Most pythonic way to declare inner functions

Question

I'm writing an program where im using two main functions however those both functions uses same inner functions. I'm wondering how I should write them in most pythonic way? My point is to hide those helpers somewhere inside and to dont repeat helper functions.

def main_function1():
    helper1()
    helper2()
    #dowork1

def main_function2()
    helper1()
    helper2()
    #dowork2

def helper1()
    #workhelp1

def helper2()
    #workhelp2

The only reasonable solution which i can figure out is declaring static class with.. private functions? But since:

Strictly speaking, private methods are accessible outside their class, 
just not easily accessible. Nothing in Python is truly private[...]

Im stuck and out of ideas.

From: http://www.faqs.org/docs/diveintopython/fileinfo_private.html

Topic: Why are Python's 'private' methods not actually private?

Also I thought about declaring one main function with inner helpers and with switcher as a argument to determine which function should run but I guess thats pretty poor solution.

For now only way I find the most accurate is to declare normal class as:

class Functions:
    def main_function1(self):
        print("#first function#")
        self.helper1()
        self.helper2()

    def main_function2(self):
        print("#second function#")
        self.helper1()
        self.helper2()

    def helper1(self):    
        print("first helper")

    def helper2(self):
        print("second helper")

Functions().main_function1()
Functions().main_function2()
print("###")
Functions().helper1()

Output:

#first function#
first helper
second helper
#second function#
first helper
second helper
###
first helper

But also here i can access helpers which isnt a big deal but still gives me a reason to wonder.

Answer 1

There are no private functions in Python. Rather, by prefixing the names of methods intended to be non-public with underscores, you signal to users of your class that those methods are not meant to be called externally:

class Functions:
    def main_function1(self):
        print("#first function#")
        self._helper1()
        self._helper2()

    def main_function2(self):
        print("#second function#")
        self._helper1()
        self._helper2()

    def _helper1(self):    
        print("first helper")

    def _helper2(self):
        print("second helper")

This is in line with the principle of "We're all consenting adults here" - you can touch the non-public methods of a class, but if you use them wrongly, that's on your own head.