Monty Python's Flying Circus
Monty Python’s Flying Circus (known during the final series as just Monty Python) is a British surreal sketch comedy series created by and starring the comedy group Monty Python. The first episode was recorded at the BBC on 7 September and premiered on 5 October 1969 on BBC One, with 45 episodes airing over four series from 1969 to 1974, plus two episodes for German TV.
Roger Wilmut
Wilmut's enthusiasm for the Goons led to the first of his books. In 1974, with the help of friends Tim Smith and Peter Copeland, he revised a list of the series' episodes supplied by the BBC, and his own earlier research, into a "much more complete typewritten list". He then sent it to Robson Books, who showed an interest. While writing the accompanying text he was "approached by the late Jimmy Grafton, who had been involved with the Goons in their early days, and had helped to get the show on the air. He suggested combining his memoirs with my book, and this is what happened, with the book being published in 1976 under the title "The Goon Show Companion"."
Wilmut was then signed by the agent Roger Hancock, who then commissioned him to "write a similar book about Tony Hancock", his elder brother. The result was 1978's "Tony Hancock – 'Artiste"', the book for which he conducted his first interviews. Whilst considering a book on "Monty Python's Flying Circus", Roger Hancock suggested that he cover "the entire generation of comedy which arose from Oxford and Cambridge Universities after 1961". The result was "From Fringe to Flying Circus". 
It wasn't until 1985 that Wilmut's next book appeared, a history of theatrical variety, titled "Kindly Leave The Stage". Over seventy people were interviewed for the project, with Wilmut remarking he thought he "ought to do the interviews as soon as possible in view of the age of the people involved."
In 1989 he produced "Didn't You Kill My Mother-in-Law?", a history of British alternative comedy. The book was originally the idea of Peter Rosengard, a life insurance salesman who had helped start this comedy movement by opening "The Comedy Store" in London in 1979. Like Jimmy Grafton with "The Goon Show Companion", the book was part memoir (this time Rosengard's), and part history of the subject by Wilmut.