Graham Chapman Quotes (1941-1989)

“The BBC were constantly replacing us with such important things as show jumping. They didn't like us very much at all.”

“I like The Young Ones a lot, I think they're excellent—particularly Rik Mayall. I think he's brilliant.”

“During the last year of Keith's life, he was attempting to dry out quite a lot, and I was drying out with him. We were, in fact, involved in a mutual project. … I went to his hospital bedside on a couple of occasions just after he'd had a little ... epileptic fit of some description, following withdrawal of alcohol. ... The tragic thing was seeing Keith go back to drinking. You see, he … had never really decided to quit.”

“John rings. He’s been away in the country for the weekend. Has just returned to find a message that Graham has had a nervous breakdown.”

“[The other Pythons all lead] boring lives, but Graham lives what we do on the screen for real. … It's constantly surprising, what he does. … Graham was at his best, usually, in very conservative restaurants when we'd be out dining, and there'd be some nice, middle-aged, middle-class couples dining, and you'd suddenly discover Graham was no longer at the table, but was underneath the table, and other people's tables, and kissing people's feet.”

“He was the most "extremely" person I think I've ever met. It didn't really matter what the adjective was, because he would be extremely that—whether it was kind or unkind or good or bad or funny or not funny, I mean there was nothing he ever did that he didn't do … much more extremely than anybody else would. … "[S]ubversive authority figures" … sounds rather like a paradox, and it's a very good paradox as far as Graham is concerned; … but, actually, the person he continually subverted was himself. … Because he was always this rather tweedy person on first meeting him, and that was an impression that lasted at least three seconds into any relationship. … But, there was always a sort of danger there, because you never actually knew what was going to happen next.”

“[I]t took about four men to live [Graham Chapman's] life. There was the quiet pipe-smoking tweed-jacketed doctor, who could elucidate complicated medical facts to the layman while calmly diagnosing and dispensing medicines; there was the quiet pipe-smoking writer who could sit all day painting his nails with gestetner fluid, occasionally interjecting the oddest comments, squawks, shouts of 'Betty Marsden' and injunctions to sing 'Only Make-Believe' in a squeaky voice; there was the quiet pipe-smoking homosexual, who could calmly bring a party of Chinese boys down for breakfast in an extremely bourgeois German suburban hotel, causing the manageress conniptions and ending in a request that he move to a more suitable establishment; and there was the quiet pipe-smoking alcoholic, who could reduce any drinks party to a shambles by consuming half a distillery and then crawling round the floor kissing all the men and groping all the women.”

“Graham's writing, at its best, … had that enviable quality of giving no evidence of where it came from. He was like that, too, except that we all knew he came from Leicester, though Graham showed not the slightest sign of having come from Leicester. As far as I was concerned, he had come from the moon—an amiable Looney with the gift of conveying enormous reassurance. You always felt it would be all right while Graham was around—whatever "it" was. And then he would be off 'round the bar of the King's House Hotel, Glen-coe, determined to kiss everyone in the bar. Which he did. And got into a fight. And got banned from the bar.”