Monty Python tickets sell out within the hour

All shows went on sale at 10am today and sold out within 55 minutes - by 10.55am. There are 14,500 tickets per show.

Eric Idle said: "It's totally amazing. I don't think we realised quite how much Python is loved round the world. We look forward to paying off Terry Jones' mortgage soon...."

However last week Idle had assured RadioTimes.com that the show will be filmed in order to be “flogged at some point later” probably as a DVD or iTunes download.

He was speaking a lighthearted press conference in London’s Playhouse Theatre where the Python musical Spamalot is playing.

The show, they revealed, will include old material plus some new stuff, although they were at pains to point out that fans often want the material they know best.

Cleese said there was a lesson to be learned from the recent experience of Neil Diamond, who was booed for doing new tracks in the second half of his gig at the Royal Albert Hall.

“People do want to see the old favourites but they do not want to see them done in exactly the same way so it will be a mix up,’ he added.

However Cleese said he would not be reprising his famous silly walk. “I have an artificial knee and an artificial hip so the silly walk is out” he said.

The Pythons have never performed material from their 1983 film The Meaning of Life before on stage, so that will be a first, said Idle – though he too was wary of including too much new comedy, adding “There is nothing like a band saying we are going to do some songs from our new album to maker people want to go to the toilet.”

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