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CRUCIFIXION?

It’s October 1978 and I’m being crucified. I’m thirty feet up on a cross in Tunisia singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” Beneath me in a troglodyte courtyard, dug out another forty feet below ground level, an Arab woman sweeps her front yard. She never looks up. We’ve been here for three days. It’s the final scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian and the song I wrote echoes across the desert to the distant hills. John Cleese has the flu. The rest of the Pythons seem fairly cheery. There are twenty-three of us on crosses and only three ladders, so between takes if you need a pee there is a desperate wait. I suppose if that’s the only moan you have about being crucified, you are on the whole lucky…

There’s something a little chilling about turning up for work and finding a cross with your name on it. Oh sure, they weren’t using nails, and we had bicycle seats to perch on, but it makes you think, hanging up there for three days in your underpants, gazing out at the desert. Perhaps everyone should be crucified for a few days, because it does give you a good perspective on life. Especially if you are singing a song that references your own passing:

Just remember that the last laugh is on you…

And don’t think the irony escaped me. I have always known this last little giggle at my expense lies somewhere in the future. I only hope there’s a good turnout.

The song was supposed to be ironic, but it ended up being iconic. I mean, you can’t have much less of a future to be bright about than when being crucified. But people began to sing it in real wars and in real danger. It struck a chord somehow and now people sing it everywhere. Including football matches, and funerals. Especially funerals. As of this writing, it’s the number one song requested at British funerals.

So here I am, up on a cross in Tunisia singing it for the first time to Graham Chapman. How the hell did I get here?