Monty Python

Monty Python, or The Pythons, were the creators and stars of Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy series which first aired on October 5, 1969 with the first episode Whither Canada?. As a television series it consisted of 45 episodes over 4 seasons. However, the Python phenomenon was much greater, spawning stage tours, four films, numerous audio recordings, several computer games and books, as well as launching the members to individual stardom.

Trivia

• The September 17, 2004 episode of Jeopardy! featured Python-related category titles in the Double Jeopardy round: Monty Python, Bring Out Your Dead, Spam, Summarising Proust, I'm A Lumberjack, and Knights Who Say "Ni"!
• All of the Beatles were fans of Monty Python. Ringo Starr made a cameo appearance after the credits of the Flying Circus episode Mr. & Mrs. Brian Norris' Ford Popular, playing himself. Besides George Harrison's work mentioned above, he also appeared as a mountie during the Lumberjack Song at the Python's City Center venue. The last song on the warm-up tape before Harrison's concerts was the Lumberjack Song.¹
• A new species of snake was discovered in Australia in the early 1980s, of which the Latin name starts Monty Python... The full name: Montypythonsidesriversleighensis.¹
• The title Monty Python's Flying Circus was partly the result of the group's reputation at the BBC. Michael Mills, BBC's Head of Comedy, wanted their name to include the word "circus", because the BBC referred to the six members wandering around the building as a circus. The group added "flying" to make it sound less like an actual circus and more like something from World War I. "Monty Python" was added because they claimed it sounded like a really bad theatrical agent, the sort of person who would have brought them together.⁴
• The Python programming language is named after the troupe, and Monty Python references are often found in sample code created for that language.
• The Monty Python foot icon is used to represent the slashdot.org post category "It's funny. Laugh." http://slashdot.org/topics.shtml
• The term spam, as used to denote unsolicited email, comes from Monty Python's Spam sketch
• Monty Python markets their own beer called Monty Python's Holy Grail