John Cleese doesn't agree:
“Too many people confuse being serious with being solemn.”
He expands:
Now I suggest to you that a group of us could be sitting around after dinner,
discussing matters that were extremely serious like the education of our chil-
dren, or our marriages, or the meaning of life (and I’m not talking about the
film), and we could be laughing, and that would not make what we were discuss-
ing one bit less serious.
Solemnity, on the other hand, I honestly don’t know what it’s for. I mean,
what is the point of it? The two most beautiful memorial services that I’ve
ever attended both had a lot of humor and it freed us all and made the ser-
vices inspiring and cathartic. But solemnity, it serves pomposity and the self-
important always know, at some level of their consciousness, that their egotism
is going to be punctured by humor. That’s why they see it as a threat.
and as an example:
“Graham Chapman, co-author of the "Parrot Sketch", is no more. He has ceased
to be. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. He's kicked the bucket, hopped the
twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the great
Head of Light Entertainment in the sky. And I guess that we're all thinking
how sad it is that a man of such talent, of such capability for kindness, of
such unusual intelligence, should now so suddenly be spirited away at the age
of only forty-eight, before he'd achieved many of the things of which he was
capable, and before he'd had enough fun. Well, I feel that I should say: non-
sense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries. And the
reason I feel I should say this is he would never forgive me if I didn't, if
I threw away this glorious opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Any-
thing for him but mindless good taste.
(He paused, then claimed that Chapman had whispered in his ear while he was
writing the speech):
All right, Cleese. You say you're very proud of being the very first person
ever to say 'shit' on British television. If this service is really for me,
just for starters, I want you to become the first person ever at a British
memorial service to say 'fuck'.”