By CNN Staff
LONDON (CNN) — The five surviving Monty Python comics will do five more live shows next summer — a total of 10 — their PR agency announced Wednesday.
The British comedy troupe announced last week it would perform live at London’s O2 arena on July 1 — the five surviving stars’ first show on stage together since appearing at the Hollywood Bowl in September 1980.
Tickets for the reunion performance, which went on sale Monday, sold out in 43 seconds. A further four dates, July 2-5, were then added and sold out soon afterwards.
The group now will also perform on July 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, Neil Reading PR said in a news release. Tickets will go on sale on November 29, it added. All shows will be at the O2 arena.
“The response to our planned reunion has been very, very silly,” member John Cleese said in the release. “But, we’re all touched that so many fans still want to see such old people perform.”
Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and the late Graham Chapman became comedic legends with the creation of Monty Python’s Flying Circus in October 1969. They produced 45 TV episodes for the BBC and five films together before going their separate ways in 1983.
The shows mostly consisted of a string of often incoherent sketches, only occasionally with conventional punch lines and loosely tied together by Gilliam’s stream of consciousness animations.
Although the TV show ran for only four seasons, it proved a massive cult hit when it was shown in the United States beginning in 1974 — just as the show was winding up on the other side of the Atlantic.
CNN’s Richard Allen Greene and Marie-Louise Gumuchian in London contributed to this report
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