by Monty Python
Voice Over: And those continentals had better watch out for their dirty foreign literature. Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Genet won't know what's hit them. Never mind the foulhess of their language - come '73 they'll all have to write in British. (pepperpots burning books: 'Bertrand Russell', 'Das Kapital', the 'Guardian ', 'Sartre', 'Freud') You can keep your fastidious continental bidets Mrs Foreigner - Mrs Britain knows how to keep her feet clean ... but she'll baffle like bingo boys when it comes to keeping the television screen dean...
(Cut to the BBC TV Centre. The peppet~ots parade in carrying signs: 'Clean TV Centre', 'God Says No To Filth', 'To The Cells'. Another pepperpot in the background holds a sign: 'Wanted Dead Or Alive' and photo of Robert Robinson.)
Voice Over: Better watch out for those nasty continental shows on the sneaky second channel. (armed pepperpots escorting people out of TV Centre) But apart from attacking that prurient hot-bed of left-wing continentalism at Shepherds Bush, what else do these ordinary mums think? Do they accept Hegelianism?
1st Pepperpot: No! ..
Voice Over: Do they prefer Leibnitz to Wittgenstein?
2nd Pepperpot: No! No!
Voice Over: And where do they stand on young people?
3rd Pepperpot: Just here, dear. (pepperpot standing on long-haired youth's head)
Voice Over: And their power is growing daily and when these girls roll their sleeves up its arms all the way. (pepperpots standing on the turret of an armoured vehicle; four pepperpots on motor bikes flank it) Yes, this is the way to fight the constant war against pornography.
(Machine guns chatter. Two pepperpots in a trench firing. Mortar bombs, reloading and firing. Bombs and smoke. At the end of the film we pick up on the nude organist (Terry Jones), sitting amongst the explosions. He plays his chords.)
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Gumby Brain Specialist
As featured in the Flying Circus TV Show - Episode 32
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The cast:
T.F. GUMBY
Michael Palin
GUMBY BRAIN SPECIALIST
John Cleese
GUMBY SURGEON
Graham Chapman
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The sketch:
(Close up on a sign saying 'Harley Street'. Stirring music. Mix through to interior of a smart, plush, ever so expensive Harley Street consulting room. The music swells and fades. Knocking at door, a short pause, then T.F. Gumby enters, backwards.)
T. F. Gumby: Doctor! Doctor! DOCTOR! (he goes up to the antique desk and bangs thl bell violently; he smashes the intercom and generally breaks the desk up) Doctor! Doctor! DOCTOR! DOCTOR! Doctor! Doctor! Where is the Doctor?
(A pause. Then another door opens and another Gumby appears.)
Specialist: Hello!
T. F. Gumby: Are you the' brain specialist?
Specialist: Hello!
T. F. Gumby: Are you the brain specialist?
Specialist: No, no, I am not the brain specialist. No, no, I am not... Yes. Yes I am.
T. F. Gumby: My brain hurts!
Specialist: Well let's take a look at it, Mr Gumby.
(Gumby specialist starts to pull up Gumby's sweater.)
T. F. Gumby: No, no, no, my brain in my head. (specialist thumps him on the head)
Specialist: It will have to come out.
T. F. Gumby: Out? Of my head?
Specialist: Yes! All the bits of it. Nurse! Nurse! (a nurse enters) Nurse, take Mr Gumby to a brain surgeon.
Nurse: Yes doctor...
(She leads Gumby out. In the background the specialist is grunting and shouting.)
Specialist: Where's the 'Lancet'?
Nurse: (to T. F. Gumby) He's brilliant you know.
Specialist: Where's the bloody 'Lancet'? My brain hurts too.
(Ambulance racing. 'Dr Kildare' theme. Cut to operating theatre. The surgeon is not a Gumby.)
Surgeon: (putting on Gumby props) Gloves ... glasses... moustache... handkerchief... (Gumby voice) I'm going to operate!!
(We now see he is surrounded by Gumbys. T. F. Gumby is on operating table.)
All: Let's operate.
(They begin to use woodworking implements on T. F. Gumby.)
T. F. Gumby: Hello!
Surgeon: Ooh! We forgot the anaesthetic!
Operating Gumbys: The anaesthetic! The anaesthetic!
(At that moment a Gumby anaesthetist comes crashing through the wall with two gas cylinders.)
