Hopes Python film may be resurrected (June 1980)

From the News Letter of June 1980
1979: Members of the British comedy team, Monty Python, during the filming of their controversial film 'The Life of Brian', (from left) John Cleese, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman. (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images)1979: Members of the British comedy team, Monty Python, during the filming of their controversial film 'The Life of Brian', (from left) John Cleese, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman. (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images)
1979: Members of the British comedy team, Monty Python, during the filming of their controversial film 'The Life of Brian', (from left) John Cleese, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman. (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images)

Bangor was ready to resurrect a controversial film which had been “verbally crucified” by Belfast councillors after a private preview, reported the News Letter in June 1980.

The Monty Python skit, The Life of Brian, was lashed as “degrading and filthy and an affront to Belfast people” after the screening in Belfast.

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And it looked unlikely that the council would license the movie to be shown in Belfast.

But the ‘Let Brian Live’ campaigners were adamant that the show must go on.

“People should be allowed to make up their own minds. They don’t gave to go if they don’t want to,” said campaign organiser Peter Russell.

The Bangor reporter and 15 friends “cast themselves as saviours at the celluloid epic” shortly after the film was released in November 1979, reported the News Letter.

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Free Methodists had written to Bangor Council asking that the film not be shown the town’s Tonic Cinema.

The cinema replied that it has no immediate intentions of screening the show.

The ‘Let Brian Live’ campaigners then entered the stage, and they had so far collected more than 2,000 signatures in the Bangor area alone supporting their case.

Kissinger warns US to restore defences

Former US Secretary of State Dr Henry Kissinger speaking in London in June 1980 warned his country against “self-effacement” and “self-abasement” over the Embassy hostages in Iran.

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Dr Kissinger was making the opening speech of a two-day conference on ‘The Energy Emergency – Oil and Money’.

He told more than 200 delegates from oil and banking firms: “I have been appalled by the tendency of so many in the West to believe the hostage question in Iran should be settled by an act of American self-effacement.”

Kissinger added: “What the US must not do is engage in any act of self-abasement, the only purpose of which is demonstrate our impotence and thereby demoralise all those elements on which a moderate policy can be built.”

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