Monty Python’s Away From it All: A Twisted Travelogue with John Cleese

And now for some­thing com­plete­ly deli­cious: a rare gem from the Mon­ty Python vault called Away From it All, fea­tur­ing John Cleese as Nigel Far­quhar-Ben­nett, a voice-over artist bad­ly in need of a hol­i­day.

The 13-minute film is a par­o­dy of the mind-numb­ing trav­el­ogues they used to show in movie the­aters. It was pro­duced in 1979 and screened in British and Aus­tralian the­aters as a warm-up for Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an.

The nar­ra­tion was writ­ten by Cleese, who Michael Palin once said was born with a sil­ver tongue in his mouth. “John loves words,” writes Palin in The Very Best of Mon­ty Python, “espe­cial­ly ‘neb­u­lous’, ‘tren­chant’ and ‘ortho­don­tic’. Though most chil­dren’s first word is ‘mama’, John’s was ‘eli­sion’. ‘Mama’ was third, after ‘hydraulics’.” Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese on the Ori­gin of Cre­ativ­i­ty

The Mon­ty Python Phi­los­o­phy Foot­ball Match Revis­it­ed