Gumby Anaesthetist: I've come to anaesthetize you!!
(He raises a gas cylinder and strikes Gumby hard over the head with it. Bong. Blackness.)
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Molluscs - Live TV Documentary
As featured in the Flying Circus TV Show - Episode 32
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The cast:
VOICE
Eric Idle
COMMENTATOR
Michael Palin
MRS. JALIN
Graham Chapman
MR. JALIN
Terry Jones
ZORBA
John Cleese
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The sketch:
(Cut to an ordinary suburban living room. Mr and Mrs Jalin are sitting on a sofa. The previous item in the show is visible on their TV set. Mrs Jalin is stuffing a chicken. Mr Jalin is reading the telephone directory. The picture changes and we hear voice from TV.)
Voice: The 'Nine O'Clock News' which was to follow has been cancelled tonight so we can bring you the quarter final of the All Essex Badminton Championship. Your commentator as usual is Edna O'Brien.
Commentator: (Irish accent) Hullo fans. Begorra an' to be sure there's some fine badminton down there in Essex this afternoon. We really...
(Mr Jalin picks up a jousting ball and chain and smashes the TV set. There is a ring from the doorbell. Mr Jalin sits, Mrs Jalin goes to the door, exits and comes back.)
Mrs Jalin: George.
Mr Jalin: Yes, Gladys.
Mrs Jalin: There's a man st the door with a moustache.
Mr Jalin: Tell him I've already got one. (Mrs Jalin hits him hard with a newspaper) All right, all right. What's he want then?
Mrs Jalin: He says do we want a documentary on molluscs.
Mr Jalin: Molluscs!
Mrs Jalin: Yes.
Mr Jalin: What's he mean, molluscs?
Mrs Jalin: MOLLUSCS!! GASTROPODS! LAMELLIBRANCHS! CEPHALOPODS!
Mr Jalin: Oh molluses, I thought you said bacon. (she hits him again) All right, all right. What's he charge then?
Mrs Jalin: It's free.
Mr Jalin: Ooh! Where does he want us to sit?
Mrs Jalin: (calling through the door) He says yes.
(Mr Zorba enters carrying plywood flat with portion cut out to represent TV. He stands behind flat and starts.)
Zorba: Good evening. Tonight molluscs. The mollusc is a soft-bodied, unsegmented invertebrate animal usually protected by a large shell. One of the most numerous groups of invertebrates, it is exceeded in number of species only by the arthropods ... viz. (he holds up a lobster)
Mrs Jalin: Not very interesting is it?
Zorba: What?
Mrs Jalin: I was talking to him.
Zorba: Oh. Anyway, the typical molluse, viz, a snail (holds one up) consists of a prominent muscular portion... the head-foot... a visceral mass and a shell which is secreted by the free edge of the mantle.
Mrs Jalin: Dreadful isn't it?
Zorba: What?
Mrs Jalin: I was talking to him.
Zorba: Oh. Well anyway... in some molluscs, however, viz, slugs, (holds one up) the shell is absent or rudimentary...
Mr Jalin: Switch him off.
(Mrs Jalin gets up and looks for the switch unsuccessfully)
Zorba: Whereas in others, viz, cephalopods the head-foot is greatly modified and forms tentacles, viz, the squid. (looking out) What are you doing?
Mrs Jalin: Switching you off.
Zorba
: Why, don't you like it?
Mrs Jalin: Oh it's dreadful.
Mr Jalin: Embarrassing.
Zorba: Is it?
Mrs Jalin: Yes, it's perfectly awful.
Mr Jalin: Disgraceful! I don't know how they've got the nerve to put it on.
Mrs Jalin: It's so boring.
Zorba: Well ... it's not much of a subject is it ... be fair.
Mrs Jalin: What do you think, George?
Mr Jalin: Give him another twenty seconds.
Zorba: Anyway the majority of the molluscs are included in three large groups, the gastropods, the lamellibranchs and the cephalopods...
MrsJalin: We knew that (she gets up and goes to the set)
Zorba: However, what is more interesting, er ... is the molluscs's er ... sex life.
Mrs Jalin: (stopping dead) Oh!
Zorba: Yes, the mollusc is a randy little fellow whose primitive brain scarcely strays from the subject of the you know what.
Mrs Jalin: (going back to sofa) Disgusting!
Mr Jalin: Ought not to be allowed.
