Food tales of the rich and famousMonty Python
Pastry with Graham Chapman
By the early 80s, the 'silliest Python' was off the gin and devoted to nutrition
Graham Chapman in Monty Python's Life Of Brian. Photograph: Moviestore Collection/Rex Features
John Hind
Sat 19 Jan 2013 19.20 EST
I first spoke to Graham Chapman, whose life is celebrated next month in the film A Liar's Autobiography, in 1977. I phoned to pick his brains about comedy. It was going well, until his doorbell sounded.
Then I listened for over half an hour as he had bottles removed from his home. Thousands of clinking, clattering empties. As it went on and on and on, I was unable to decide whether he'd forgotten me, was being funny, or didn't care. I've since been told it may have been either just before, or just after, Chapman miraculously gave up "four pints of gin a day" so that he, rather than John Cleese, would play the lead in Life of Brian.
Recently a plaque was hung outside the Angel pub in Highgate, celebrating Chapman having supped there "often and copiously". In the 70s, flowery shirt unbuttoned, he would provoke pubgoers into bashing or accepting him. Under tables he bit ankles and licked feet, declared "I'm a poufftah" and howled "BETTY MARSDEN!" (the '50s comedian who parodied Fanny Cradock as "Fanny Haddock").
By the time I got to drink with Chapman he was strictly teetotal. I asked him if it was true that he'd pickaxed his own furniture to get revellers out of his home. "That's intercoursingly true," he said.
In the 80s he was devoted to nutrition in his impressive Highgate kitchen. He often took days preparing meals. Once, watching him make pastries during a break in filming Yellowbeard, I asked if he was no longer "The Silliest Python". He replied by explaining his links with the Dangerous Sports Club; how he'd borrowed a gondola from an Italian restaurant to "ride it, uncontrollably" down an Alpine ski-slope. He'd found a different perspective on the world, as a child, by "putting a chair in the kitchen sink and sitting on it as my mother made spotted dick".
Food tales of the rich and famous