A Funny Sort of History

A Funny Sort of History

Stories from the history of comedy

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  • Monty Python’s Flying Circus – Flouting the Rules? (Part 2)

    Monty Python’s Flying Circus – Flouting the Rules? (Part 2)

    22 August 2025
    Profile

    Last time, we learned about the fledgling careers of the pre-Python Pythons. They’d spent most of the 1960s as jobbing writer-performers, getting into the spirit of that decade and gently pushing against the standard boundaries…

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  • Monty Python’s Flying Circus – Flouting the Rules? (Part 1)

    Monty Python’s Flying Circus – Flouting the Rules? (Part 1)

    15 August 2025
    Profile

    Late one night in October 1969, a new show arrived on British TV. It was called Monty Python’s Flying Circus and despite arriving without much fanfare – it went out on a Sunday barely an…

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  • Not the Nine O’Clock News – Shockingly Conventional

    Not the Nine O’Clock News – Shockingly Conventional

    8 August 2025
    Profile

    In the UK of the late 1970s, TV sketch comedy was a rather cosy place. It was a world represented by the likes of The Two Ronnies, Morecombe & Wise, and Mike Yarwood – people…

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  • Sketches

    Sketches

    1 August 2025
    Concept

    This week, I’m going to cover comedy sketches, one of the simplest and most fundamental examples of the art. Despite their simplicity, a sketch is not just a handful of gags strung together. The sketch…

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  • What’s the plan?

    What’s the plan?

    1 August 2025
    Meta

    Let me tell you the plan for this site. Funny… On this site, I’ll publish articles about comedy in its many forms. From the subjects I cover, I’ll pepper in samples for you to read,…

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A Funny Sort of History

A Funny Sort of History

Stories from the history of comedy