Zorba: The randiest of the gastropods is the limpet. This hot-blooded little beast with its tent-like shell is always on the job. Its extra-marital activities are something startling. Frankly I don't know how the female limpet finds the time to adhere to the rock-face. How am I doing?
Mrs Jalin: Disgusting.
Mr Jalin: But more interesting.
Mrs Jalin: Oh yes, tch, tch, tch.
Zorba: Another loose-living gastropod is the periwinkle. This shameless little libertine with its characteristic ventral locomotion ... is not the marrying kind: Anywhere anytime is its motto. Up with the shell and they're at it.
Mrs Jalin: How about the lamellibranchs?
Zorba: I'm coming to them ... the great scallop (holds one up) ... this tatty, scrofulous old rapist, is second in depravity only to the common clam. (holds up a clam) This latter is a fight whore, a harlot, a trollop, a cynical bed-hopping firm-breasted Rabelaisian bit of sea food that makes Fanny Hill look like a dead Pope... and finally among the lamellibranch bivalves, that most depraved of the whole sub-species - the whelk. The whelk is nothing but a homosexual of the worst kind. This gay boy of the gastropods, this queer crustacean, this mincing mollusc, this screaming, prancing, limp-wristed queen of the deep makes me sick.
Mrs Jalin: Have you got one?
Zorba: Here! (holds one up)
Mrs Julin: Let's kill it. Disgusting.
(Zorba throws it on the floor and Mr and Mrs Jalin stamp on it.)
Mr Jalin: That'll teach it. Well thank you for a very interesting programme.
Zorba: Oh, not at all. Thank you.
Mrs Jalin: Yes, that was very nice.
Zorba: Thank you. (he shakes hands with her)
Mrs Jalin: Oh, thank you.
(Cut to a studio presenter at a desk.)
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The Minister for not listening to people
As featured in the Flying Circus TV Show - Episode 32
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The sketch:
(Cut to a 'Nine O'clock News' set. A news reader is at a desk. Photos come up on inlay screen behind him. An anonymous minister's photo is on screen.)
News reader (Michael Palin): The Minister for not listening to people toured Batley today to investigate allegations of victimization in home-loan improvement grants, made last week (photo behind changes to close up of anothter faceless minister) by the Shadow Minister for judging people at first sight to be marginally worse than they actually are. (photo changes to exterior of the Home Office) At the Home Office, the Minister for inserting himself in between chairs and walls in men's dubs, was at his desk after a short illness. He spent the morning dealing with the Irish situation and later in the day had long discussions with the Manister for running upstairs two at a time, flinging the door open and saying 'Ha, hal Caught you, Mildred'. (photo of the Houses of Parliament) In the Commons there was another day of heated debate on the third reading of the Trade Practices Bill. Nix Roland Penrose, the Under-Secretary for making deep growling noises grrr, launched a bitter personal attack on the ex-Minister for delving deep into a black satin bag and producing a robe of Euthymol toothpaste. Later in the debate the Junior Minister for being frightened by any kind of farm machinery, challenged the Under-Secretary of State for hiding from Terence Rattigan to produce the current year's trading figures, as supplied by the Department of stealing packets of bandages from the self-service counter at Timothy Whites and selling them again at a considerable profit. Parliament rose at 11.30, and, crawling along a dark passageway into the old rectory (the camera starts to track slowly into the news reader's face so that it is eventually filling the screen) broke down the door to the serving hatch, painted the spare room and next weekend I think they'll be able to make a start on the boy's bedroom, while Amy and Roger, up in London for a few days, go to see the mysterious Mr Grenville.
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Tuesday Documentary / Children's Story / Political Broadcast
As featured in the Flying Circus TV Show - Episode 32
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The cast:
NEWSREADER
Michael Palin
PRESENTER
Eric Idle
POLITICIAN
Terry Jones
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The sketch:
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'TODAY IN PARLIAMENT HAS NOW BECOME THE CLASSIC SERIAL'
Newsreader: He in turn has been revealed by D'Arcy as something less than an honest man. Sybil feels once again a resurgence of her old affection and she and Balreau return to her little house in Clermont-Ferrand, the kind of two-up, two-down house that most French workers throughout the European Community are living in today.
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'THE CLASSIC SERIAL HAS NOW BECOME THE TUESDAY DOCUMENTARY'
(Cut to a photo of a French construction site. The camera tracks over the photo.)
