We were driving home from our weekly downtown dinner outing for real Ramen noodle soup at Sakura in Village-by-the-Grange when the topic of Monty Python came up. I immediately launched into a poor rendition of “Novel Writing (from Essex)”, which I’d heard at some point this week on CBC’s Freestyle. I have to admit that the show has grown on me, thanks in part to Kelly Ryan’s jabbing at co-host Cameron Phillips’s nerdiness (though he does reference the Simpsons). I told Laurel how Phillips had mentioned that Michael Palin would be one of his three dinner guests (you know this game: who’d you have over for dinner?). Our list has grown so large that we’ll need a banquet hall.
Laurel too is a huge Palin fan, though John Cleese may be the popular face of Python. This started us off on ranking the members in accordance with the Beatles template: John Cleese = John Lennon; Eric Idle = Paul McCartney, both Michael Palin and Graham Chapman = George Harrison; Terry Jones = Ringo. And of course, Terry Gilliam = George Martin.