Life Without Toast - Sibling Rivalry

I'll start by confessing I haven't actually read this book so much as placed it on my coffee table and leafed through it as much as I could. It's a weighty tome to say the very least, but saying I haven't read it doesn't mean I haven't experienced it, as that is as much as you can do with a book of it's type. It's a 'coffee table book' in the very best meaning of that cliché. Weighing in at about 350 pages and absolutely crammed full of anecdotes, photos, posters, hundreds of Terry Gilliams fantastic surreal illustrations and also cramming in a pretty much full autobiography of every single Python, it really something to be browsed through occasionally, something that washes over you as you read it, beginning with a short 'how I met him' from each Python, about each Python.

Moving on from there, the book brings you through the early careers of the writers, from their early days working the cabarét circuit, through their early collabarations, and on to them banding together as comedic talents with a similar love of the absurd, finally forming the preeminent 'Flying Circus' with which each of them would become synonymous. The origins and absurd reasoning behind a huge pile of the Python sketches, from the Parrot sketch to the Lumberjack song and on through the Ministry of Funny Walks (not to mention the Spanish Inquisition) are all fleshed out and explained in fond rememberance and backed up with a wealth of photos and reproductions of notes.

"And then Eric came up with 'Always Look on the Bright Side' and we cracked the end of the film"

Moving on to the films, from 'The Holy Grail' through 'Life of Brian and finally 'The Meaning of Life, all are given the full treatment, with production notes, reports and facts, to anecdotes such as the one above, and many in-jokes you may or may not have been unaware of, as well as scenes that didn't make it to the films.

The book is rounded out the spectre of Death, and particularily that of Graham Chapman, who is fondly and not-so-fondly remembered by all.

All in all, an unbelievably superb and valuable source for anyone who finds Monthy Python funny, and a fantastic addition to anyones coffee-table book collection, more of a conversation piece and something to get lost in than just 'something to read'. And I got it for nine euros in the Easons sale (rrp about ?60)!