The Monty Python comedy team are getting back together.

The surviving members of the legendary British collective of comedians are set to announce their return 30 years after their final film, The Meaning of Life, was released. John Cleese, 74, Terry Gilliam, 72, Terry Jones, 71, Eric Idle, 70, and Michael Palin, 70, are expected to make a high-profile official announcement about their comeback next week, despite John previously saying it would be "absolutely impossible."

"No one ever thought this was possible, but it's 100 per cent happening. They knew it was a case of now or never. This will be a fully-fledged reunion - it's huge news for the entertainment world ... It's a testament to their very significant cultural impact that Python fans have never given up on a reunion, even though it's decades since they were last together. Now their wishes have come true. There's going to be huge anticipation about what they decide to do when they reunite," a source told The Sun.

Monty Python - which also included the late Graham Chapman, who died in 1989 - were responsible for some of modern comedy's most surreal moments including the infamous Parrot Sketch, about a disgruntled customer trying to return a dead parrot to a pet shop owner and the film Monty Python's Life of Brian, which followed the exploits of an ordinary man mistaken for a messiah in ancient times.

Previous attempts to reunite the group happened in 1999 with a planned US tour, which collapsed after Michael dropped out. Last year, Terry Jones tried to get them to voice alien characters in a film he was directing called Absolutely Anything, but that project also fell through. After Graham's death from spinal and throat cancer, Eric once quipped, "We would only do a reunion if Chapman came back from the dead. So we're negotiating with his agent."