Revealed: The '˜biblical' memo that brought Pythons to the BBC

“They are all well-regarded people with a considerable reputation”, the head of comedy, Michael Mills, had written of the cast to Miss Sandra Coombs in the contracts department. “It is something of a coup if we can cleave them unto us for some time to come.”

“Cleave them unto us... that’s BBC language from the 1960s,” said Rachel Foss, head of contemporary archives at the British Library, as she put the document back in its folder.

Though it had not been sent directly to him, Michael Palin had obtained a copy of the memo and stashed it away, along with reams of other paperwork documenting the life of Python from its earliest utterings.

Today, Mr Mills’ old testament reference was finally saved for the nation, along with 50 Python notebooks and 35 boxes of diaries, scripts and other paperwork Palin had fastidiously collected.

The Sheffield-born comedian turned world traveller had earlier published two volumes of his diaries, but they only scratched the surface of the body of work he has now handed to the British Library.

The 1969 memo, which referred to the soon-to-be-recorded first series of Monty Python simply as “The Circus”, is one of the jewels in the collection, which also includes embryonic versions of Python sketches that future generations would reel off parrot-fashion.

“There is a lot of social and artistic history here,” Ms Foss told The Yorkshire Post. “We think of these sketches as having always existed in the form we know them, because they’ve been immortalised in the culture. But to see what happens to get to that stage is really illuminating.

“We all know these things don’t fall from the sky in a burst of inspiration, but it’s fascinating to see the level of workings-out and detail that goes on in the creative process.”

Palin himself took a characteristically self-deprecating approach to his largesse. “I’m very pleased that my archive has been accepted by the British Library, and that they will make it publicly available, so that future generations will know not to make the same mistakes again,” he said.

His library begins in 1965, as he left Brasenose College, Oxford, with a second class degree in modern history and accepted his first TV engagement as co-host of a pop music programme called Now!, recorded at the Bristol studios of TWW, one of the first ITV companies.

No studio footage of the show survives, but it lives on in Palin’s diaries.

The paperwork also covers his earliest collaborations with the other Pythons, as writers on The Frost Report with David Frost, and as performers on the ITV children’s series, Do Not Adjust Your Set. It includes notes and scripts from the Python movies - one of which, the biblical satire Life of Brian, would draw accusations of blasphemy - and from his later solo work on films like The Missionary, in which he co-starred with Maggie Smith.

The British Library said it had been discussing the acquisition of his papers for two years. The collection will be available to view in the its reading rooms from next spring.