Monty Python Kurtzman's "Help!" magazine, one issue of which featured Cleese. Moving from the US to England, he animated features for "Do Not Adjust Your Set" and was then asked by its makers to join them on their next project: "Monty Python's Flying Circus". He co-directed "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and directed short segments of other Python films (for instance "The Crimson Permanent Assurance", the short film that appears before "The Meaning of Life"). When Monty Python was first formed, two writing partnerships were already in place: Cleese and Chapman, Jones and Palin. That left two in their own corners:
Monty Python settled on "Python". On other occasions, Idle has claimed that the name "Monty" was that of a popular and rotund fellow who drank in his local pub; people would often walk in and ask the barman, "Has Monty been in yet?", forcing the name to become stuck in his mind. The name Monty Python was later described by the BBC as being "envisaged by the team as the perfect name for a sleazy entertainment agent". "Flying Circus" popularised innovative formal techniques, such as the cold open, in which an episode began without the traditional opening titles or announcements. An example