Graham Chapman (1941-1989)

Robert Ross remembers the late Graham Chapman, the most anarchic and subversive member of the Monty Python gang!

Graham Chapman as Monty Python’s pompous military man

As one of the founding fathers of off-the-wall comedy collective Monty Python, pipe-smoking, hard-staring Graham Chapman could be the most subversive of the lot. Indeed, as a child, when my very liberal parents allowed me to stay up late and watch rather illicit repeats of the show, my young brain automatically assumed that Chapman *was* Monty Python. Be it as bemused policeman or confused colonel, this strait-laced figure of ridiculous authority seemed to be in control of this manic flying circus. Just.

Indeed, Chapman whether as stupidly big-nosed skin specialist Raymond Luxury-Yacht or as that pompous military man who would wander into a sketch to stop it for “being far too silly…”, remains a titan of the absurd. The most dangerously funny of comic greats was a natural for membership of the Dangerous Sports Club: acts of extreme madness in the name of thrills. His larks of lunacy could range from abseiling into uncharted potholes, to attending posh functions dressed as a giant carrot. Chapman relished being a liberated liability.

The title of his 1980 memoir: A Liar’s Autobiography, Volume VI, tells you all you need to know. It was the first and only volume; and it’s far from all balderdash. He was indeed born in Leicester, and, as a war baby, was swiftly introduced to the abstract beauty of death and destruction, eagerly ferreting around in the bomb craters for dismembered limbs. This very real detachment from human sentimentality would serve him well at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, where he studied medicine. He also met blunt Downing College law student John Cleese. Comedy was their lifelong bond and, as often as not, an open bible was the surest sign that the two had been writing sketches together.