This programme contains some strong language.
MUSIC: "Rule Britannia"
Before the dawn of time in the last millennium,
at Her Majesty's Theatre in London,
comic history was made.
Monty Python teamed up with Beyond The Fringe in aid of Amnesty International.
The success of these shows has lasted nearly 30 years. They led to Live Aid and Comic Relief.
They were such a landmark that those of us who took part can't remember much about them.
Good evening, madam. Your name is? Mrs Yeti Goosecreature.
I'm sorry I can remember so little about it!
Plenty of people remember you. We all want to see Basil Brush back on TV! It's not Basil Brush!
I can't remember anything about it.
I most royally shall now to bed to sleep off the nonsense I've said!
I can't remember any of the events.
Then I want to end it, if I may, "Norwich".
"Norwich," yes.
Well, it's an idiomatic way of saying, "Knickers off ready when I come home."
I've forgotten the words, but I must've said it 1200 times!
I'd forgotten being involved in it.
I can't remember what happened... Nibble! Leave Orifice alone!
If I could remember... One thing.
You don't even know me, do you, Saunders? You don't even realise...
SNORES
I remember being shite and thinking we should've rehearsed this.
# Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh... #
I forget who was on drums.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
# I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK I sleep all night and I work all day
# He's a lumberjack and he's OK He sleeps all night and he works all day... #
The series of shows, The Secret Policeman's Ball, was a turning point in British comedy and music.
A rich mix of styles and talents was brought together for the first time.
# He goes to the lavatory On Wednesdays he goes shopping and has buttered scones for tea
# He's a lumberjack and he's OK He sleeps all night and he works all day
# I cut down trees, I skip and jump I like to press wild flowers
# I put on women's clothing and hang around in bars
# He cuts down trees, he skips and jumps He likes to press wild flowers
# He puts on women's clothing and hangs around in...bars? #
The first benefit show was the brainchild of John Cleese, a godfather of British comedy.
His reputation persuaded performers to give their services for free.
They wanted to raise money and awareness for Amnesty International
which was then a little-known charity fighting to end torture and free prisoners of conscience.
# He's a lumberjack and he's OK... #
Don't worry. Don't worry about it.
'It began when Amnesty had very little money at all.'
One day I noticed a cheque go by, signed "J Cleese".
I knew somebody who vaguely knew him, so I phoned her up
and she gave me his phone number.
One day I phoned John. There was a crunching sound on the phone because John was eating a lettuce sandwich.
And he said, "How can we raise money for Amnesty?"
It seemed the most obvious thing.
A stage show was the one thing that I knew how to organise.
He said, "We've got to do it for two or three nights. There's no point in doing it just for one night.
"You find the theatre. I'll give you the phone numbers of the people."
Except for a couple, they all said yes.
We wanted it to be something people could go to in the evening.
It was ten when the show started.
Actually, it was nearer midnight.
There'd been a proper professional show in the theatre that had just finished.
Then we'd entertain them, hopefully, for two hours.
Ah! Even I remember the words of this one.
'Oh, God!'
The Dead Parrot sketch. Oh, dear me!
I wish to register a complaint.
'The content of the Amnesty show was very simple.
'It was stuff people knew well, wouldn't have to rehearse for long'
and which was tried and trusted. We knew it was gonna work.
Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, innit, eh? Beautiful plumage.
The plumage don't enter into it. He's stone-dead.
No, no, he's resting. All right, if he's resting, I'll wake him up.
Hello, Mr Polly Parrot. I've got a nice, fresh cuttlefish for you if you wake up...
There, he moved! No, that was you!
This is only 1976 and yet the sketch is already a cliche of comedy.
John and Mike know it backwards and the audience knows it backwards as well!
'John and Mike could be miming.'
Oh, wakey, wakey!
'This is one of the best stage performances we ever did.
'I've never seen John at such high voltage. He was terrific.'
He does a great routine with it.
There should be an Olympic sport of parrot bashing. He would win.
Bom, bom, bang, bang, whack, bang!
Where does he get it from?
Incredible! I've never seen him do that before.
We did that show many times. I don't think it ever worked quite as well.
Now, that's what I call a dead parrot.
He's stunned.
'The audience is already laughing because they know what's coming.
'And sometimes it throws their timing.'
Because the timing is different, the performance becomes different.
'And Mike often starts laughing.'
He's probably pining for the fjords.
PINING for the FJORDS?
SPLUTTERS WITH LAUGHTER
Pining for the fjo-o-ords?
What kind of talk is that?
Look...
This is nothing to laugh at! Why did he fall flat on his back when I got him home?
The Norwegian Blue prefers kipping on his back. Remarkable bird, squire. Beautiful plumage.
Some sketches became national treasures.
Remember when Margaret Thatcher used part of this sketch at a Tory conference?
It was about the Lib Dem Party and they persuaded her to do it.
She was good at many things, but not at this. They coached her.
This is an ex-parrot.
It is not merely stunned. It has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker.
She actually used quite a lot of it
and the Pythons were all convinced that we should sue her for breach of copyright.
When Peter says, "Oh, saucy Wooster, dost thou lie so low...?"
Jonathan Miller directed the first show.
He was a member of the theatrical revue, Beyond The Fringe,
along with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and top playwright, Alan Bennett.
Beyond The Fringe captured the mood of Britain in the '60s.
Their success in London and New York launched the satire movement.
The trouble with being a miner
is as soon as you're too old and tired and ill and sick and stupid to do your job properly,
you have to go.
