The studio where he crashed the Life of Brian spaceship, the stage where he put on a Faust that caused fights, the pub where he last spoke to Heath Ledger … the ex-Python takes a hilarious and evocative stroll down memory lane
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own an alley in Covent Garden, on a building that was once a banana warehouse, there is a blue plaque. “Monty Python, Film Maker, Lived Here, 1976-1987,” reads the inscription. It’s easy to miss: the plaque is not at eye level as they normally are, but up on the first floor, almost as if the blue plaque committee lost confidence in their uncharacteristic joke. Or perhaps John Cleese put it up.
Terry Gilliam arrives. I like his jacket. It looks like it’s been stitched together from bits of blankets. “Me too,” he says. “I got it 30 years ago in a secondhand store in New York.” We’re going to wander around London, revisiting places that have played significant parts in his career, as he approaches his 85th birthday.
The dates on the plaque are right, he thinks. After the success of 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which Gilliam co-directed (with Terry Jones), they had money. So he, Michael Palin and special effects whiz Julian Doyle rented this building. On the ground floor, they recorded the Monty Python albums. Upstairs was a studio where they did some of the effects for Life of Brian, like the spaceship crash. “We went down to the local magic shop, bought exploding cigars, emptied the gunpowder, then broke a lightbulb and put it on the filament.” Boom. Gilliam giggles at the memory. He giggles a lot, a childish, naughty giggle. I was half-expecting a grumpy old man. “At home I am,” he admits. “This is a performance.”
