The Colonel (Monty Python) The Colonel (Monty Python) The Colonel is a recurring fictional character from the British television show "Monty Python's Flying Circus", played by Graham Chapman. The Colonel acts as a "straight man" comic foil to the show's absurd characters and sketches. He maintains a rigidly mirthless personality and is always dressed in khaki British Army uniform. He occasionally makes appearances in the show, usually breaking the fourth wall and disrupting sketches to pronounce them too silly for the public and, therefore, demanding that something else be shown. He often orders the show to proceed in a different direction (sometimes to the
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