Well, the very opposite applies with the judges.
'Things they were saying about the country and government were things that no-one had ever done before.'
We were brought up believing that archbishops, generals, MPs and lords and ladies were there
because they were somehow... they deserved that place and they had wisdom,
then a fairly quick process of disenchantment was setting in in the '60s
and our leaders were out of touch,
certainly with how younger people were thinking about the world.
Beyond The Fringe articulated that so well.
Accurate observation of social styles and class styles
was characteristic of Beyond The Fringe.
That is what amused the audiences.
'Because we were not traditional showbiz characters,
'but were university performers,
'there was a higher level of sort of comic literacy.'
Are you using "yes" here in the affirmative sense?
No.
"Who am I?" he would cry despairingly.
"You are Lawrence of Arabia," passers-by would stop him and say. "And I claim my £5."
They're very rigorous, the exams. They're noted for their rigour.
People come staggering out saying, "My God, what a rigorous exam!"
The audience didn't know how scary it was for all concerned.
This was the first time Beyond The Fringe was on stage with Monty Python, a coup for Amnesty.
Those comedians were giants, but their styles were very different.
No-one knew if it would end in laughter or tears.
Even for the Pythons, we were the old men of comedy.
They were seniors, like a school set-up.
They were school prefects and we were third-form ticks.
They were much smarter than we were.
We liked being silly and they weren't silly.
'To be in the same rooms as these guys was exciting.'
You don't seem competitive like we were.
I couldn't work with Jonathan. We just wouldn't get on really.
Some of the comics had never even met, let alone performed in each other's sketches.
Dudley Moore was in Hollywood, so Terry Jones took his role
in the classic Beyond The Fringe parody of Shakespeare.
It doesn't matter how it goes. It plays itself, it's so ludicrous.
I do remember there are great barren patches in this, chiefly the bits I'm involved in.
'One of the things that surprised Alan and myself'
was what seemed to us to be the unaccountable admiration
that the Python people had for the Fringe,
as if we were pioneers of something which they then carried on
with much greater success.
Beyond The Fringe were gods to us.
They were gods when we were at university,
so I always felt a bit intimidated
by Peter and Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett.
When I had to play Dudley Moore's part, it was nerve-wracking.
Alan comes on and sits on a seat in the centre and you put yourself sweetly and coyly at his feet.
I thought he plucked hard... But they were all totally discordant.
That's right. # Ooh! #
I think it was even just one string, rather than...
Just one string, then what you do is make it as accurate as you can,
rather than putting any sort of comment on it.
As near as possible to this.
# Oh, Death, his face my shroud hath hid
PLUCKS DISCORDANT NOTE
# And Lethe drowned my poor love's soul
# Oh, let us flee to Pluto's realm
PLUCKS NOTE # And in his arms I shall grow old...
LOW TUNELESS NOTE
Wise words in mouths of fools do oft themselves belie.
'Beyond The Fringe was watched and applauded almost entirely
'by middle-aged, middle-class people, not by young people.'
Young people became absolutely passionate about Monty Python.
INDISTINCT SONG
Their fame and their reclame and just the fact that they had fans
in a way that we never had fans...
That was the first time I'd seen that and to see a theatre full of them was extraordinary.
Dudley Moore's absence led to another unique pairing.
Sing, sing!
John Cleese got to perform with Peter Cook.
'Everyone of my generation thought that Peter was the great genius.'
When he performed on these shows, you could hardly find space in the wings.
'And I'd heard about this sketch
'and it was marvellous to go on stage and do it with him.'
Did you know that you've got four miles of tubing in your stomach?
No, I didn't know that. It's a good thing I'm here then.
Aren't you interested in your intestines? Not particularly. You should be.
Because without your intestines, you'd be unable to digest.
Then you'd look a bit of a fool, wouldn't you?
Would you like to see a diagram of your intestines?
I've got a diagram of your intestines here.
Well, it's not actually YOUR intestines.
'Peter never stuck to the script.'
He would always just make it up at the end. "Peter, are you going to do this line about so-and-so?"
He'd say, "Yes, very probably." It was no help if you had the line after that.
Did you know that the whale is not really a fish? It's an insect.
The great advantage of doing sketches with Peter is that he'll come in and drive you mad,
but you'll have a newspaper with all the lines in it, so I have the entire script.
See how far it has to go, the food? Four miles at one mile an hour.
This means none of the food that reaches your stomach is ever really fresh.
Shall I tell you something?
You are one of the most boring, tedious, uninteresting, monotonous,
flatulent, flat-headed, cloth-eared, swivel-eyed, fornicating little gits I've ever laid eyes on!
Is that a fact?
How very interesting!
It was based on this servant at my school called Arthur Boilett
who would tell you these boring, which he thought interesting facts.
He had a line. He said, um...
"Do you know that stone which used to lie just outside the, um...
"the left-hand side of the gravel driveway?
"I sold that yesterday because I thought I saw it move."
And he kept selling things which he thought he saw move.
If anything moved, it was valuable.
The Oxbridge styles of the Fringe and the Pythons differed from the new wave of stand-up comedians.
But these two guys were in Rome.
Billy Connolly was a hot young comic from Scotland,
bringing with him a special brand of Glaswegian humour.
The sun was belting down on them. You know, belt!
"Hey, the sun's beltin' doon on me." "Come on and get a bevvy."
They shot... So they shot into a wee bar in Rome.
And right up to the bar and said, "Jimmy, give us two pints of heavy."
