Monty Python's Flying Circus - Title

Title

The title Monty Python's Flying Circus was partly the result of the group's reputation at the BBC. Michael Mills, BBC's Head of Comedy, wanted their name to include the word "circus" because the BBC referred to the six members wandering around the building as a circus, in particular "Baron Von Took's Flying Circus", after Barry Took, who had brought them to the BBC. The group added "flying" to make it sound less like an actual circus and more like something from World War I. The words "Monty Python" were added because they claimed it sounded like a really bad theatrical agent, the sort of person who would have brought them together, with Eric Idle suggesting Monty and John Cleese suggesting Python.

The BBC had rejected some other names put forward by the group including "Whither Canada?", "The Nose Show", "Ow! It's Colin Plint!", "A Horse, a Spoon and a Basin", "The Toad Elevating Moment" and "Owl Stretching Time". Several of these titles were later used for individual episodes.

Read more about this topic:  Monty Python's Flying Circus

Famous quotes containing the word title:

    I wish not to be given a title or an appointed position. I can and will do more good if I were made a Federal Agent at Large, and I will help best by doing it my way through my communications with people of all ages. First and Foremost I am an entertainer but all I need is the Federal Credentials.
    Elvis Presley (1935–1977)

    A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Et in Arcadia ego.
    [I too am in Arcadia.]
    Anonymous, Anonymous.

    Tomb inscription, appearing in classical paintings by Guercino and Poussin, among others. The words probably mean that even the most ideal earthly lives are mortal. Arcadia, a mountainous region in the central Peloponnese, Greece, was the rustic abode of Pan, depicted in literature and art as a land of innocence and ease, and was the title of Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral romance (1590)