Graham Chapman
Graham Chapman
Born 8 January 1941 in Leicester, Midlands
Died 4 October, 1989 at the age of 48 from cancer
Education: Melton Mowbray Grammar School and Cambridge
Utterly useless fact: Qualified medical doctor forsook stethoscope for antler headdress. 
Graham's father was a policeman, and the young Graham had to move around the country quite a bit whenever his father had a new posting. At Melton Mowbray Grammar School, the young Graham tried his hand at acting. Graham's older brother John was a doctor, and Graham wanted to go to medicine too ... but always had his eyes on Cambridge college and their Footlights - a famous proving-ground for actors, writers and comedians. At Cambridge Chapman met John Cleese, and they began to write together. Graham became so busy appearing in and writing for Footlights revues that he gave up medicine entirely. With Cleese, he wrote for The Frost Report, the film The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer, and Richard Gordon's "Doctor ..." series, appearing in the film Doctor in Trouble. He and Cleese wrote for and appeared in the film The Magic Christian. With Marty Feldman and Tim Brooke-Taylor, Chapman and Cleese created their own sketch comedy series, At Last the 1948 Show, which ran for two series. Despite critical acclaim, the series was not widely seen.
Graham was twenty-five when he realized he was gay. When he came out publicly, just before the Flying Circus TV series began, John Cleese was shocked ... and so were several ladies who had crushes on the eccentric writer! For two decades, before his death, Graham lived with David Sherlock, and they became like an old married couple. In 1972 Chapman co-founded the publication Gay News, striving to change the way gays were perceived by the public.
Graham always seemed like the most eccentric and uncontrollable of the Pythons, often playing the most bizarre characters. However, he was best known for his leading roles as Arthur in Holy Grail and Brian in Life of Brian - classic leading man roles that required him to play the straight man to the other Pythons' eccentric characters. Of course Graham was the perfect straight man, because his well-behaved, upper-class British exterior could hide a dangerous and unpredictable eccentricity. Thus making it all quite a bit funnier.
John Cleese quit the Python team after the third series of the Flying Circus, and Graham was on his own. In the fourth series of Python, Graham began writing with Douglas Adams (future creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), and they created a comedy pilot called Out of the Trees, which aired once against a football match and received low ratings. The series was not continued. Chapman was always the most self-conscious Python, and his nervous mannerisms weren't always part of the act. He smoked a pipe constantly, and also drank constantly. By the time of the third series of Python Graham had become an alcoholic. His taste for the bottle nearly killed him.
During the shooting of Holy Grail Graham was so affected by alcohol he had trouble performing.
Being a qualified physician, Graham knew how his alcoholism was affecting his body. Yet he kept destroying himself anyway - three pints of gin a day. Finally, over Christmas 1977, he decided to stop drinking. He spent three days in bed shivering and hallucinating. After three days he finally stopped shaking, and got up. But he hadn't eaten, and was very short of blood sugar. He went into muscular spasm and then an epileptic fit, hitting his head and passing out unconscious.
When Graham became conscious again, he realized with some relief that he was still alive. He never drank again. He still retained his off-kilter edge, and fully sober in 1980, delivered his best performance in "The Life of Brian"
Post-Python, Chapman
conducted a comic lecture tour of college campuses throughout the U.S. and Australia, featuring
reminiscences on Python, memories of friend Keith Moon and his legendary one-man wrestling act. In 1983, Chapman starred in, produced and co-wrote the pirate film "Yellowbeard". He also starred in "The Odd Job," with David Jason and Carolyn Seymour.
Chapman and longtime companion David Sherlock adopted a son, John Tomiczek, who died in 1992. Tragically, Chapman
was diagnosed with cancer of the tonsils in 1988. With Chapman on the day of his death were Terry Jones,
John Cleese and Michael Palin. Chapman passed away on 4 October 1989, just a day short of the 20th
anniversary of the first broadcast of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Jones, speaking of Graham, said it was
"the worst case of party pooping I had ever seen." At Graham's funeral, a huge number of friends and associates arrived to pay tribute to the eccentric genius of their friend Graham.
From the book Graham Crackers.