And he says, "Whit?"
In Italian, like, you know...
"Two pints of heavy. Are you deaf or something?"
He said, "Look... We...
"We don't have heavy in Rome. We've got all sorts of clever things, but not heavy.
"But you're welcome to anything you see here."
"I don't know about any of thae things an' that.
"I tell you what. What does the Pope drink?"
The guy says, "Creme de menthe. He likes a wee glass of creme de menthe now and again."
"Give us two pints of that!"
'One thing I discovered was the stand-ups had a great advantage.
'If you put a sketch after a stand-up, the energy dropped.'
If you stand there on your own in a spotlight with a microphone,
there's such a focus of energy and the microphone gives you such power
that it was very hard to follow the best stand-up performers.
It was very hard to follow Humphries, for example.
I knew Barry a little bit. You bump into people here and there.
Barry was doing a show in town.
I said, "After your show, could you come along and do a bit?" And he did.
I'll finish here and I'll stay in Edna's clothes.
I think I'll stay in that. Yeah, fine.
I'm not going to walk down the Haymarket wearing it. No.
I'll organise a car... Yes.
That will take me and Iris, my accompanist... Yeah. ..down to the theatre.
I forgot to tell you something, Iris. Oh?
I agreed a long time ago to do a charity appearance
on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights after the show. After the show?
And I haven't told you yet.
Why? Does it affect me? Yes.
It would be nice... I can't do it alone, Iris.
Well, I did hear, but I didn't know whether it affected me.
Would you mind being there just in case I lose my voice?
That would be lovely. Thanks, Iris. I'm sorry that you had to be told this on camera, as it were.
Bless your heart.
# The English have a quality I'd like to sing about
# It's not the sort of quality
# Bestowed on wog or Kraut
# They think you're on the sticky side
# You never throw a tizz
# A special something sees you through
# I'll tell you what it is...
# Spunk, spunk, spunk You're so full of British spunk
# Though our tum-tums are a-rumbling and our members sadly shrunk... #
LAUGHTER So...
Don't spoil yourselves. Don't be unnecessary.
Remember you're out!
This is an early incarnation of Barry Humphries' Dame Edna.
She's kind of slightly... not quite as biting as she becomes later on, I think.
# So in a time of crisis there's nothing quite so nice
# As British spunk, spunk, spunk, spunk, spunk! #
In those days, comedy was largely men only.
In the first show, the only major comedienne was Eleanor Bron.
She was in a sketch that was very unpolitically correct, thankfully!
There's something I must tell you.
Yes, dear? There can be no possible doubt about it any longer.
I'm going to have a baby.
For goodness sake, Penelope!
How many times do I have to tell you? It's not a baby. It's a balloon.
Charles... It is a baby.
It's a balloon, Penelope.
It's a baby, darling!
It's a balloon, Penelope. It's a baby. It's a balloon!
LOUD BANG Oh!
Prick!
If you talk to some of the women who were contemporaries of John Cleese
and Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor,
they don't have kind things to say.
It was, "Oh, we need a woman in this sketch" to feed some lines.
Men got all the good jokes.
When I was in the Footlights Club at Cambridge,
many people, now famous comedians, didn't want women in the club.
And, of course, Monty Python, which is in patches a really great show...
is the most misogynistic show...ever.
'It's got six guys who play women half the time, hideous old crones,
'and apart from that, the only women in the show were a couple of bimbos really.'
But one woman made a major contribution.
Connie Booth was then married to John Cleese. She co-scripted and co-starred in Fawlty Towers.
The hit of the second show was their sketch.
I wonder if you might have The Amazing Adventures Of Captain Gladys Stoat-Pamphlet
And Her Intrepid Spaniel Stig Among The Giant Pygmies Of Beccles...
..Volume Eight?
No, we don't have it. Funny, we've got a lot of books here. I wonder if you'd... No, we haven't.
We're closing for lunch. No, but I saw it over there!
What? Olsen's Standard Book Of British Birds. Olsen's Standard Book Of British Birds? Yes.
Yes, we do have that as a matter of fact. The expurgated version.
The expurgated version of Olson's Standard Book Of British Birds?!
The one without the gannet.
They've all got the gannet. It's a standard British bird, the gannet!
It's in all the books!
I don't like them. They wet their nests. Right!
Any other birds you don't like? The robin. Right, the robin...
There we are. Anything else? The nuthatch.
There! No gannets, no robins, no nuthatch. There's your book.
I can't buy that. It's torn!
Another first for Amnesty was the use of celebrities in the sketches.
It was a coup to get Britain's first female newsreader.
'I was asked if I'd do something for the show in 1979
'and I said yes without knowing what I would be asked to do.'
Good evening, mystery celebrity, and welcome.
'And then they said that they were going to run this competition'
where a member of the public guesses which celebrity is beating them up.
Terry Jones was the poor victim.
Are you ready? Yes. BANGS GONG
'Terry and I had a practice behind the scenes. I had a pair of boxing gloves.'
We practised rolling over and hitting and him going,
"Oh, get off! It's Angela Rippon, it's Sandy Gall!"
'But it was just fantastic fun.'
It must be Robin Day. No, but you're warmer.
A well-known television celebrity? Yes. Sandy Gall.
Not Sandy Gall, but very close. I'll give you a hint. He's female.
Richard Baker? Not Richard Baker.
She really was beating me up. She wasn't just playing. She really punched me!
Not Tony Benn. She was kicking me while I tried to remember my lines.
