In a student house in middle England 50 years ago this weekend, three of my classmates and I waited agog to see John Cleese’s first TV show since he left the Monty Python troupe the previous year. We had all been Python fanatics since we were 14 years old, knew most of the sketches verbatim, and were very excited indeed.
The comedy premiered on the secondary, minority BBC channel, and within minutes—seconds, in truth—we were very much not laughing. The episode was about a fake Lord trying to check in to a seedy seaside hotel, and the snobbish Cleese character who runs the place gets fooled by him.
