Religious types make Monty Python look serious and reasonable

I found this clip on the blog Cynical-C, where someone commented that they wished this whole interview was uploaded somewhere to watch. I’ll second that! But these few moments make for interesting watching: John Cleese and Michael Palin defend “The Life of Brian” in a debate with the Bishop of Southwark.

It was originally linked from a blog that I’m just about to bookmark, Atheist Media, where they cite the Wikipedia entry:

Shortly after the film was released, Cleese and Palin engaged in a what would become an infamous debate on the BBC2 discussion programme Friday Night, Saturday Morning, in which Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood, the Bishop of Southwark, put the case against the film. Muggeridge and the Bishop had arrived 15 minutes late to see a screening of the picture prior to the debate, missing the establishing scenes which demonstrated that Brian and Jesus were two different characters, and hence contended that it was a send-up of Christ himself.

Both Pythons later felt that there had been a strange role reversal in the manner of the debate, with two young upstart comedians attempting to make serious, well-researched points, while the establishment figures engaged in cheap jibes and point scoring.