'I wanted to get to the end quickly because she was really hurting me.'
He must exaggerate. I didn't touch him.
Very near. Anna Ford, Anna Ford!
APPLAUSE
'It was unusual for people to see celebrities step out of their role.'
Seeing a newsreader do something different was not common. Maybe that made it funnier.
Would you like to come back next week?
Oh, yes, please, Brian.
During one of the shows... We did the opening night.
We got a decent review somewhere, the Guardian, the Independent.
But they said, "What happened to the biting satire?"
The Jeremy Thorpe trial had just finished
and Peter went right home that afternoon and wrote a piece.
In 1979, the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe made headlines in a libel suit
involving a man called Norman Scott.
Scott's case was that Thorpe had hired a hit man to murder him, but Scott's dog was shot instead.
Millions followed every revelation.
Norman Scott announced to an astonished judge and press gallery that he had been Thorpe's lover,
the splendid, dashing, Old Etonian leader of the Liberal Party.
He was married to the ex-wife of the Earl of Harwood and was as Establishment as you could get.
There had been no hint that Jeremy Thorpe might not be as other girls.
And this rather hysterical figure, Norman Scott, claimed it was a plot to have him killed
because he might tell the world that he was Jeremy Thorpe's lover.
It went to trial. Jeremy Thorpe sued.
The trial ended with the judge advising the jury to return a verdict of "not guilty"
and thereby clearing Thorpe's name.
The judge had come out with this outrageously biased direction to the jury
about how they ought to vote
and Peter had written this... this sketch
and performed it that night.
It was really like live theatre,
live comment on something political that was actually happening that day.
In the last few weeks,
we've all heard some pretty extraordinary allegations
being made about one of the prettiest,
about one of the most distinguished politicians...
..ever to rise
to high office
in this country...
or not.
Over the evidence of the so-called hit man, Mr Olivia Newton-John...
..I prefer to draw a discreet veil.
He is, as we know, a man with a criminal past,
but no criminal future.
Ha-ha-ha!
He is a piece of ordure,
a piece of excrement,
unable to carry out a simple murder plot...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
..without cocking the whole thing up.
Ladies and gentlemen...of the jury,
you are now to retire,
as indeed should I...
You are now to retire carefully to consider your verdict
of "not guilty".
And of course, looking back at that piece,
the ridicule that Peter was heaping
on this judge's biased summing up in favour of a politician,
it still seems relevant in the wake of the Hutton Report.
The sketch became such a hit, it was published in Private Eye and even released as a single.
It's just fantastic how judges still have this extraordinary propensity to believe someone
because they have an Old Etonian tie or they're a peer of the realm
or because they are the Establishment.
And, of course, it introduced to the world fantastic epithets and euphemisms for acts of gay love.
I remember Peter said to us just before he went on, "I just want one more euphemism for a homosexual.
"Any new ones?"
Then Billy Connolly said, "In Glasgow there is a phrase
"called the player of the pink oboe."
It was time for the sketch. Peter goes on and halfway through it...
We have been forced to listen to the testimony...
of Mr Norma St-Jean Scott.
A scrounger, parasite,
pervert,
a worm...
..a self-confessed player of the pink oboe.
And Peter, in the time he got from the wings to the sketch,
had thrown in "self-confessed" which really made "player of the pink oboe" work.
WHISTLES AND APPLAUSE Quiet, please!
Into this dazzling line-up came newcomer Rowan Atkinson.
'I know I needed, as soon as I walked on, just a look to take control of the audience.'
Ainsley?
You may not know what I'm about, but what I'm gonna try and do
is I'm just going to assume this role of this sardonic, sarcastic
and sadistic schoolmaster and stick to that characterisation until the end of the sketch.
Ellsworth Beast-Major?
Ellsworth Beast-Minor... Here!
I have a detention book.
Haemoglobin?
'If the audience knows you're funny, they'll laugh almost at whatever you do.'
If you are John Cleese, you can come on and go, "Right!" and everyone starts laughing.
But if they've never seen you before, it's so much harder.
Nancy Boy Potter?
'No-one really knew who I was or what I did.'
They were educated in those three, four spots throughout the evening
and the schoolmaster was the first thing that I did which said, "Here I am and this is what I do."
If I see it once more this period, Plectrum, I shall have to tweak you.
Do you have a solicitor, Plectrum?
You're lying, Plectrum, so I shall tweak you anyway.
See me afterwards to be tweaked. Yes, isn't life tragic?
'I'm not sure you could so successfully write or perform a sketch like that now.'
Since corporal punishment was stopped in schools,
those sort of characters slipped out of favour in comedy terms
because yet again the character landscape has changed so much
and headmasters are very different now. They're far less sadistic.
Don't snigger, Babcock!
It's not that funny.
Antony and Cleopatra is not a funny play.
If Shakespeare had meant it to be funny, he would have put a joke in it, wouldn't he?
The absence of Eric Idle created a gap in the Monty Python line-up.
Rowan took his part in the Four Yorkshiremen sketch.
We used to drink out of a rolled-up newspaper.
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
'I was living a fantasy, being on stage with the Monty Python team doing a Monty Python sketch.'
I felt as though I kept my end up as best I could.
But it was a great privilege. Hmm...
We used to live in a tiny, tumbledown house with great holes in t'roof.
A house?
You were lucky to have a house.
We used to live in one room, 26 of us, no furniture and half the floor was missing.
