by Monty Python
Pither: Phew, what an amazing escape. Well goodbye, Reginald.
Gulliver: Goodbye, Mr Pither, and good luck with, the tour!
(They shake hands. Gulliver strides off. Pither mounts his bike and rides off into the sunset. Music swells. Roll credits. Cut to afield with hedgerow behind. The first animated monster peeks over the hedge.)
First Monster: Hey, I think he's finally gone!
(Second monster appears.)
Second Monster: Ooh yes!
(They hop over the fence into the field.)
First Monster: Ready, Maurice?
Second Monster: Right-ho, Keyin. Let's go.
First Monster: All right, maestro, hit it!
(We hear Clodagh Rogers singing Jack in a Box'. The two monsters jump up and down enthusiastically if not gracefully. Fade out.)
* * *
* Until three (or so) years ago, Clodagh Rogers owned and ran her own bar in Paignton, Devon, UK.
Paignton is one of the three towns which make up Torbay - Torquay, Paignton, Brixham.
Torquay, of course, was the inspiration for, and where much of, Fawlty Towers - another John Cleese classic series - was filmed.
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Bomb on Plane
As featured in the Flying Circus TV Show - Episode 35
* * *
The cast:
FIRST PILOT
Michael Palin
BADGER
Eric Idle
SECOND PILOT
John Cleese
STEWARDESS
Carol Cleveland
HEADPHONES
Graham Chapman
* * *
The sketch:
(Fade up on two pilots in the cockpit of an aeroplane. A stewardess is there too. After a moment or two the first pilot makes an announcement.)
First Pilot: This is Captain MacPherson welcoming you aboard East Scottish Airways. You'll have had your tea. Our destination is Glasgow. There is no need to panic.
(The door of the cockpit opens and Mr Badger comes in.)
Badger: There's bomb on board this plane, and I'll tell you where it is for a thousand pounds.
Second Pilot: I don't believe you.
Badger: If you don't tell me where the bomb is... if I don't give you the money... Unless you give me the bomb...
Stewardess: The money.
Badger: The money, thank you, pretty lady... the bomb will explode killing everybody.
Second Pilot: Including you.
Badger: I'll tell you where it is for a pound.
Second Pilot: Here's a pound.
Badger: I don't want Scottish money. They've got the numbers. It can be traced.
Second Pilot: One English pound. Now where's the bomb?
Badger: I can't remember.
Second Pilot: You've forgotten.
Badger: Ay, you'd better have your pound back. Oh... (rubs it) fingerprints.
First Pilot: Now where's the bomb?
Badger: Ah, wait a tic, wait a tic. (closes eyes and thinks) Er, my first is in Glasgow but not in Spain, my second is in steamer but not in train, my whole is in the luggage compartment on the plane... (opens eyes) I'll tell you where the bomb is for a pound.
Second Pilot: It's in the luggage compartment.
Badger: Right. Here's your pound..
(Enter a man with headphones.)
Headphones: This character giving you any trouble?
First Pilot: He's ruined this sketch.
Second Pilot: Absolutely.
Headphones: Let's go on to the next one.
Badger: 'Wait a tic, wait a tic. No. I won't ruin your sketch for a pound.
Second Pilot: No, no.
Badger: 75P.
Headphones: Next item. (they start to leave)
* * *
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A Naked Man /
Ten seconds of Sex
As featured in the Flying Circus TV Show - Episode 35
* * *
The cast:
NUDE MAN
Terry Jones
ANNOUNCER
John Cleese
'IT'S' MAN
Michael Palin
VOICE OVER
Eric Idle
* * *
The sketch:
(The nude organist is seated at his organ in the open air, with a lovely scarlet dressing-gown draped round his shoulders. It says on it 'Noel Coward' which is crossed out and 'Nude Organist' written underneath. He is talking to a journalist with a notepad who is nodding and interviewing him. Someone else holds a small tape recorder. Make-up ladies are adding the finishing touches. They bring him a mirror while he talks. Someone is taking photos of him, perhaps with flashbulbs.)
Nude Man: Well I see my role in it as, er, how can I put it best - the nude man - as sort of symbolizing the two separate strands of existence, the essential nudity of man...
(They realize that they are on camera. They remove the man's robe and clear the set. He grins at the camera and plays his chords. Cut to the announcer. He is sitting at his desk in the middle of a field but he is talking earnestly to a trendy girl reporter.)
Announcer: It's an interesting question. Personally I rather adhere to the Bergsonian idea of laughter as a social sanction against inflexible behaviour but... excuse me a moment... And now...
It's Man: It's...
(Animated titles.)
Voice Over: (and Caption): 'AND NOW THE TEN SECONDS OF SEX'
(Black screen and the sound of a ticking clock .for ten seconds.)
