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Monty Python is often referred to as “The Beatles of comedy,” but does that mean that they have their very own Pete Best?
Monty Python’s Flying Circus wouldn’t exist without two other shows that came before it: At Last the 1948 Show, which starred both Graham Chapman and John Cleese, and Do Not Adjust Your Set, which featured Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Michael Palin (and its second season incorporated animated sequences from a young American named Terry Gilliam).
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Do Not Adjust Your Set was technically a children’s show, but the surreal sketches seemingly resonated more with adults, and as word spread, grown-ups began “rushing home from the office” in order to watch it.
In addition to the future Pythons, Do Not Adjust Your Set also featured two other performers Denise Coffey and David Jason. Jason is perhaps best known for later going on to star in the iconic comedy series Only Fools and Horses.
He’s a four-time BAFTA winner, he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1993 and he was even knighted by the Queen in 2005, but he’s still annoyed that he wasn’t asked to be a part of Monty Python.
In his new book This Time Next Year: A Life of Positive Thinking, Jason wrote about how his four collaborators “ditched the program and, without so much as a ‘thanks and see you later’ (went) on to form a comedy troupe with a couple of other friends, called John Cleese and Graham Chapman.”
In his previous memoir My Life, Jason described how “rankled” he was that Palin, Jones, Idle and Gilliam bailed on their show to launch Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which he called “a more grown-up version of Do Not Adjust Your Set — but without me and Denise.” “It was as though the band had broken up and then re-formed without us,” Jason continued. “Denise and I were part of the original group, but we got sidelined. Or that’s how it felt to me.”
In 2021, Idle revealed that he was sad to hear that Jason felt hurt by the Pythons. But as Idle pointed out, each member of Monty Python was also a writer. And though Idle considered Jason to be a “brilliant comic actor,” he “didn’t write.”
In his book, Jason also recalled that he’d lost out on a role in the long-running British sitcom Dad’s Army. “It was like the Beatles all over again, and I was Pete Best. Twice,” Jason joked.
Of course, that comparison would really only make sense if Best had gone on to have an accomplished career instead of, well, whatever it is that he ended up doing after being booted out of The Beatles.
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