It was 45 years ago this week, on June 16, 1969, that the Pythons held a meeting to try to decide on a name for their upcoming TV series. They were unsuccessful.

It would take a lot of meetings and a lot of suggestions before they came up with the winning selection. It was not a high priority for them at the time. They had numerous discussions in which they finally selected one, then met again the following day and decided they didn’t like it very much. And the process would start over.

As most fans know, they went through many, many names trying to select the perfect name for their show. By the way, it’s worth mentioning that they weren’t trying to pick a name for their comedy group, because at that time, they didn’t consider themselves a comedy group–just six writer-performers who were trying to figure out what to call their TV series. I’ll post a few of the runners-up this week.