Terry Jones’ Old Notes Reveal Scrapped Monty Python Jokes

As we’ve previously mentioned, there’s currently a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to build a statue honoring late Monty Python member Terry Jones in his hometown of Colwyn Bay, Wales. In a rare moment of agreement, all the surviving Pythons have thrown their support behind the project, dubbed “A Python on the Prom,” which will possibly result in a detailed bronze replica of Jones playing the organ while completely naked. 

The campaign has, at the time of writing, raised 83 percent of its goal, but organizers are hoping to make up the difference with a new exhibition celebrating Jones’ life. “The Life of Terry” will open in Colwyn Bay on December 12th, with all proceeds going toward the statue fundraiser. The exhibit will reportedly feature more than 100 items that have been loaned by Jones’ family and the Monty Python archive.

The items will include rare personal photographs, as well as pages from Jones’ notebooks and scripts. His copy of the Life of Brian script even features handwritten “alternative lyrics to ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.’” 

A lot of these documents have only been found recently by Terry’s daughter Sally Jones. “Since dad passed, I’ve been sorting through all of his photos and papers and have been discovering little drawings, early versions of Python sketches and completely new material,” Jones revealed. 

Fortunately, for those of us who won’t be able to make it all the way to Wales, Sally Jones has shared some of these discoveries on social media. For example, she posted a page from Terry Jones’ Meaning of Life script containing changes to a joke at the end of the film. In the finished version, female victims of the fatal salmon mousse received boxes of “After Life mints” from heaven’s desk clerk. In the script, it was “packets of tampons” until Jones crossed it out.

Speaking of mint jokes, from the very same film (which Jones directed) there are hand-drawn sketches of the “Mr. Creosote” sketch.

There was also an unproduced sketch called “Taxi of the Undead” which is about— Well, it’s kind of hard to tell because of Terry Jones’ handwriting, but if they cracked the Zodiac killer code, surely someone can figure out what this all says. 

And we can’t forget the notebook containing Jones’ early work on the Labyrinth screenplay. From what we can tell, the sentence “the audience can see every detail of the Goblin King’s junk thanks to his spandex pants” doesn’t appear anywhere.

Hopefully the Terry Jones account keeps posting more of these photos for those fans who aren’t anywhere near Wales. Or perhaps this could all be collected and released as some kind of book one day? 

Just maybe not a coffee-table book because no one wants to read about Mr. Creosote while they’re eating or drinking.