A poor Yorkshire accent, I'm afraid. My accents are not at all good. Accents are not my thing.
We used to have to get out the lake at 3am, clean the lake,
eat a handful of hot gravel, work 20 hours a day at t'mill for tuppence a month, come home
and Dad would beat us about the head and neck with a broken bottle... if we were lucky!
Right, hmm...
I used to get up in the morning at half past ten at night, half an hour before I went to bed...
..eat a lump of freezing cold poison,
work 28 hours a day at t'mill and pay mill owner to let us work there
and when I got home, our dad used to murder us in cold blood each night and dance on our graves,
singing "Hallelujah!"
Now, you try and tell the young people of today that
and they won't believe you. No.
By the end of the evening, Rowan Atkinson had stolen the show.
In the End Of The World sketch, he discovered something that would make him an international star.
Will there be a mighty wind? Certainly there'll be a mighty wind.
DISTORTED CROAKY VOICE: Will this wind be so mighty
as to lay low
the mountains of the earth?
All I was trying to do with a croaky voice was to do a Dudley Moore impersonation.
What's odd, looking at it now, is it is the forerunner of the voice that I homed in on for Mr Bean.
As to lay low... As to lay low...
the moun-TAINS... the moun-TAINS...
of the "eurghth".
It felt funny at the time and so I thought when we tried to think -
ten years later, it must have been -
for a voice for Mr Bean, that was the voice I'd done that had amused me the most. And so we used it.
Prepare for the end of the world.
30 seconds.
Have you brought the picnic basket?
'My defining comic hero of the time was John Cleese.'
You know, I was 23, whatever I was at the time, and John was the man.
Michelangelo, I want to have a word with you about this Last Supper of yours. Oh, yes?
I'm not happy with it. You don't like the kangaroo? What kangaroo?
I'll paint it out. I never saw a kangaroo. It's at the back. I'll make it into a disciple.
That's the problem. What? The disciples.
Are they too Jewish? I made Judas the most Jewish.
No, it's just that there are 28 of them.
Not all the sketches were old favourites.
Cleese wrote The Last Supper for the BBC who rejected it as blasphemous.
'John phoned up and said he'd got this sketch which he had written for Python, but the BBC had banned.
'I don't know who it would have offended.'
We were both very busy with other work that week
and we never got together to rehearse it,
so we memorised it separately and rehearsed it over the phone.
We only ever did it at the show.
The Last Supper is a significant event in the life of Our Lord.
The Penultimate Supper was not, even if they had a conjurer and a steel band.
I commissioned the Last Supper and that is what I want. But look...
12 Disciples and one Christ!
One?!
'The Amnesty audiences were just terrific.'
There was a great responsiveness and it was such a friendly audience that when you went on,
you were very loose and being funny in comedy is all about that relaxation. It's just like sport.
If you feel tight, it never quite happens, it's never really good.
They were just great. They knew the score and they were wonderful to perform to.
Why in God's name have you painted this with three Christs in it?
It works, mate. It does not work.
It looks great. The fat one balances the two skinny ones.
There was only one Saviour.
I know that, but what about a bit of artistic licence? One Redeemer. I tell you what you want.
You want a bloody photographer, not a creative artist!
I'll tell you what I want. I want a Last Supper with one Christ,
12 Disciples, no kangaroos by Thursday or you don't get paid!
You bloody fascist!
I'm the bloody Pope, mate.
I may not know much about art, but I know what I like!
He has an extraordinary presence which is not just charisma,
it's also slightly frightening.
If you watch the close-ups of the lawyer in the courtroom sketch, it shows you those extraordinary eyes
and he will go just further than any other comedian would ever go.
It's like looking into the eyes of someone very mentally disturbed!
I suggest you murdered these people. I did.
I put it to you that you murdered these people. I did. I submit that you murdered these people. I did.
Did you or did you not murder these people? Yes. Yes or no? Yes, I murdered these people.
Answer the question!
I...I murdered these people.
We've wheedled it out of you at last, have we?
A-ha-ha-ha!
Mr Bartlett, you do realise you're meant to be the counsel for the defence?
MUSIC: "Cavatina"
As well as the comics, a rich mix of musicians took part.
Classical guitarist John Williams played Cavatina from the Vietnam War film, The Deer Hunter.
I was never interested much in music for its own sake.
I wanted something that was vaguely amusing, that would be a point song with witty lyrics.
Ladies and gentlemen, I've suffered for my music. Now it's your turn.
'I thought the best thing I could do under those circumstances was the protest song.
'Some people said it's an attack on Bob Dylan'
and Donovan said, "My friends say you're having a go at me." I'm not!
It's just that at that time a lot of people were doing protest songs
and they were making a lot of money doing it, so that was my angle.
# All the prophets of doom can always find room
# In a world full of worry and fear
# Tipped cigarettes and chemistry sets
# And Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
# So I'm going back to my little old shack
# And drink me a bottle of wine
# That was mis en bouteille before my birthday
# And have me a fucking good time... #
There was still a sense, I suppose a hangover from Watergate and the Vietnam War
that young people were naturally inclined to protest injustice
in a way that now in our very cynical, ironic, post-modern way
we find rather kind of hysterical perhaps
and rather inarticulate.
Young people are now so soaked in financial worries
and career thoughts and ambitions that they have little time for international politics.
# When rain has hung the leaves with tears
# I want you near
# For to kill my fears
# To help me to leave
# All my blues behind...
# For standing in your heart
# Is where I wanna be
# And long to be
# But I may as well
# Try and catch
# I may as well try and catch... #
I felt we were the last generation of people who went to university
who still cared about being socially different and daring and wanted to change the world.
