Bafta honour for Monty Python stars

The Monty Python stars are to be honoured with a special award from the British Academy of Film and Television (Bafta) to mark their contribution to comedy over 40 years, it emerged today.

John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam will receive the prize at a special screening of a new documentary about the Pythons in New York on 15 October.

It will be the first time all five remaining members of the team will have been reunited since Spamalot, the hit musical based on Monty Python And The Holy Grail, opened on Broadway in 2005.

Cleese said he was pleased to be honoured with his fellow Pythons.

"I believe these trinkets are more important than people think," he joked.

The new film, Monty Python: Almost The Truth (The Lawyer's Cut) will feature interviews with all of the surviving Pythons, along with archive footage of Graham Chapman, who died in 1989.

It will also include interviews with guests including Steve Coogan, Bruce Dickinson, Jeff Bridges, Eddie Izzard, Stephen Merchant, Dan Aykroyd, Tim Roth and Hugh Hefner.

The Pythons will collect the Bafta after a screening of the film at New York's Ziegfeld Theatre on October 15, 40 years after the first edition of Monty Python's Flying Circus was broadcast by the BBC.