Chapman eventually established a writing partnership with John Cleese, which reached its critical peak with Monty Python during the 1970s.

His life and legacy were commemorated at a memorial service at St Bartholomew's Hospital two months after his death, which was a testimony to Chapman's surreal sense of humour that the remaining five Pythons enacted.

He showed a strong affinity for science, sports and amateur dramatics and was singled out for attention when a local paper reviewed his performance of Mark Antony in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

[10] Graham and his brother John were both avid fans of radio comedy, being especially fond of The Goon Show[11] and Robert Moreton's skill of telling jokes the wrong way round and reversing punchlines.

[14] Following graduation, Chapman joined the Footlights show Cambridge Circus and toured New Zealand, deferring his medical studies for a year.

"[17] Following their Footlights success, Chapman and Cleese began to write professionally for the BBC,[18] initially for David Frost but also for Marty Feldman.

[22] It was Chapman's first significant role as a performer as well as a writer[22] and he displayed a gift for deadpan comedy (such as in the sketch "The Minister Who Falls to Pieces") and imitating various British dialects.

[32] Although the pair were officially equal partners, Cleese later thought that Chapman contributed comparatively little in the way of direct writing, saying "he would come in, say something marvelous and then drift off in his own mind".

[34] The series was an immediate success, and Chapman was delighted to learn that medical students at St Bartholomew's crowded round the television in the bar to watch it.

[37] Chapman's main contribution to the "Dead Parrot sketch", derived from the piece within How to Irritate People and involving a customer returning a faulty toaster, was "How can we make this madder?

[41] In 1975, Chapman and Douglas Adams wrote a pilot for a television series, entitled Out of the Trees, but it received poor ratings after being broadcast at the same time as Match of the Day and only the initial episode was produced.

[46] The film, which starred Chapman as the eponymous pirate, also featured appearances from Cook, Marty Feldman, Cleese, Idle, Spike Milligan and Cheech & Chong.

David Robinson, reviewing the film in The Times, said that "the Monty Python style of comic anarchy requires more than scatology, rude words and funny faces".

[52] Saturday Night Live creator and Python fan Lorne Michaels persuaded Chapman to star in The Big Show.

[61] Chapman and Sherlock moved to Belsize Park in 1968,[62] and the pair enjoyed visiting gay clubs in Central London.

[64] In 1972, on a television show hosted by English jazz and blues singer George Melly, Chapman first disclosed his homosexuality publicly, becoming one of the first celebrities to do so.

By the time Monty Python went out on tour in 1973, Chapman's drinking had begun to affect his performance, causing him to miss cues to go on stage, and was known to suffer from delirium tremens (DTs).

[77] In 1988, Chapman made a routine visit to a dentist, who found a small, malignant tumour on one of his tonsils, leading to both being removed via a tonsillectomy.

[82] At the time of his death, he was being visited by Sherlock, brother John and his sister-in-law, and fellow Pythons Palin and Cleese, the latter of whom had to be led out of the room to deal with his grief.

[82] Chapman's death occurred on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the Pythons' collective debut on British television, and Jones called it "the worst case of party-pooping in all history".

The five surviving Python members had decided to stay away from Chapman's private funeral to prevent it from becoming a media circus and to give his family some privacy.

"[85] Ten years after Chapman's death, his ashes were first rumoured to have been "blasted into the skies in a rocket" with assistance from the Dangerous Sports Club.

At the 1998 Aspen Comedy Arts festival, the urn, brought onstage by a stiff English butler, was "accidentally" knocked over by Terry Gilliam, spilling the "ashes" on-stage.

[92] A compendium of writings, Calcium Made Interesting: Sketches, Letters, Essays & Gondolas, also compiled and edited by Yoakum, was published in 2005 in association with the David Sherlock and John Tomiczek trust.

[93] In 2000, Chapman's play O Happy Day was performed by Dad's Garage Theatre Company in Atlanta, Georgia, with the assistance of Cleese and Palin.

[95] In June 2011, it was announced that Cleese, Jones, Gilliam and Palin would perform in a 3D-animated version of Chapman's memoir A Liar's Autobiography: Volume VI.

The voices of Cleese, Gilliam, Jones and Palin were spliced into commentary recorded by Chapman reading from his memoir and taped shortly before his death.

"[98] In September 2012, a British Comedy Society blue plaque commemorating Chapman was unveiled at The Angel pub in Highgate by Jones, Palin, Barry Cryer, Ray Davies and Carol Cleveland.

[99] Palin said, "Highgate was his patch, and he should be celebrated because he was a very good, brilliant, funny, nice, wise, kind man, who occasionally drank too much.

"[100] In December 2014, a green plaque funded by Leicestershire County Council was placed on Chapman's former home in Burton Road, Melton Mowbray.