# We'll be fighting in the streets
# With our children at our feet
# And the morals that they worship will be gone
# And the men who spurred us on... #
When Pete Townshend played with John Williams, there was no time to set up equipment,
so Pete played an acoustic version for the first time.
# I'll take a bow for the new constitution
# Turn and grin at the new revolution
# Smile and grin at the change all around... #
'Tomorrow will be only the start of a season of violence in Chile,
'but the security forces killed eight people and arrested 300.
'Amnesty says it's likely these people will have been tortured.'
'It is, in particular, the people in other countries who are mouthy who get it in the neck
'and you don't have to be a comic or a writer or a singer to do that.
'You can just be an ordinary person who talks too much.'
And that's essentially what comics and singers and writers do.
They just talk too much. God bless us, we can do that. They can't.
Singer-songwriters were murdered
just for being singer-songwriters in Chile.
Victor Jara was a case in point.
I sang in the stadium he was murdered in
and danced with mothers of people who had also been murdered in that very spot.
It was a very symbolic and emotional thing.
It really touches something when you realise that what you do, you do in freedom.
In another regime, you can be murdered for it.
# History can't be blamed
# Cos the banners were all flown in the last war... #
Governments are really keen on locking people up they don't like.
So I think one's got to have eyes and ears out all the time
and voices that will shout, "This is wrong!"
# We don't get fooled again... #
In my travels when I'd meet the leader or president of that country
the first thing I'd do is read them the Amnesty report on that country.
And it really terrifies these brutes.
After the Thatcher election in 1979,
a new ethos swept the country.
With the selfish culture of the '80s came a more ruthless breed of political comedy.
Mrs Thatcher's hand, aw!
She had a sore hand. Aw!
Four million unemployed, but awww!
Yeah, cos the tendons were constricting in her hand.
The tendons were drawing in the fingers
to form a claw!
You mustn't deal with these people. Why not, Nancy, old honey bun?
Because they're communists. Communists? Where? There!
That's your hand. Your hand's a communist? You've been infiltrated?
No, no, those people. Come on, Nance. How do you know?
Because they want to free dissidents.
The Amnesty shows changed direction with more savage humour.
This was even reflected in the new Oxbridge comics, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.
Jim! Jim!
Dear God!
I want to go to bed with you.
What was I doing?
Jim, you were in the middle of a messy divorce with the woman who wrote most of your scripts.
And it was from then on that things started to go wrong for you.
Blimey! Ooh!
Jim, once you stopped being mad, did you stop being funny?
SOBS You know?
And then you let down Amnesty by refusing to do their annual charity show.
SOBS LOUDLY
It was damn sporting of Mr Cleese to allow us to do that, wasn't it?
He's got nothing to say. Without his dead parrot, he's nobody.
This is the wreck of a once noble comedian.
# I've had it up to here with sex
# Those nylon vests and hairy necks
# They expect you to be flighty and they act like God Almighty
# Cos they've got a cock and they can mend a flex...
# And when they proudly strip and pose
# I want to say "What's one of those?"
# They tend to feel a failure if you don't love their genitalia
# Though why you should Christ only knows! #
FAST RHYTHMIC DRUMBEAT
One of the things that grew out of the Amnesty shows
was the, as it were, seamless takeover of that generation
by what were called, in the early '80s, alternative comedians.
One of the features of the third show was Alexei Sayle.
I went round to a friend's flat the other night
and I noticed a sickly, sweet smell.
Sickly, sweet bloody smell!
I thought, "Aye, aye!" I thought, "Spam for tea!"
Then I saw the extra-long, nine-skin, Gauloises dick compensators he was rolling.
I said, "Byron..."
I said, "How do you manage to get the Spam in there?"
Then I realised what was happening. I said, "I'm hip to this groove. Rock around the crocodile, man."
So they all ignored me. I sat down on the Habitat pine scatter cushions.
'Because the one before had really made the career of Rowan Atkinson,
'I thought it would do the same for me,
'irrespective of the fact that I was aggressive, difficult to work with,
'not from Oxford or Cambridge.' ..if you eat the fuckers!
It didn't quite work out like that, but...
'Certainly, I saw it as a career opportunity.'
The lifestyle in Stoke Newington is very alternative. But I can't get behind all the people taking drugs
and not giving me any, the bastards!
'The stuff I was doing was all about lifestyle, but that was all new.
'Nobody had done that stuff before about drugs and the kind of clothes they wore.'
The chunky jumper and a suit with a tailored pocket with a calculator,
all telling racy stories about commodity investment.
To see Alexei doing What's On In Stoke Newington was quite anarchic.
It was very unapologetically punk
and it was pretty sensational. It was legendary.
I had one toke of this dope and I was paralysed from the waist down.
I lost the use of my fingers.
I developed every single symptom of typhoid.
It was fucking ama-a-a-azing!
They're going, "Oh, fucking amazing! Oh, fucking fantastic!
"Oh, save the shrimp, man!"
'The thing that was original about me, unlike comics generally, they have a desperate need for approval.'
They want the audience to like them and I didn't care if they did.
In fact, I liked it if they didn't like me. I wanted them to laugh, but I goaded them, I was aggressive.
Morris Minors, it's like being inside a '50s radio.
See them all pedalling away!
Look, it's Noddy the social worker! Ooh! Ooh! Shut...!