GRAHAM CHAPMAN WROTE:
The name, "Monty Python's Flying Circus" was, to be honest, sort of
foisted upon us by the BBC. We were all busy
trying to write the first 13 episodes of the series and weren't desperately
keen to stop and worry about what to call the bloody thing. I mean, we were
panicking just to get everything done before we went into the studio, so we
weren't about to spend a lot of time arguing about titles.
There'd already been suggestions, things like "Owl Stretching Time,"
"The Toad Elevating Moment," and "Sex and Violence." Terry Jones came up
with a nice one-"A Horse, a Bucket, and a Spoon." I must say, I rather liked
that one. I never *understood* it, but I liked it. We never agreed on any of
these titles because, obviously, they were the ideas of individual members
of the group and, being human beings, no one else liked them.
But then the BBC's Head of Comedy, Michael Mills, came into our shed and
told us that he wouldn't leave until we had given him a title, and that it
had to include the word "circus." He desperately wanted a title as he had to
have something to put in the TV magazine, and he said we had to use the word
"circus" because the BBC had loosely referred to the six of us wandering
around the building as "a circus," and that this word "circus" had
appeared on contracts and interdepartmental memos and so on, and in a
bureaucracy like that it would have a very expensive process to change all
of that paperwork! So we thought, "All right, we'll swallow that, we'll
use the word 'circus.'"
We added "flying" to it to make it sound less like a real circus and
more like something to do with the First World War, and then added "Monty
Python" because he sounded like a really bad theatrical agent. Just the sort
of guy that might have gotten us together. So that was it. None of us liked
it, but none of us hated it. Typical committee decision.
Michael Palin's tribute first appeared October
6, 1989, in The Guardian:
MICHAEL PALIN WRITES:
I FIRST HEARD OF GRAHAM CHAPMAN as one of that pool of exOxbridge
revue talent that sloshed around the BBC in the mid1960s.
I use the word sloshed advisedly, for many of our best times were had
propping up the various bars of the Corporation. Graham was like a
figure out of a Biggles story. Strong, finely chiselled features, pipe at a
jaunty angle in his mouth, pint in one hand and progger in the other. A
progger was Graham's name for the flatended instrument which he
used to bed down the tobacco in his pipe. I never knew whether it
was a real name or not. Graham liked words and used them well, but
if he felt the right one didn't exist he'd invent another one.
In the postCambridge days he was a journeyman writer, like us all.
One day he would be working with John Cleese to produce a dazzling
succession of successful sketches for The Frost Report, the next he
would be writing filler jokes for The Petula Clark Show.
He kept a low profile as a performer until At Last, the 1948 Show, in
which he revealed a talent for playing intense, rather serious
characters hilariously. He was a charismatic performer, drawing the
eye to himself as much for the originality and unshowbizziness of his
approach as for the likely detectable hint of unpredictability. An
audience was never quite sure what he would do next. Nor, I think, as
a performer, was Graham. During a singing court scene in one of the
early Python shows he quite inadvertently substituted 'window
dresser' for 'window clearer' in his song, a Freudian slip at which we
all fell about, especially Graham.
In 1969, when the mutual admiration society which became known as
Monty Python assembled, Graham met David Sherlock and embarked
on one of the many radical changes in his life, when they decided to
live together. It was a courageous decision, which shocked some of
his friends at the time but was borne out triumphantly by the fact that
they shared the rest of their lives. David, together with their adopted
son John Tomiczak, nursed and cared for him with stoic patience and
quiet strength throughout his final illness.
Graham's need to relax himself with a dram or two took a
disproportionate hold on his life as the pressures of a heavy Python
schedule grew. Drink was not always the friend he thought it,
affecting his performances and occasionally doing a great disservice to
a much underrated natural acting talent.
His writing contributions to Python were of quality rather than
quantity. Whilst all around were scratching their heads for inspiration
Graham would puff his pipe and glance sideways at the Times
crossword and be quite silent for 30 minutes or so before coming out
with a single shaft of inspiration that would transform a mundane
sketch into something very mad and wonderful.
Such surreal flashes were the very essence of Python, as were his
memorable performances as the Colonel, as the Hostess in the
Eurovision song contest, Raymond Luxury-Yacht, and others.
