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There’s nothing quite as annoying as people who recite chunks of Monty Python and the Holy Grail in public. Except, perhaps, for those who recite it badly.

Growing up (in the ‘70s), Monty Python’s Flying Circus was a huge part of my emerging sense of what was funny. There was also Steve Martin, Saturday Night Live (original cast), Richard Pryor and Cheech & Chong. But only Monty Python came to us, fully hatched, from Britain. That made it special.

British humor is peculiar and exotic, especially to non-Brits. But it’s hugely popular, as popular as Mr. Bean and Little Britain (both obvious successors to Monty Python’s humor). Ricky Gervais’ The Office also took up that other strand of British humor — excruciating embarrassment ­— and spawned a hit US television show.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus began life as a half-hour weekly BBC skit show in 1969. It went off the air in 1974, but mutated over the years into albums (first vinyl, then cassettes, and even more embarrassingly, eight-track tapes), then movies, then books, then live shows and concerts, then more movies, before finally ending up on Broadway as the hit musical Spamalot.

That is a strange tautology. But then, they were a strange group. As the recent Authobiography (by “The Pythons”) makes clear, the writing/performing members of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and (resident Yank) Terry Gilliam were almost bound to cross paths in Britain’s small TV writing circles. But their collective humor might not have coalesced to such giddily surreal levels.

The show usually opened with a long shot: a disheveled, bearded man, crawling across a desert, crossing deadly traffic, emerging from the sea, only to utter with his last dying breath: “It’s…” Then cue music (a pomp and circumstance number called Liberty Bell) as Terry Gilliam’s airbrushed cutout animation introduced the show’s title. From there, it was anything goes. “The Dead Parrot Sketch.” “The Lumberjack Song.” “The Upperclass Twit of the Year Award.” “The Ministry of Silly Walks.” “Nudge, Nudge.” “The Cheese Shop.” “The Spam Song.” (Ask a geek to recite any of them for you; he will.)

Absurdism was big in 1969, when Monty Python got its start. But more importantly, the Pythons were all university-educated (three from Cambridge, two from Oxford), seasoned writers and performers who finally got their chance at total creative freedom. They’d done live comedy revues, labored under David Frost, writing one-liners and ad-libs for the egocentric BBC broadcaster. They’d worked on countless comedy shows, the names of which are lost in the mists of time (Do Not Adjust Your Set and We Have Ways of Making You Laugh are just two of them — early test runs for the final Pythonian solution).

It was the pipe-smoking Chapman who decided to “do away with punchlines,” as he put it. They’d written too many of them for other shows; their sketches would instead end with awkward pauses or surreal jump cuts to, say, a man with a stoat through his head. Then cut to: grainy stock footage of old English grannies clapping in a TV studio.

If they found they lacked continuity between skits, they’d turn to Gilliam, an American Army brat who’d wound up in London doing cartoons before being inducted to the Python brotherhood. They’d say, “We need 30 seconds to join this airplane skit to this one in a drawing room.” He’d buy batches of old Victorian postcards, cut ‘em up, and animate them, adding his own dark humor and penchant for drawing large-breasted women. (It’s debatable whether Gilliam’s Pop Art style predated the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine look or not.) As Idle now puts it: “Gilliam made us popular in America because he provided the two things America loves — tits and violence.”

It’s clear that John Cleese’s athletic slapstick — the bodily contortions of his “silly walk” — inspired Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean, as much as it was itself influenced by the physical humor of early silent films. But there’s something else going on there, too: a bit of Magritte, perhaps, in the bowler and brolly — the surreal insistence that such contortions are completely sane, necessary and rational.

One gets conflicting views on which are the real “brains” behind Monty Python. Certainly, Terry Jones’ workmanlike writing skills and desire to direct films (which came to brilliant fruition — and creative collision — during Life of Brian) were pivotal in charting the Python direction. Cleese was a strong physical presence who often clashed with Jones and Chapman, but his humor was key. The sometime-medical student and comedy writer Chapman surprised them all by “coming out” at a public party with his boyfriend in 1966 — an unusual step for the times. Idle and Palin had a regular “straight man” quality that made their presence in any sketch almost painfully funny. And they all wrote brilliant bits.

There is an assumption that much of Python’s humor — overflowing as it is with references to philosophy, literature, modern culture —is meant to be esoteric or erudite. In the book, Cleese takes pains to note that their humor assumes an audience is “intelligent, though not necessarily educated.” In England, this is an important distinction. The British class system ensured only a very small minority made it to the privileged public schools. Most of the Pythons were middle-class, having entered Oxford and Cambridge on their own steam, their own wits. And besides, there’s nothing erudite about a bunch of Vikings floating down from a cafeteria ceiling, chanting “Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam…” It defies interpretation, erudite or otherwise.

Monty Python’s humor often cut both ways. It lampooned the working class, as well as the upper class (much as Little Britain takes cat-swinging aim at similar targets today). Scan a piece like “The Oscar Wilde Skit” on paper and you’ll agree it takes a rare genius to combine the clever and the silly in such a delirious fashion:

Scene: Oscar Wilde’s drawing room. A crowd of suitably dressed folk are engaged in typically brilliant conversation, laughing affectedly and drinking champagne.

Prince of Wales: My congratulations, Wilde. Your latest play is a great success. The whole of London’s talking about you.

Oscar: There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

There follows 15 seconds of sycophantic laughter.

Prince: Very, very witty... very, very witty.

Whistler: There is only one thing in the world worse than being witty, and that is not being witty.

Fifteen more seconds of the same.

Oscar: I wish I had said that.

Whistler: You will, Oscar, you will. (More laughter.)

Oscar: Your Majesty, have you met James McNeill Whistler?

Prince: Yes, we’ve played squash together.

Oscar: There is only one thing worse than playing squash together, and that is playing it by yourself. (Silence.) I wish I hadn’t said that.

Whistler: You did, Oscar, you did. (A little laughter.)

Prince: You really must forgive me, Wilde, I’ve got to get back up the Palace.

Oscar: Your Majesty is like a big jam doughnut with cream on the top.

Prince: I beg your pardon?

Oscar: Um... It was one of Whistler’s.

Whistler: I never said that.

Oscar: You did, James, you did.

The Prince of Wales stares expectantly at Whistler.

Whistler: Er… Well, Your Highness, what I meant was that, like a doughnut, um, your arrival gives us pleasure and your departure only makes us hungry for more. (Appreciative laughter.) Your Highness, you are also like a great stream of bat’s piss.

Prince: What?

Whistler: It was one of Wilde’s, one of Wilde’s.

Oscar: It sodding was not! It was Shaw!

George Bernard Shaw: I... I merely meant, Your Majesty, that you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark.

Prince: (Accepting the compliment.) Ah!

Oscar: Right. (To Prince:) Your Majesty… is like a dose of clap! (Points at Whistler.)

Whistler: Uh, that is… before you arrive… before you arrive is pleasure, and after is a pain in the dong.

Prince: What?

Oscar and Whistler: One of Shaw’s, one of Shaw’s.

Shaw: You bastards! Um... what I meant, Your Majesty, what I meant...

Oscar: We’ve got him, Jim.

Whistler: Come on, Shaw.

Oscar: Come on, Shaw-y.

Shaw: I merely meant...

Oscar: Come on, Shaw-y...

Whistler: Let’s have a bit of wit, then, man.

Oscar Come on, Shaw…

Shaw: (Blows a raspberry.)

The Prince shakes Shaw’s hand. Laughter all round.