Palin admitted he doesn’t think it could be made today.
Monty Python is regarded as one of the best comedy groups, often compared to The Beatles for having the same influence on comedy as the latter had on music.
But with 10 years passing since the troupe last reunited, is there hope of another hurrah? It isn’t likely, according to Sir Michael Palin, who has put to bed any hope of a reunion.
Speaking to Radio Times magazine in its special Earth Day issue, Palin admitted that the last reunion was “the end of it”.
“We got a nice big audience and we made a lot of money, we could bow out gracefully,” he said.
Back in 2014, the surviving members of Monty Python announced they would star in a revival in London, in which they performed a mix of old and new material from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
While it was originally meant to be one performance, it was later expanded to 10 shows due to phenomenal demand, which would become their last with Terry Jones, who died in 2020, and second without Graham Chapman, who died in 1989.
“I loved doing Python, it was cherished,” Palin continued. “The good stuff was good and the bad stuff, bad. It didn’t represent an attack on this or that. That was the wonder. It mocked everything around it, it was so scattergun.
“I did 15 different characters in Life of Brian, so it was quite hard to pin down what we actually were.
“Certainly, in the film there were things which are similar to what people are talking about now. Gender issues, extremism. But it was all done at a time when people could laugh at it.”
As for whether Monty Python could be made in 2024, Palin admitted he didn’t think it would “get any backers”.
He explained that there isn’t “such a generous, open atmosphere” that there was once. “Python was of its time.”
He added: “Then, you just had to be funny. Now, you have to be funny and politically correct, which restricts a lot of comedians. And it restricts a lot of people. Because we know that people aren’t politically correct. In the pub, God knows what they say!”
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