Graham Chapman was always one of the most significant figures in the Monty Python troupe. He was the go-to leading man when the team made a narrative movie, because the others deemed him to be the only one among them with the charm and the acting talent – not to mention his comic gifts as a voice of reason – to carry a feature film.
Sadly, Chapman was the first of the Pythons to pass away by quite a few years, but his work has lived on and continued to provide laughs in the decades since. So, here are Graham Chapman’s 10 best characters from the Python back catalogue.
10 Helmut
Graham Chapman’s character Helmut adds another layer to the joke in the “Italian Teacher” sketch. Terry Jones plays an Englishman teaching an Italian lesson to a class full of Italian students who are much more fluent in the language than their teacher.
Chapman plays the only non-Italian student in the class – a German student named Helmut – who is terribly confused: “Was is das wort fuer ‘mittelschmerz’?”
9 Sir Edward Ross
When he appears on an arts and culture show, Sir Edward Ross is referred to as a series of ridiculous nicknames by the interviewer, played by John Cleese. Graham Chapman plays Ross with a pipe, a pompous attitude, and an intellectual aura.
This contrasts hilariously with the increasingly inappropriate pet names that Cleese delivers in his uniquely deadpan style: “sweetie,” “sugar plum,” “pussycat,” “angel-drawers,” “Eddie-baby” etc.
8 Professor R.J. Gumby
Although Michael Palin would go on to become the best-known Python to play Gumbys, it was Graham Chapman who first played Professor R.J. Gumby. He hits himself in the head while crooning.
This is juxtaposed hysterically with the revelation that Professor Gumby majored in historianism and is, for all intents and purposes, quite intelligent.
7 God
In addition to playing the lead role of King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Graham Chapman provided the voice of God. In the Pythons’ following film, he’d play a man who was mistaken for the son of God, which ties this together nicely.
God only appears briefly in Holy Grail, but it’s a tough role for any actor to play, especially in a satirical way. Despite this, Chapman nailed it.
6 Raymond Luxury-Yacht
In his first appearance, Raymond Luxury-Yacht is a talk show guest, but his most delightfully absurd appearance is when he goes into a cosmetic surgeon’s office, asks for an operation to have the size of his large nose reduced, and gets invited on a camping vacation with the surgeon.
He looks to the camera and says, “He asked me! He asked me!” Then, the two are seen frolicking through the woods, holding hands, in slow-motion.
5 Biggus Dickus
In one of Life of Brian’s most memorable gags, Roman soldiers are laughing at the name of Pontius Pilate’s friend Biggus Dickus, but Pilate can’t understand why the name is so funny.
The gag is followed up later in the movie when Biggus Dickus himself makes an appearance, played by Graham Chapman, and he, too, can’t understand why people keep laughing at his name.
4 Working-Class Playwright
In a pitch-perfect satire of British kitchen sink dramas, the “Working-Class Playwright” sketch flips the class conventions of contemporary plays on their heads.
Instead of a working-class coal miner father chastising his well-educated son for wanting to be a playwright, a working-class playwright father chastises his well-educated son for wanting to be a coal miner.
3 The Colonel
Monty Python’s sensibility is unabashedly silly. Graham Chapman often contrasted this comic style by taking the role of the “voice of reason.” The Colonel is the quintessential Chapman character, because he’s a strict military figure who steps in to put a stop to any sketch that he deems to be too silly.
Anyone acting as the “silliness police” in a Python sketch has a very difficult road ahead, but Chapman always pulled it off brilliantly in the role of the Colonel.
2 Brian Cohen
Some of Chapman’s best characters were put-upon regular guys. As an ordinary man who was born on the same night as Jesus and then amasses a fervent religious following that he can’t seem to shake, Brian Cohen is the ultimate put-upon regular guy. No matter how much he pleads with his followers that he’s not the Messiah, they continue to call him the Messiah and hang off his every word.
Another hilarious dimension of the Brian character that provides plenty of laugh-out-loud moments is his strained relationship with his mother, Mandy, played by Terry Jones in one of his own most memorable performances.
1 King Arthur
The Pythons decided to use the Arthurian legend as a loose structure to keep Monty Python and the Holy Grail on the right track. This meant that the burden was on Graham Chapman’s lead performance as King Arthur to tie the whole movie together.
Chapman has the charm, relatability, and comic gifts required from a leading man. He mostly adopts the role of “straight man” or “voice of reason” as Arthur (“On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot – ‘tis is a silly place!”), but that’s his forte, so it works spectacularly.
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