His offstage performances included collecting an award from the Sun
newspaper by leaping high in the air, emitting a loud squawk, and
crawling all the way back to his table with the award in his mouth,
leaving Lord Mountbatten, who had given him the award, looking
very confused.
But Graham's most memorable performances were sustained and
demanding - as King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and
Brian in the Life of Brian.
Around the time of the filming of Life of Brian, Graham made a
conscious effort to free himself from the dependence on the large G
and Ts - after that "ice but no lemon please." His restless
everinquisitive need to be freed from the boring and the conventional
had led him to the brink, but his cautious disciplined rational side
saved him at the last minute from toppling over. He gave up drinking,
and later, with immense difficulty, also laid aside his pipe.
Perhaps Graham too easily overestimated the talents of others while
underestimating his own and, as a result, his ventures outside
Python - Out of the Trees for the BBC and his two films, Odd Job and
Yellowbeard - were full of good ideas badly resolved. The commercial
failure of Yellowbeard depressed him.
His recent illness was another in a series of mountains which Graham
had to climb. He always regarded death as highly overrated and could
never understand why anybody made such a fuss about it. Despite
great physical discomfort he remained alert, informed, articulate and
humorous.
He hated to be bored, which is why he joined the Dangerous Sports
Club and once hurled himself into thin air attached to a length of
rubber... "I was high for two weeks after that."
I suspect he would have enjoyed an old age of increasing eccentricity,
dispensing his considerable wisdom and hospitality, occasionally
leaping in the air and shouting "Eeke!"
- Reprinted from Life Before and After Monty Python by Kim "Howard" Johnson, St. Martin's Press, 1993
John Cleese, Graham's friend and writing partner, presented the following speech at Chapman's memorial service, two months after his death:
JOHN CLEESE WRITES:
GRAHAM CHAPMAN, co-author of the "Parrot Sketch," is no more. He has
ceased to be. Bereft of life, he rests in peace, he has kicked the
bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and
gone to meet the Great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky, and I
guess that we're all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent,
such capability and kindness, of such intelligence should now be so
suddenly spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he'd
achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he'd had
enough fun.
Well, I feel that I should say, "Nonsense. Good riddance to him, the
freeloading bastard! I hope he fries." And the reason I think I should
say this is, he would never forgive me if I didn't, if I threw away this
opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him but
mindless good taste. I could hear him whispering in my ear last night as
I was writing this, "Alright, Cleese, you're very proud of being the
first person to ever say 'shit' on television. If this service is really
for me, just for starters, I want you to be the first person ever at a
British memorial service to say 'fuck'!"
"A Bit on the End" from Graham's own A Liar's Autobiography:
ERIC IDLE WRITES:
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...
It's 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 into 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 day's 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
A Medical Love Song: A MIDI by Steve Hull (STHMID@aol.com)
Out of the Trees clip
(6 MB, Realplayer)
After Monty Python's Flying Circus ended, Graham Chapman created a series with Douglas Adams (who would later create The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), and Bernard McKenna. That series was "Out of the Trees." Three scripts were written, but only one was ever produced. The pilot aired only once, got low ratings, and was never heard from again. It starred Chapman along with future Hitchhiker alums Simon Jones and Mark Wing-Davey. The pilot is thought to be lost, unless Jones or Wing-Davey has a copy. In this clip from "The Making of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," which is on the Hitchhiker's DVD, Douglas Adams recalls the lost show. He seems embarrassed by his own writing for the show, but in truth the script is quite terrific (we've read it), and we hope the lost show turns up someday.
The Minister Falls Apart
from At Last, the 1948 Show
(1.4 MB, MPEG-1 video)
Graham Chapman can't keep it together while talking to Tim Brooke-Taylor. From At Last the 1948 Show, a sketch comedy series that predated Monty Python. Encoded by Linus. For entire episodes of this show, visit our At Last the 1948 Show page.
Both essays are taken from the official Python site, Pythonline, and are the property of Monty Python and 7th Level, and used with the greatest of respect for all concerned, and in fondest memory of Graham Chapman.