'Suddenly, you had this very attitudinal stance that alternative performers could take.'
The idea of the privileged classes coming on to the stage and being funny in an intellectual way
had been slowly subverted by folk from the red-brick universities and the secondary moderns
who had something funny to say and believed the abuse of human rights was wrong. It was a broader church.
# I feel like busting loose with some bad jokes! Bad jokes!
# I feel like busting loose with some bad jokes! Bad jokes! #
'I don't think anybody had ever orchestrated four jokes like this.'
I'm a funkateer so it was a no-brainer to say,
"Why don't you have a Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers backing track for these jokes?"
We had backing singers, funk musicians. It was great fun.
# A man was in a hospital bed Ooh, get down
# The doctor said, "I've got some good news
# "And some bad news"
# The man said, "What's the bad news?"
# The doctor said, "We've had to amputate both your legs"
# He said, "Ooh!
# "Good God! What's the good news?"
# And the doctor said, "The man in the next bed wants to buy your slippers!" #
'It summed up the Amnesty thing of combining music with jokes.'
I don't think the audience had ever had funk in an Amnesty show before.
So I brought the funk to the barbed-wire candle. It was great.
# A man walked into a barber's shop
# He said, "I want you to cut my hair
# "Just like Michael Jackson..." #
God Almighty! You wouldn't want your hair like Michael Jackson now!
# When he woke up, he was completely bald, just like this guy
# He said "Barber...!" #
I'm one of the first black people to be on Amnesty. There might have been a singer, but not a comic.
So there was a black guy on stage being funny,
rather than people talking about him being in jail! So it was good.
We toured all the way round the Deep South.
And there was a lot of segregation going around.
We weren't allowed to play in the same room as white folks.
You used to have to play in a broom cupboard down the hall.
They used to send the applause back in a little envelope.
'I get to perform black characters from the community.'
And talk in a joshing way about things like oppression and slavery
and I tell those jokes and people go, "Oh!" Comedians have the opportunity to do that.
There is a relationship between comedy and human rights.
Comedians understand censorship.
They understand how wrong it is not to be allowed to express your mind.
One of the essential things in being a comedian is absolute freedom of speech.
And I mean absolute.
Therefore, comedians are amongst the first to be deeply distressed at the idea
of those who are imprisoned or stifled or tortured for speaking their mind, for thinking freely,
so it's a primal insult to the very energy that makes a comedian.
Comedy has always been a way of escaping from your environment.
The world presses in on you and if you get them to laugh, the bullies run away.
And if you get other people to laugh, I'm out, I'm free at last!
This is gonna stop somebody being tortured? Yeah, I'll do that.
Somebody's gonna get stoned? What?
Not stoned like that, like THAT! Let's stop it now. We'll help.
For one up-and-coming comedienne, Amnesty launched her career.
In a grim warning of the dawn of celebrity culture,
Ruby Wax had the job of interviewing the stars backstage.
I can get you into show business.
You were the original presenter. Well, there I was.
I developed other skills because I would have been so off the air!
Tonight... Don't forget Amnesty.
What's Amnesty? They work for people behind bars.
This is a show for bartenders? No, it's a charity.
They're working for nothing? Of course. We'll meet these suckers...
Oh, look at it!
'You know what? I like that high neck there and the big panty wabs!
'It was grotesque. And a big fuchsia ball. And I wonder why I didn't get laid?'
You loved it. I loved it so much.
# Put a quarter in the jukebox and hit that beat
# Everybody started rocking My rock'n'roll Ruby... #
'I look like a small Puerto Rican.'
I'm not sure if I was being freed.
Mr Cleese, how much excitement did you feel
being on the same stage as Liza Minnelli? Fuck off! Funny guy!
It's sad, isn't it? What's sad is there is no other person I can play.
You can say, "I was in character." That's me.
When did you realise you were funny? It was a sexual experience.
I think the first time I came to puberty, the first time I saw hair.
Why is this phallic-shaped thing in my nose?
Len, I'm trying to make you famous. Ruby, sod off!
Why did comedians jump at the chance of doing it? Everybody's so egotistical. For the exposure. Yeah.
But would you do it for another charity? Why Amnesty?
I always said those were the A-list. It was the cachet that the Pythons gave it initially.
I don't think we'd save a donkey unless the career's slipping.
I may save a donkey in the next few years. You can see where your career is by what charities you do.
I gave them your number. AIDS is good, Amnesty is good, but Save An Aardvark, forget it.
GENTLE GUITAR MUSIC
LAUGHTER
While younger comics were taking over from more established acts,
the same change was happening in music, publicly, with no apologies.
Will you stop a minute?
I think they're bored. Could you...?
He's your friend.
You should tell him.
The later Amnesty shows were becoming a showcase for rock stars.
# I just wanna see you at night
# Don't come round my house in the day
# I love it when we start up a fight
# I love it when the fight ends your way
# I love it when you call me names
# I love it when you call me names... #
I remember being seriously nervous, so I was surprised that I didn't look as nervous as I know I felt.
Throughout my whole career I've done very few acoustic things.
It's because I write the songs and do all the arrangements
and I like to hear all the stuff I've put there,
so I'm not that keen on playing songs on my own. So that's unusual.
'I think it's nice when you can play something on your own with a guitar
'and prove that the song stands up to that kind of scrutiny.'
