Book review: A Liar’s Autobiography, by Graham Chapman et al.
There are a few passages in this book that would be of interest an impartial audience (anyone not swept along by liberty campaigns). If it was just about comedy though, I think it would have appealed to a much broader readership. There is an overwhelming proportion of content to emphasise Graham Chapman defining himself by the attribute of gayness (with a pipe), at the expense of defining himself by his comedy writing and performance talents. Is it just me that thinks of him as a great comedian first and doesn’t care what he did when he went home?
The first thing I noticed was that it includes a re-working of Douglas Adams’ Peony Sketch, which was first broadcast in Out of the Trees (1975) and was the first occasion that Douglas blew up planet Earth (followed three years later by Hitchhiker’s Guide and then the unmade BBC pilot script The Ends of the World, which was going to destroy the planet a different way each week for a dozen episodes). In this version, Chapman tells the story as if it has happened to himself and his boyfriend, then he cuts the ending off and just walks away down the street (surely ruining it, but he never could do punch-lines). The reason this recycled sketch is in there is because Adams was a friend of Chapman (appeared in Monty Python Series 4 in the Donor Card Sketch), but Chapman had so many friends engaged in helping him write this book that he let some go, including Douglas, along with the potential for radically interesting and intelligent invention. In turn, Douglas’s biography includes the recollection that Chapman spent most of the writing days knocking off early to drink too much gin in the pub and then tried to snog his co-authors.
The second anecdotal story which was fascinating and had an authentic sense of menacing tension was the Miss Finsbury episode, where Chapman assists local fund raising by handing out raffle prizes but inadvertently draws the attention of two thugs who have been tasked with ensuring the chastity of Miss Finsbury, whose husband is a gangland figure tucked away in prison. Chapman’s defence against questioning about his interest in this woman is that he didn’t do anything and anyway he was “a pouf”, but the gangster thug answers that he is one too and they both know that it doesn’t make any difference. Okay, I learned something. Is this story all fiction or did something like it really happen? Did Chapman even write it?
The third is an incomplete sketch from an old stage tour in New York or somewhere where famous wits in the Regency period (Wilde, Shaw etc. — all Pythons) are trying to put each other in awkward positions in front of the Prince Regent that they will need supreme cleverness to escape from, e.g., to the Prince, “Trollope told us you were a streak of bat’s piss.” Trollope, or it may have been Swift but anyway, clarifies that what he meant was even in the darkest night, the Prince’s presence illuminates the scene with golden lustre. He then says something which pits Wilde in a similar fix that he has to improvise a clever compliment to contort himself out of. I found it very annoying when Chapman stopped recounting this sketch before giving us the ending. Has anyone got a copy of it anywhere? Was anyone there?
The rest of the book is grey water with nothing of quality floating in it. They go to Ibiza and do nothing much, they visit J.B. Priestly and do nothing in particular, they talk to Marty Feldman and don’t talk to Paul McCartney, then Chapman comes out as gay to his social circle and dies (in an appended section added to the revised volume post-publication). Eric Idle’s reaction to Graham’s announcement of being gay is one of non-comprehension, i.e. “You go to bed with men?” — “Yes” — “Naked?” — “Yes” — “Oh.” — “Yes” — “but… Why?”
Keith Moon (a drummer in a 1970s-ish group called The Who) comes out of this looking like a gentleman, inoffensive, kind and always fun (maybe I should have read his biography). There’s an awful lot of padding about chronic alcoholism and then a lengthening list of Graham Chapman’ s homosexual pick-ups. Altogether, Chapman seemed into anatomy, as a doctor and later in his private life. He was a champion of gay liberation at a time when the police still thought it was an offense, despite the Puritan era having fizzled out. Live and let live is the only way we know now, partly because of pioneers of human rights like Chapman… BUT, as if this story needed yet another butt, these pages on his dating history simply aren’t interesting enough stories to include in an autobiography on their own merit, especially of someone who did so much else. Why only give the Python shows and films one or two lines as if they were nothing? For example, I know this book was written 3 years too early to discuss Yellowbeard (wonderful plot, incredible cast, Chapman was the star) but what about the co-written projects at that time: Our Show for Ringo Starr, The Dangerous Sports Club of Great Britain sketch and The Private Life of Genghis Khan? Ok, so The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (Chapman and Peter Cook) was mentioned. What about the rest of his lesser-mentioned works? If one of Chapman’s gay conquests was included in this book as an essential component of a funny story, pushing out Python material because it has more value, that would be fine to run with but this seems to be said for the sake of adding to a publically disclosed bedpost-notch list — and edging out more interesting recollections from the world of comedy. So what if he got off with a hotel porter in Sunderland? Sorry, I don’t care. Instead, where are the great sketch ideas he didn’t get around to making?
Altogether, I wanted this to be brilliant and informative, tinkling with absurdity and wit, but it seemed designed to convince me that Graham Chapman was the least inspiring member of the Monty Python team; iconic on screen, boring and a paralytic drunk off it. The Pythons did their bit to stand up for Graham when a busy-body old bitch wrote to the BBC asking for the homosexual on Python to be removed from the screen (which the BBC actually passed on to the actors as if it were credible). Eric Idle wrote back to her saying she was quite right and they were going to have him shot. The next series of Monty Python did not include John Cleese, so that must have left her thinking he was the one.
Graham Chapman, rest in peace. You were fantastic and adored by millions. Your script writing and performances were, and always will be, unforgettable. It’s just such a shame your paperback was gin-soaked piss and missed an opportunity to make people laugh.
