Thank You, Mister Jones

With the passing of Terry Jones, I find my thoughts wandering through Monty Python but settling on Ripping Yarns.

Now I’m a big Python fan. But Ripping Yarns. More subtle humor – as satire often is.

And maybe it’s because I connect Ripping Yarns, specifically the episode “The Testing of Eric Olthwaite” with my Dad, who loved how boring Eric was and how obsessed he was with shovels.

And whenever I’m feeling excited, I say this, from Eric: “It were hard to accept I were boring. Especially with my interest in rainfall.”

I just love the absurdity and imagine what fun it must have been to write and produce such stuff. The British, I’m thankful, have a long love for the absurd. I’m not sure this kind of absurdity could get made in the United States nowadays. Maybe earlier. And maybe not even in England now. But for what it was, when it was made, it was glorious to behold.

Also, Ripping Yarns fed my need to identify obscure character actors in different roles. Thanks to this, I got to see Denholm Elliott, David Griffin, and Roy Kinnear in places I didn’t expect them.

Then there was the time I recognized HIM as the obscure character actor.