How To Irritate People was a 1968 hour-long US television comedy special that took an important step towards the creation of Britain's most famous television comedy series, Monty Python's Flying Circus. Yet despite this it is largely considered to be a misstep, a noble failure that is certainly on the journey towards creating Pythonesque humour, but is not quite there yet. Showcasing the writing talents of John Cleese and Graham Chapman, for the first time it unites them in performances alongside Michael Palin as well as Connie Booth.

Creation: How To Insinuate People

In the late 1960s David Frost was a well-known British television host who when at Cambridge University had been the secretary of its famous Footlights drama and comedy society. By knowing many of the writers and performers at Cambridge, Frost utilised their talents to become one of the most successful television hosts in the world. While he took a lot of the credit for the work of others, he would give many their big break in return. John Cleese was a writer and actor whose career in particular he nurtured.

Shortly after Cleese had married Connie Booth, David Frost invited him to a meeting to discuss whether he had any ideas for future projects. Cleese told Frost that he wished to spend a year concentrating on writing rather than performing in order to spend time at home with his new wife. Frost commissioned Cleese to write a television special which would be aimed for the US market, which Frost was trying to get a bigger foothold into. He also allowed Connie to perform in the show, which Cleese would write alongside his writing partner Graham Chapman. As Cleese's previous collaborator and former housemate Tim Brooke-Taylor had commitments making Marty with Marty Feldman for the BBC, Cleese decided to act alongside Michael Palin, who had also written for David Frost¹. This would be the first time they would perform together.

The sketches all had irritation as the central theme, with John Cleese performing in most of these as well as linking the sketches together in the way he would later perfect for Monty Python with the phrase: 'And now for something completely different'.

Cast: How To's Irrelevant People

The cast of How To Irritate People were made up of many with strong links to Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-74).

• Connie Booth was John Cleese's first wife (1968-78) and co-created and starred in Fawlty Towers with Cleese. She also played many of the female roles in Monty Python, such as the witch in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

• Tim Brooke-Taylor a housemate of both Cleese and Chapman with a lifetime of comedy roles. At the time he was best known for performing for classic radio comedy I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again (1964-73), particularly as Lady Constance de Coverlet. This show starred Cleese, David Hatch, and Jo Kendall - as well as Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden, with whom he would appear in television comedy series The Goodies (1970-82). He had appeared alongside Cleese and Chapman in At Last the 1948 Show (1967-68).

• Graham Chapman was perhaps the member of Monty Python who wrote the least, but was highly valued for his ability to know instinctively what was funny and would work well with an audience. He was also the strongest at playing 'straight' characters, starring as King Arthur in Holy Grail and Brian in Monty Python's Life of Brian.

• John Cleese was instrumental in creating Monty Python and also the first to leave. He has had a wide and varied career as both writer and performer as well as being heavily involved in charity work for The Secret Policeman's Ball.

• Sir Michael Palin is another founding member of Monty Python who often wrote comedy with his writing partner Terry Jones, such as Ripping Yarns. As well as comedy he is well known for his travel documentaries, exploring the world.

How To Python People

Cleese and Chapman wrote all the material. As the show was written for the US market and not broadcast in the UK, several sketches were later used for Marty or polished to become genuine Monty Python sketches. A conversation with Michael Palin about the problem he had experienced in trying to complain about a recently purchased faulty car from a dodgy car dealer inspired one of How to Irritate People's sketches. This would later be the basis of the far more famous and surreal Dead Parrot Sketch with the broken car changed to become a pet. Cleese would record in his autobiography:

[Michael Palin] provided the story for one of the first pieces we wrote, about a garage owner who had sold him a car, and who had a wonderfully evasive way of dealing with the numerous complaints Michael made about it... It's well known among Python fans that this piece was later rewritten as the 'Dead Parrot' sketch. What happened was this: 'How To Irritate People' was never intended to be transmitted in the UK so when 'Monty Python' started, and I happened upon a copy of the script in a bottom drawer, Graham and I decided that something should be made of it, both because no-one in Britain had seen it and because we still loved the [salesman] character... so we rummaged among other possible locations for him, and up popped a pet shop.

Other Python connections were the creation of the 'Pepperpot' old women who squawk 'Oo!' and 'Well I never!'. These were created by Graham Chapman and are seen talking irritatingly loudly in a cinema. They would frequently appear in Monty Python. Cleese has also confessed:

In a couple of cases Graham and I opted to reuse sketches from 'At Last the 1948 Show', one a gameshow with me a heartless host called Nosmo Claphanger haranguing an old crone; the other a send-up of a current affairs programme about freedom of speech, where the interviewer never stops talking, so that the interviewee, unable to get a word in edgeways, goes berserk.

Michael Palin would recall the show with the words:

'How To Irritate People' was the show which John asked me to do with him in '68. That was important because it was the first time I'd ever worked with John and Graham as an actor and a writer and it was very much like a mini-Python... I was an actor with their material, but we changed it a little in rehearsal. We really enjoyed doing that even though the end result had not been very successful largely due to technical problems with the recording itself.

Filming: How To Irrecoverable People

To be honest, it was not a good experience. Or, to be completely honest, it was a dreadful experience. But not when we were writing it. For in the early stages of its gestation Graham and I revelled in the freedom of being in charge of the script for the first time.
- John Cleese

As there was a live studio audience during the recording, Cleese had to perform all the sketches in order and so needed to quickly change from his host clothes and into each character's costume and back when providing the links. As the film was intended for broadcast in America it was filmed in NTSC, which is the American standard, rather than PAL².

Unfortunately, while the first rehearsal had gone extremely well, the show was performed live and beset with technical issues that constantly delayed the recording of the show and resulted in the need for the sketches to be performed over and over and over. This meant that the live studio audience had heard many of the jokes several times before the recorded version, and so had long since stopped laughing. Cleese recorded this in his autobiography with the words:

From the instant we arrived in the studio that morning, everything went wrong. There were endless technical problems, which put the crew under such pressure that they never laughed at any of the sketches, and we therefore found ourselves rehearsing to total silence – never an encouraging experiencing, especially when you are performing new material... Then we started recording the show... within five minutes none of the sketches felt funny, and this spells DISASTER for a performer. You just can't sense how to make the material funny, because it has suddenly become clear to you that it isn't.

One moment stands out as being especially appalling. Connie and I... sense a stirring in the audience, just as though they have all awoken from a thousand-year sleep. A tiny flicker of hope flashes through my central nervous system. 'Hold it!' cries the director. Why? We aren't told, of course. Silence. A minute passes. 'From the beginning, please!' So Connie and I start it again, and just as we reach the same point, the audience stirs again, we even get a tiny laugh, and the director intervenes. 'Hold it, please!' Connie and I stop and sit there for seven minutes while they relight. By the time we start a third time, we can feel the audience's boredom and irritation.

Unfortunately there was no moment during the recording of 'How to Irritate People' when it felt funny. It was an awful experience.

How To Irritate People was shown as an episode of David Frost Presents broadcast on the Westinghouse Network on Sunday nights, with other episodes showcasing performances by Ronnie Barker, Tommy Cooper and Frankie Howerd. Although over an hour's worth of material was recorded, the programme slot was an hour long. As well as an introduction by David Frost there were commercial breaks so not all the sketches recorded would have been shown. Which sketches were edited or omitted from the broadcast version in the United States is unknown as the broadcast copy was not retained, although every sketch recorded has survived. The show does not involve or mention any buses, but it was promoted with the motif of a double decker bus, presumably because it had a British cast³ and double decker buses are also British vehicles.