Presenter: The ease of construction, using on-site prefabrication facilities (the camera starts to pull out slowly from the photo to reveal the photo is part of the backdrop of a documentary set about the building trade; the documentary Presenter is sitting in a chair) makes cheap housing a reality. The walls of these houses are lined with pre-stressed asbestos which keeps the house warm and snuggly and ever so safe from the big bad rabbit, who can scratch and scratch for all he's worth, but he just can't get into Porky's house.
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'THE TUESDAY DOCUMENTARY HAS BECOME "CHILDREN'S STORY" '
Presenter: Where is Porky? Here he is. What a funny little chap. (cut to animated Porky doing little dance) But Porky's one of the lucky ones - he survived the urban upheaval of the thirties and forties. For him, Jarrow is still just a memory. (zoom out to see Porky as pan of documentary-the graph) The hunger marches, the East End riots, the collapse of the Labour Government in 1931... (stock film of Ramsay MacDonald)
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'THE CHILDREN'S STORY HAS GONE BACK INTO THE TUESDAY DOCUMENTARY'
Presenter: ... are dim reminders of the days before a new-found affluence swept the land, (stock shots of Christmas lights in Regent Street, shopping crowds, tills and consumer goods ending up with toys) making it clean and tidy and making all the shops full of nice things, lovely choo-choo trains ...
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'NO IT HASN'T'
Presenter: . .. and toys and shiny cars that go brrm, brrm, brrm, (shots of toys) and everybody was happy and singing all the day long (cut to the Presenter; by now he has a big kiddies' book which he shuts) and nobody saw the big bad rabbit ever again.
(Cut to a politician giving a party political broadcast in one of those badly lit sets that they use for broadcasts of that nature.)
Politician: But you know it's always very easy to blame the big bad rabbit...
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'NOW IT'S BECOME A PARTY POLITICAL BROADCAST!'
Politician:.. when by-elections are going against the
Government, (he turns and we cat to side camera which reveals a cross behind him as in a religious broadcast) Do you think we should really be blaming ourselves?
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'NO, SORRY, ''RELIGION TODAY" '
Politician: Because you know, that's where we really ought to start looking.
(A football comes in, he heads it neatly out of shot.)
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'MATCH OF THE DAY'
(Cut to stock film of ball flying into net and shot of Wembley crowd roaring. Then cut into short sequence of footballers in slow-motion kissing each other.)
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Apology (politicians)
As featured in the Flying Circus TV Show - Episode 32
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The sketch:
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'POLITICIANS - AN APOLOGY'
(The camera pans across a landscape. Roller caption starts to come up, superimposed. The words are quite large and easily readable, but well spaced so that the roller will seem to go on for quite some time. Voice over reads)
Voice Over (Eric Idle): and CAPTION: 'WE WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGIZE FOR THE WAY IN WHICH POLITICIANS ARE REPRESENTED IN THIS PROGRAMME. IT WAS NEVER OUR INTENTION TO IMPLY THAT POLITICIANS ARE WEAK-KNEED, POLITICAL TIME-SERVERS WHO ARE CONCERNED MORE WITH THEIR PERSONAL VENDETTAS AND PRIVATE POWER STRUGGLES THAN THE PROBLEMS OF GOVERNMENT, NOR TO SUGGEST AT ANY POINT THAT THEY SACRIFICE THEIR CREDIBILITY BY DENYING FREE DEBATE ON VITAL MATTERS IN THE MISTAKEN IMPRESSION THAT PARTY UNITY COMES BEFORE THE WELL-BEING OF THE PEOPLE THEY SUPPOSEDLY REPRESENT NOR TO IMPLY AT ANY STAGE THAT THEY ARE SQUABBLING LITTLE TOADIES WITHOUT AN OUNCE OF CONCERN FOR THE VITAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF TODAY. NOR INDEED DO WE INTEND THAT VIEWERS SHOULD CONSIDER THEM AS CRABBY ULCEROUS LITTLE SELF-SEEKING VERMIN WITH FURRY LEGS AND AN EXCESSIVE ADDICTION TO ALCOHOL AND CERTAIN EXPLICIT SEXUAL PRACTICES WHICH SOME PEOPLE MIGHT FIND OFFENSIVE. WE ARE SORRY IF THIS IMPRESSION HAS COME ACROSS.
