The full Monty Python

TONIGHT, actor Charles Edwards plays something completely different. Since graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1992 his screen credits have taken in everything from Batman Begins to Mistresses and the final series of Waking The Dead.

On stage he originated the role of Richard Hannay in the award-winning adaptation of The Thirty Nine Steps that transferred from London’s Tricycle Theatre to the West End to Broadway in 2008.

This year he has appeared in Twelfth Night at the National Theatre and is currently playing Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, in London.

Now, in Holy Flying Circus, he plays Monty Python’s Michael Palin. The story is set in the late-Seventies as Monty Python’s film Life Of Brian caused outrage around the world and there were calls for it to be banned as blasphemous.

Against this backdrop, Michael Palin and John Cleese found themselves facing prominent society figures Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark in a TV debate in front of a live studio audience to defend their film against charges of blasphemy.

Edwards, rright, feels that in the context of the film, Palin is the group’s moral compass, “but whether or not he is or was that in real life I have no idea”, he says.

“It’s irrelevant in a way – the thing with this film is it is so removed from reality.

It’s categorically not a biopic. Other than the debate, which is obviously a fact and the fact of Life Of Brian itself, everything else around that is exaggerated or imagined.”

He was a big Python fan at school. “I was of the era before video when you’d record it on your tape cassette player and bring it in and we’d all listen to it together,” he recalls.

“But Brian was my favourite thing that they did. Possibly because it had a story. I love Python sketch comedy but Life Of Brian was a very satisfying whole.

“I just thought they were all terrific in it and that’s why it’s so interesting to be doing this – because at the time I was unaware of the effect that it had. It’s just fascinating watching the debate.”

Written by Tony Roche, Holy Flying Circus is a fantastical re-imagining of the controversy surrounding the release of the film that incorporates surreal cutaways including puppetry and animation in telling its narrative.

The drama also features Darren Boyd as John Cleese, Steve Punt as Eric Idle, Rufus Jones as Terry Jones, Tom Fisher as Graham Chapman and Phil Nichol as Terry Gilliam.

BONA fide queen of the handmade and all things crafty, Kirstie Allsopp returns with a brand new series Kirstie’s Handmade Britain that will really test her mettle as a craftswoman.

“It involves going to county shows around the country, learning new crafts and entering those crafts for competitions to be judged in the same way that everyone else’s stuff was judged,” she explains.

She sets out to see if she can really cut it in the artisan world, travelling the country during the British summer to visit some of the finest county and agricultural fairs.

At each event she has to submit entries to some of the toughest craft competitions going.

In this first programme she heads to the Devon County Show, where she enters some of her finest baked goods in the Afternoon Tea competition.

She needs to perfect her scones and homemade jam, and her chosen afternoon tea patisserie – kumquat eclairs.

Kirstie enlists expert scone maker Richard Hammond (not that one) to help her perfect a crumble-free scone, and receives advice from Loretta Lui, who has worked under Raymond Blanc and Gordon Ramsay, for her eclairs.

As the day of reckoning nears Kirstie, never one to do things halfheartedly, decides she’s going to enter a second contest – the single cake competition, for which she rustles up a Caribbean fruit cake. But has the intrepid baker bitten off more than she can chew?