Always look on the bright side of life: Monty Python mark stage return with mass singalong
Comedy legends, all 70-plus, return after three decades and leave audience in tears of laughter
Monty Python returned to the stage for the first time in more than 30 years with a reunion show in London full of silly jokes and smut and ending in a mass sing-a-long by 14,000 fans of the legendary British comedy troupe.
Opening a 10-night residency at the 02 Arena on Tuesday, the five surviving Pythons performed some of their best-loved sketches and songs to an adoring crowd.
John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle and Terry Jones, now all in their seventies, went through more than a dozen costume changes for a show featuring live comedy, archive footage and big musical numbers. Idle, the director, had promised something spectacular, but ultimately it was the old sketches performed with a minimum of fuss - and perfect comic timing - that proved most successful.
There were many in the crowd crying with laughter as Idle and Cleese performed their dead parrot sketch, in which Cleese tries to return the bird to the pet shop insisting that it "is no more".
The pair then moved into the cheese shop skit, where every variety Cleese asks for is out of stock, and which ended with both men having a fit of giggles.
"It was brilliant, better than expected," said David Mallinson, 48, from Manchester. "I've got tears in my eyes. The atmosphere was amazing," he said.
His son James, 17, added: "The fact they forgot some of their lines and laughed at their own jokes almost made it better."