As featured in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

A fish with the face of Graham Chapman has sold for more than £10,000 at auction

The 127cm-long model was used in the 1983 Monty Python film The Meaning of Life, for sketches in which the troupe played fish in a tank. 

It came from Chapman’s estate and went under the hammer at Knightsbridge auction house Bonhams today, where it fetched £10,240 including buyer’s premium.

The auctioneers described it as having a ‘hard cast metallic painted face with blue marble eyes, soft foam-like body and gills, body with tin foil scales individually placed, with painted net fins with plastic and metal wires, on metal stand.’

They added: ‘ This is one of the six fish models created for the six original members of Monty Python. The fish models were meticulously crafted, with each one featuring intricate detailing that mirrors the face of its corresponding Python member.’

It was sold as part of an ongoing auction called The Uncanny, which also featured a black horned mask Ozzy Osbourne wore  for Rolling Stone magazine, which fetched £3,328, a bust of John Merrick used on The Elephant Man movie, which fetched £3,840, and sketches Tim Burton drew for The Nightmare Before Christmas.  

Still to be sold is a wand used by Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which has an estimate of between £10,000 and £15,000.

Chapman died in 1989 at the age of 48.

Published: 29 Oct 2025