Often life is a bit tiresome and irritating, its at times like this that we need some humour to lift us out of the rut and remind us that we can laugh at our problems; problems that generally are not unique to ourselves.

So perhaps to provide you some 'go-to' happiness, Im going to write about things that make me laugh. Not a little titter (thanks Frankie Howerd), a proper belly laugh, you know like when you are on the phone on the train, the person on the line tells you a joke and you burst out laughing, you try to stifle it as the irritated and perplexed travellers stare at you like you have two heads (Zaphoid Beeblebrox reference acheived!).

So then children, if you are sitting comfortably, today we will giggle our way through:

Monty Python's Life of Brian

In early justification of this choice, we can see on Rotten Tomatos that it has a very high score, and this should tell us something good about what we are going to discuss.

The backdrop to the film is the holy lands, contemporary with the life of Jesus Christ. The film starts with the birth of Brian in a stable, the Three Wise Men come into the stable by mistake, thinking they have found Jesus, who was just born in the stable next door. Brian's horrendous mother Mandy Cohen soon disabuses the three travellers, and they take their gifts and give them to the true Messiah.

Throughout the rest of the film, when Brian is a young adult, he is contunouously mistaken for the Messiah, which not only annoys him immensely, but gets him into trouble with the Romans who are occupying his homeland. Though Brian does court trouble by joining a revolutionary group intent on expelling the Roman occupiers; when asked how much he hates the Romans, Brian replies 'A lot!', this is convincing enough for the revolutionaries, and Brian is a member.

The real comic fodder comes from not only excellent observational humour about the way people are petty and stupid, but about the religious and political zealotry abundant within the characters in the script. We have multiple Jewish revolutionary parties, all sworn haters of the Romans who are desparate to free their lands of the occupiers (Popular Peoples Front, Peoples Popular Front and so on), but who actually seem to hate each other more, and spend so much time and effort squabbling between themselves, that the Romans just let them fight it out.
The Romans themselves are not especially bright, most of them dont really want to be there as an occupying force and wish they could go home, the most fun they seem to have is bedding the local women, hence Brians father actually being a Roman we think, though his fathers name being 'Biggus Dickus', leads some to believe this may not be true. Brians mother Mandy it seems, was (and remains) a woman in demand by the Roman occupiers.

Its really impossible to try and describe all of the jokes in the film, it just makes me laugh from the very start to the very end, and re-watching it reveals more clever and subtle humour.

Controversy

When the film was originally released, it caused a lot of controversy within the Christian community, the film was accused of being blasphemous and heretical and an insult to Christians, it was banned in multiple places around the world, and some of those bans were lifted only recently. I dont feel any of this is warranted, Jesus is portrayed sensibly and without humour in just one scene, he and his words are treated reverently and without distain. As I said earlier, the humour comes from the stupidity of the people; on mis-hearing Jesus' words a posh lady character says 'Blessed are the Cheesemakers?', whereupon her posh husband says with hubris 'I think He means all purveyors of dairy products'; whereupon a fight breaks out between two other characters Mr Cheeky and Bignose, because the lady cant hear the words of Christ.

The film itself uses humour to deal with an amazing array of serious topics, from religion, politics, death, gender identity, persecution and more. OK its a comedy so its not a serious dissection of the issues, but I dont think anyone should be offended by the way things are dealt with in the film; if you are, perhaps go to your doctor and see if your capacity for satire and irony has been compromised.

I'd love to hear from other people, and expect, nay demand, your favourite quotes from the film. If you have not seen it, get yourself a copy and let me know what you think, I truly hope you get as much joy from it as I have.