When it sticks to the facts about the extraordinary Monty Python comedy troupe, Jim Yoakum's The (Non-Inflatable) Monty Python TV Companion (Dowling Press, $16.95) is a nice addition to the Python canon. Unfortunately, Yoakum has fallen prey to the same "virus" that consumes many Python fans who think that just because they've heard Python humor, they can write it.
One problem is with the photo captions. One wouldn't imagine this to be a huge shortcoming of any book, much less a Python opus. But in many cases, instead of identifying the episode or sketch from which the photo was taken, Yoakum thinks it sufficient to write a cutesy caption in "breaking the fourth wall" Python style ("The author didn't send a caption for this one, so..."). No less than three pages are devoted to supposedly funny captions that don't have photos to go with them. Ha ha.
Also, huge sections of the book are devoted to nothing but reprintings of the author's favorite Python routines. And those sections resemble old, teensy typewriting blown up to full-page size. Indeed, the entire book looks cheesy, and typographical errors abound.
With the wealth of biographical material to choose from--the Pythons' many legal and censorial battles with the BBC and ABC-TV, their controversial take on religion in Life of Brian--one would think that an obviously admiring author would show more respect to his subject. Despite an attempt at legitimizing the book by printing an introduction from the late Graham Chapman (written 11 years before the book was published), this book has a far more (you should forgive the pun) inflated sense of self than it deserves.
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