GRAHAM CHAPMAN
Life's a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke its true.
You'll see it's all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
So always look on the bright side of death...
Its Graham Chapman's Memorial service, he has been dead less than three months and I'm singing this in St. Barts Hospital Great Hall, to a packed congregation each of whom has been issued hymn sheets of the words of this song. I can feel a huge giggle growing. Once again Python has slipped gently into a parody of the Church of England.
Graham had died with brilliant timing on October 4th 1989, the very eve of the twentieth anniversary of the first recording of Monty Python's Flying Circus, causing a huge celebratory party to be cancelled in what Terry Jones called the greatest act of party pooping in history. Now we were gathered in St.Bart's to remember this wonderful medical loony and the event was becoming very silly indeed. I kept expecting Graham's Colonel to come in and stop it.
It soon began to turn from a memorial into a roast, from a sad occasion into first an amusing and then an hilarious afternoon, as one comedian after another piled up Graham stories. I suppose it was inevitable that an event stacked with so many funny people couldn't keep serious for very long, and mercifully comedy kept breaking out, so that by the end laughter liberated everyone from sadness.
John Cleese started it, startling everybody by declaiming a parrot sketch parody - "Graham Chapman is no more, he has gone to meet his maker, he has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible" - because he said Graham would never have forgiven him if he hadn't. He ended by claiming to be the first person to say fuck at a Memorial Service.
The Fred Tomlinson singers led us all in a Chorus of Jerusalem in Japanese or Jelusarem, as Graham used to sing.
Bling me my speal, oh crowds unford
Bling me my chaliots of file...
Tim Brooke-Taylor read the massage parlour episode from this book. Mike Palin, hilarious as ever, spoke of how Graham was always late. For years Graham had prevailed on Michael's legendary niceness by getting him to pick him up for rehearsal as he was "on the way". Michael, too nice to say no would sit and stew for twenty minutes in the car outside Graham's flat, always arriving late for rehearsal with a less than apologetic Graham in tow. Occasionally during this morning vigil young men would poke their heads out of upstairs' windows and say things like "he'll be down in a minute" and "he's nearly ready", further infuriating Michael. He now confessed that he had been wondering about this whole twentieth anniversary thing and couldn't see the point of it, but that Graham's death had finally brought some meaning to it. And in a very real way, he confided, he believed that Graham was actually with us in the room today. Well not right now, but in another twenty minutes certainly...
Graham Chapman was a loony. You can tell that from this book. After all it took four men to write his autobiography. Pretty fair, since it took about four men to live his life. There was the quiet pipe-smoking tweed jacketed doctor, who could elucidate complicated medical facts to the layman while calmly diagnosing and dispensing medicines; there was the quiet pipe-smoking writer who could sit all day painting his nails with gestetner fluid occasionally interjecting the oddest comments, squawks, shouts of "Betty Marsden" and injunctions to sing "Only Make Believe" in a squeaky voice; there was the quiet pipe-smoking homosexual, who could calmly bring a party of Japanese boys down for breakfast in an extremely bourgeois German suburban hotel, causing the manageress conniptions and ending in a request that he move to a more suitable establishment; and there was the quiet pipe-smoking alcoholic, who could reduce any drinks party to a shambles by consuming half a distillery and then crawling round the floor kissing all the men and groping all the women. But he wasn't all fun.
He could get in a right rat bate; especially if you tried to help him out. In our stage show due to his tendency to take a quick nip between numbers he was frequently late and would often leave Mike Palin and Carol Cleveland waiting on stage for him. One night both John and I took it into our heads to fill in for him, rather than have this embarrassing silence from the audience and we were both rather startled to find ourselves facing each other across the stage. We fell into Graham's part and acted it out one behind the other until Graham finally staggered on huffing and puffing. Instead of the quiet word of thanks we expected at the end of the show, he was completely furious with us, yelling and screaming. We didn't try it again.
Jonathan Lynn observed that Graham was the only true anarchist in Monty Python. He could really only thrive in chaos. Fortunately in Monty Python there was always plenty of it about. I can remember filming the TV series and Graham nipping in to a Bank to cash a cheque dressed as Biggles. "Its alright" he said to the startled cashier "I am a Doctor."
It was really as Brian that he achieved his finest work. Recently, and painfully, cured of his alcoholic addiction, he threw himself into the role of the man who is mistaken for the Messiah with typical Graham dedication. Not only did he spend long hours filming every day, but instead of crawling off to swim or sleep like the rest of us, at lunchtime and in the evening he reverted to his doctor persona and gave surgeries for the crew and local Tunisians.
There is something very chilling about turning up for a days work and finding a cross with your name on it. We spent three days being crucified and it certainly focuses the mind wonderfully. I suspect it was important for all of us but David Sherlock told me it had been particularly meaningful for Graham since he had finally come to terms with himself.
What shines through this book is his staggering honesty - the brilliance of truth that only a self-proclaimed liar could achieve. Facts and stories we would have murdered our grandmothers to conceal are cheerfully paraded for our edification. This is life viewed as comedy, that only a doctor faced constantly with the physical comedy of our bodies can see.
He taught us not to respect doctors - they are after all only ex-medical students - and to be honest with our emotions. "Well its better than bottling it up" would be
Graham's credo. "After all who of us in our lives hasn't set fire to some great public building or other..."
In October 1989 as Graham lay dying I was editing a collection of Python songs, and had been searching in vain for the original recording of a song Graham and I wrote together called "Medical Love Song". I finally found it the day he died, and played it with tears rolling down my cheeks as Graham sang:
"I left my body to science
But I'm afraid they turned it down."
Eric Idle
April 1991
Info:
Taken from Pythonline