Terry Jones

It's 30 years since Monty Python's Life of Brian first hit the nation's cinemas, heralded by much controversy about whether it was blasphemous and consequent anxiety about who would back it. But it was both a box office success and a critical one and ever since has been voted one of the funniest films of all time. Sanjeev Bhaskar recounts how it was made and who eventually underwrote it (Beatle George Harrison). Lively interviews with Terry Jones, who directed, producer John Goldstone and all the Python team.

Thirty years after the release of the heretical masterpiece Monty Python's Life of Brian - and a few weeks since RT readers voted it the best comedy film ever - Sanjeev Bhaskar investigates how and why the Pythons did it. The movie was conceived when Eric Idle announced, for a laugh, that the follow-up to Monty Python and the Holy Grail would be called Jesus Christ - Lust for Glory. That throwaway gag ended up as a heartfelt, intelligent, rationalist satire where every scene is a quotable moment. As Terry Jones, Carol Cleveland, producer John Goldstone and others reminisce, it's a chance for fans to celebrate - and for those who dismiss the film as blasphemy to discover what it's really about.

Terry Jones' favourite Monty Python sketches

40 years of Monty Python.

Monty Python - Almost the Truth: the BBC Lawyers' Cut began with what we can now call a Pythonesque title sequence. Over an animation of global apocalypse someone sang a Bond-style theme tune: "It's a new documentary... it's not complimentary... but it's better than a hysterectomy". True on the first and last count, but not on the middle one, since this trot through Monty Python history was actually quite flattering to the programme and the people that made it, barring Graham Chapman, perhaps, who isn't around anymore to mind. In rock-band geneology style, it traced the past pedigree of a group that eventually came together with little more than a vague wish to travel in the same direction. "It was the worst interview that anyone or any group has ever done," said Cleese, describing the terrible pitch they made to the BBC. "I'll give you 13 shows, but that's all ," replied the commissioning editor, which was what passed for rigour in those days, and the rest - after the wobbly start that all truly innovative comedies have because they've got to teach the audience a new kind of funny - was history. The best bit was Cleese's curiously barbed attempt at long-distance teasing of Terry Jones. "What Terry's never been able to accept," he said earnestly, "is that the Welsh are a subject people put on earth to carry out menial tasks for the English".

Forty years ago this week, Nixon was withdrawing troops from Vietnam, Je T'Aime topped the charts and Concorde broke the sound barrier. And then for something completely different: the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus aired on BBC One. We never looked at comedy - let alone Spam, parrots or lumberjacks - in the same way again. This new film celebrates the anarchic troupe's Ruby Jubilee and marks the first time the surviving Pythons have come together for a project since 1983's The Meaning of Life. It's archly subtitled The Lawyer's Cut and those Beeb briefs have been busy because it's slimmed down from a six-hour series screened in the US (as Terry Jones says, "a record so complete and faithful to the truth that I don't need to watch it") to just 60 minutes. Directed by Alan Parker, it features new interviews with Jones, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Eric Idle, as well as archive chat from the late Graham Chapman. All tell the story of how they met at Oxbridge and The Frost Report, created trailblazing television, made the transition into films and ultimately became a British institution. Which, like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expected.

Now here's an interesting way to celebrate the 30th birthday of a classic sitcom. For the first time ever, John Cleese reveals his favourite scenes Fawlty Towers. No clues yet as to which ones they will be but there's the added bonus of the likes of Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Mitchell and Webb, Eddie Izzard and AA Gill reminiscing about these magic moments. Possibly even more interesting will be the comments from the owners of Gleanagles Hotel, which was the real-life inspiration for Fawlty Towers.