# And he loves it when she beats his brains out
# He's pecked to death but he loves the pain
# And he loves it when she calls him names... #
# The silicon chip inside her head gets switched to overload
# And nobody's gonna go to school today
# She's gonna make them stay at home... #
My voice was crap from singing all day in the studio and I wasn't directing it out.
I thought, "This isn't very good."
I never expected the bloody thing would crop up 35 years later,
whatever the fucking time it is.
# I don't like Mondays
# I wanna shoo-oo-oo-oot the whole day down... #
'You feel you could do something different.'
It gave me confidence to know I could just play the piano.
Being a drummer, it wasn't something I felt totally natural at.
# I can feel it coming in the air tonight
# Oh, Lord...
# I've been waiting for this moment all my life
# Oh, Lord... #
'That was the very first time I sat on stage on my own playing the piano.
'I had to look at my hands.'
And if I did this to wipe the sweat away...
This is my sweat spot.
If I take my hand off, I may not know where to put it down again.
It was a big moment, becoming confident on stage playing a piano.
# I've been waiting for this moment all my life
# Oh, Lord
# Oh, Lord... #
There's little things I remember as if they were yesterday, mainly the music. One was Sting.
# Message in a bottle... #
'Message In A Bottle seemed appropriate about feeling isolated,
then not isolated by other people contacting you,
so it seemed a useful metaphor for what Amnesty actually do -
make people feel less alone.
# Seems I'm not alone in being alone
# A hundred billion castaways
# Looking for a home
# I'll send an SOS to the world
# I hope that someone gets my...
# I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle... #
I was happy to be up there on my own instead of having the whole band there, the whole big production.
You do the song, people recognise it, sing along, you're out of there.
In fact, it gave me the idea that I didn't need to be in a band.
It planted a seed for me creatively as well as getting me interested in Amnesty.
# Oh, message in a bottle... #
Music moves you in a different way. It's a visceral thing.
With comedy, you're like this, whereas music gets you right here.
So somebody singing a song about freedom is an amazing thing.
It can really move you and make you passionate.
# Oh! I see my light come shining
# From the west unto the east
# Any day now
# Any way now
# I shall be...
# Released
# I shall be... #
For the finale, veteran rock stars Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton join Sting doing a Bob Dylan number.
# Every man needs protection... #
Sting, whether he meant to or he was asked to, kind of led.
I think everybody else was either too shy
or just sort of stood back and let him...
Cos he was a pushy little bloke.
# I see my light come shining... #
I'm kind of bossy when it comes to music,
so I found myself bossing Eric around and bossing Jeff Beck, these two icons.
I can't believe I'm doing this.
I'm telling them what I think they should do.
So many international rock stars appeared in Amnesty shows
that the Secret Policeman's Balls became a hit in America.
They raised awareness of the effort to rescue prisoners of conscience.
The seed was planted at Amnesty for Bob.
He saw what they were doing, how entertainment helped that process
and he ran with the ball further than anybody could imagine.
I always felt I was on his coat-tails in that regard.
# Sending out an SOS
# Sending out an SOS... #
These shows led to a new style of giant charity event like Live Aid and Comic Relief.
Because of television, they were now slickly produced and raised much more money,
but people still remember those early Amnesty benefits with great affection.
What I loved about it was the fact that it was rough round the edges.
Everybody had come together, there wasn't a proper running order,
you never quite knew what was happening, but it happened because of the energy everybody put into it.
There was no idea of your image. Or your ratings.
Or if you had the right shoes. It was more relaxed and easy-going.
You didn't need a director.
You wanted a snatch squad to get them off. Everybody did twice as much as they said they would.
We're normally treated like royalty. There's too many royals backstage, you all have to lump in.
'Those dressing rooms were appallingly small.'
The conditions were terrible, the food non-existent. Where was Amnesty when you need them?
As the old poet says, "You can't hope to recapture that first, fine, careless rapture."
And in the early shows, there is "a fine, careless rapture" about it.
WHISTLES AND APPLAUSE
# I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK I sleep all night and I work all day... #
'You felt that you were nailing your colours to the mast.'
With Comic Relief, you can be ambiguous in your political intent,
but with Amnesty you are definitely saying, "I am against this. This is wrong."
And I think... I think that gives it some mettle.
# There's nothing in the streets
# Looks any different to me
# And the slogans are replaced by-the-bye... #
Amnesty presents this idealised potential that we could treat each other better. It is idealism.
It's possible, so it's a potential. We need to support organisations that offer us that potential.
# Just like yesterday
# Then I'll get on my knees and I'll pray
# We don't get fooled again... #
I had a strange thought recently that I feel as though I'm probably a member of the last generation
to truly enjoy freedom of thought
in the sense that you can't help feeling that within 20 years,
someone will have invented a machine to read your mind.
There's absolutely no reason why that should not be the case,
the rate at which technology advances,
whereas I know that my thoughts are my own at the moment,
but I cannot believe that many more decades will go by when that will be the case and that's frightening.
I haven't a clue what Amnesty can do about it. Nothing, I suspect,
but it just puts you in mind of how fragile and important a thing freedom is
and sometimes you have to take a stand against what is deemed to be progress
in order to re-establish human dignity and human freedoms.
# I'm just one of those people who wanna feel good all the time
# I don't want no bad news messing with my mind
# Well, who is and who isn't? These days it's hard to tell
# When so many people have so many good reasons
# To feel more than just a little annoyed
# But what can you do when you're sure somebody
# Is screwing around with your reality?
# I'm just one of those people who wanna feel good all the time
# I'm just one of those people who wanna feel good all the time... #