Quote:
Originally Posted by TGS
... But it's still a mystery why "Heidegger, Heidegger, was a boozy beggar" was thought to be a funny line by most people - who presumably had never heard of Heidegger!
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by TimMason
Perhaps they just thought it was nonsense. The line "Bonar Law has hairy ears" used to have the audience for ' Round the Horne' in stitches every time, although it's unlikely that many of them actually knew who Bonar Law ("the unknown Prime Minister") was.
But there's also the point that Monty Python was not as popular as we believe. Only about three percent of the population watched the first series. It later rose to about 8 percent, sufficient to keep it going, but hardly as popular as some other programmes, such as "Last of the Summer Wine". Most of the audience for Python would probably have been pretty well educated, and would have been likely to catch at least some of the references to philosophers. |
I think it was the booze. Not everyone knows who Heidegger was (and many of us who do are still extremely uncomfortable about his Nazi connections), but lots of folks can relate to boozy beggers!
Last of the Summer Wine was a wonderful show, as was
Waiting for God. The elderly are rarely made the central figures of series in our youth-centered U.S. TV culture.