Exclusive: Monty Python filmmaker in fight to stay in UK over ‘absurd’ visa ruling
The veteran British filmmaker behind the Monty Python films could be forced to leave the UK after the Home Office revoked his Thai wife’s visa.
Julian Doyle, 79, received notice this week that partner Suki, 51, whom he married four years ago, no longer has the right to remain.
The ruling gives her just 10 days to appeal or leave the country.
London-born Doyle, who now lives on the Isle of Wight, yesterday vowed to fight the “absurd” decision.
But if their appeal were to fail, he would have no other choice than to abandon his family and go with her, he said.
Doyle is widely regarded as a key figure in British popular culture and a lynchpin of the country’s movie industry.
Alongside his work with Monty Python, he has edited and directed a string of hit films including Time Bandits and Brazil, and music videos for Kate Bush and Iron Maiden.
A photographic still frame that he shot in Monty Python and the Holy Grail was featured on a Royal Mail postage stamp this year.
Writing in The European magazine, he said the ruling was so bizarre that it could form the basis of a new Python film.
He said: “I have spent my career trying to make the absurd believable. Editing Life of Brian, directing Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting, staging the madness of Iron Maiden’s Can I Play with Madness — my life has been defined by bringing the surreal to the screen. Yet nothing in film has prepared me for the surrealism of Britain’s immigration system.
“This week my wife Suki and I received a letter from the Home Office informing us that she no longer has the right to remain in the country. We were told we must leave, or appeal within ten days. The reason? A form was filled in late and a residency card was mistakenly converted into an e-visa. When I went to renew the e-visa the document simply said, “PARTNER EXPIRED.” Was I dead? Was my marriage over by administrative decree?
“As someone who was born in London and has lived in Britain all my life, the thought of leaving my home on the Isle of Wight, my daughter, and my grandchildren because of a clerical misstep is absurd in the truest Python sense.”
Doyle, whose feature films also include Chemical Wedding and Love Potion, added: “I have brought millions of pounds into this country through the films, music videos and cultural projects I have worked on. Yet here I am, facing the prospect of selling my house and moving to Spain to remain with my wife.”
According to Doyle, Suki’s visa was revoked on August 1 after she missed a filing deadline with her residency application.
The couple appealed the ruling earlier this week and assumed the Home Office would overlook the error.
But the couple received a letter yesterday (September 10) confirming their application had been refused. “If you do not appeal, you must leave the country”, it added.
“If I were editing this story for the screen, I would probably cut it as too far-fetched. A man who worked closely with the creators of the ‘Spanish Inquisition’ sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus now receives his own letter of expulsion from the Home Office? It writes itself. Bureaucracy as the villain. A Kafkaesque pile of forms and deadlines where the hero is felled not by logic but by paperwork,” Doyle wrote.
He added: “But beyond the comedy is a more serious reflection on the country I love. Britain’s culture — its humour, its imagination, its very brand abroad — has been built on creativity, on bending rules and reinventing forms. Yet the system that now defines our future here is mechanical, unforgiving, humourless.”
Doyle said the couple would fight the ruling but, if their appeal failed, they would move to Spain — where his brother lives and where Suki already holds a visa — to begin a new life together.
He added: “In the end, perhaps this is the only way I can process what is happening: as a continuation of the absurdist tradition I once helped shape. But it is also a cautionary tale. When rules are applied without flexibility or common sense, they cease to serve justice and start to parody it. Britain, of all countries, should recognise the difference.
“As for me, I will fight the appeal. But if we lose, I am not going to abandon my wife, whatever the system believes should happen with our marriage. We are loving partners for the rest of our lives and if this means setting up a new life in another country, so be it. But as we set sail, with our dog and all our belongings from the Isle of Wight, at least I will do so knowing that even in the darkest moments, comedy is still the best way of telling the truth.”
The Home Office emphasised that immigration decisions are reached according to established rules and deadlines, which require applicants to provide the necessary information in full and on time.
A spokesperson added: “It is our longstanding policy not to routinely comment on individual cases.”
Photos: Copyright Julian Doyle/The Double Agents