Monty Python - a show too far.

It was in 1973 that I went to the Bristol Hippodrome to see 'Monty Python's first farewell tour.'

It was a good show, one of the most surreal events I have ever attended.

This tour was after the TV series but before the movies.  It was a show of classics, done pretty well word for word, culminating in an encore of the Dead Parrot Sketch.  As everything with Python, very clever, funny in parts but nothing side-splitting, unlike what you get with Billy Connolly.

41 years on (gulp!) and their final show ever is on 'Gold', live from the monstrous 02 arena in London.  And I don't think it is very good or very funny.

It depends, almost wholly, on Eric Idle who was not my favourite Python.  He's the hungriest, the best stage performer, the one who gives it energy.  Palin still plays the cheesy characters to great effect, but Cleese looks and sounds tired, and Jones just doesn't do enough.

The sketches, contrary to popular myth, were not always classics.  Some barely worked, some didn't work at all.  Time loves a hero.

At least they are honest: they are doing it for the money.  Of course they are.  Coldplay don't play cavernous football grounds for musical reasons so why should the Pythons pretend they are regurgitating 40 year old sketches and songs for artistic reasons?

I'd have been disappointed if I had laid out money to see this show. It's tired, it's dated but worst of all, most of it isn't funny which the biggest criticism of all.