Voice Over: (and caption) : 'ALL RIGHT, YOU CAN STOP NOW'
* * *
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Housing project built by characters from nineteenth-century English literature
As featured in the Flying Circus TV Show - Episode 35
* * *
The cast:
VOICE OVER
Michael Palin
HUNTINGDON
Eric Idle
* * *
The sketch:
(Cut to a building site. The camera pans over it.)
Voice Over: This new housing development in Bristol is one of the most interesting in the country. It's using a variety of new techniques: shock-proof curtain-walling, a central high voltage, self-generated electricity source, and extruded acrylic fibreglass fitments. It's also the first major housing project in Britain to be built entirely by characters from nineteenth-century English literature.
(By, this time the pan has come to rest on a section of the site where various nineteenth-century literary figures are at work round a cement mixer: two ladies in crinolines, Bob Cratchett on his father's back, Heathcliff and Catherine throwing bricks to each other with smoldering passion. Nelson. Mr Beadle as fireman. Cut to the interior of a half-finished concrete shell. A little girl is working on top of a ladder.)
Voice Over: Here Little Nell, from Dickens's 'Old Curiosity Shop' fits new nylon syphons into the asbestos-lined ceilings ... (shot of complicated electrical wiring in some impressive electrical installation) But it's the electrical system which has attracted the most attention. (cut to Arthur Huntingdon studying a plan; he has a builder's safety helmet on) Arthur Huntingdon, who Helen Graham married as a young girl, and whose shameless conduct eventually drove her back to her brother Lawrence, in Anne BrontE's 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' describes why it's unique.
Huntingdon: Because sir, it is self-generating. Because we have harnessed here in thir box the very forces of life itself. The very forces that will send helen running back to beg forgiveness!
(Cut to a close up of big pre-fabricated concrete slabs being hoisted into the air by a crane and start to pull out, as the commentator speaks, to reveal a crowd of nineteenth-century farmhands working on them.)
Voice Over: The on-site building techniques involve the construction of twelve-foot walling blocks by a crowd of firm hands from 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' supervised by the genial landlady, Mrs Jupp, fro
m Samuel Butler's 'Way of All Flesh'.
(Pan to reveal Mrs Jupp with a clipboard. Cut to voice over narrator in vision with a stick-mike, in front of an impressive piece of motorway interchange building. Behind him and working on the site are six angels, three devils, and Adam and Eve.)
* * *
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M1 interchange built by characters from 'Paradise Lost'
As featured in the Flying Circus TV Show - Episode 35
* * *
The cast:
NARRATOR
Eric Idle
FOREMAN
Terry Jones
VOICE OVER
Michael Palin
* * *
The sketch:
(Continued from 'Housing project built by characters from nineteenth-century English literature')
Narrator: In contrast to the site in Bristol, it's progress here on Britain's first eighteen-level motorway interchange being built by characters from Milton's 'Paradise Lost'...
(He turns and we zoom past him into the angels etc.)
Narrator: (voice over) What went wrong here?
(Cut to a fireman in a donkey jacket and helmet.)
Foreman: Well, no one really got on. Satan didn't get on with Eve ... er... Archangel Gabriel didn't get on with Satan... nobody got on with the Serpent, so now they have to work a rota: forces of good from ten till three, forces of evil three to six.
(The camera tracks through a high-rise development area.)
Voice Over: But even more modern building techniques are being used on an expanding new town site near Peterborough; here the Amazing Mystico and Janet can put up a block of flats by hypnosis in under a minute.
* * *
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Mystico and Janet - flats built by hyonosis
As featured in the Flying Circus TV Show - Episode 35
* * *
The cast:
MYSTICO
Terry Jones
MR. VERYBIGLIAR
Michael Palin
ARCHITECT
Graham Chapman
TENANT
Eric Idle
* * *
The sketch:
(Mystico removes his cloak, gloves and top hat and hands them to Janet, who curtsies. He then makes several passes. Cut to stock film of fiats falling down reversed so that they leap up. Cut back to Mystico and Janet. She hands him back his things as they make their way to their car, a little Austin 30.)
Voice Over: The local Council here have over fifty hypnosis-induced twenty-five storey blocks, put up by El Mystico and Janet. I asked Mr Ken Verybigliar the advantages of hypnosis compared to other building methods.
(Cut to a man in a drab suit.)
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'MR K. V. B. LIAR'
Mr Verybigliar: (MICHAEL) Well there is a considerable financial advantage in using the services of El Mystico. A block, like Mystico Point here, (indicating a high-rise block behind him) would normally cost in the region of one-and-a-half million pounds. This was put up for five pounds and thirty bob for Janet.
Voice Over: But the obvious question is are they safe?
(Cut to an architect's office. The architect at his desk. Behind him on the wall are framed photos of various collapsed buildings. He is a well-dressed authoritative person.)
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'MR CLEMENT ONAN, ARCHITECT TO THE COUNCIL'
Architect: Of course they're safe. There's absolutely no doubt about that. They are as ,strong, solid and as safe as any other building method in this country provided of course people believe in them.
(Cut to a council fiat. On the wall there is a picture of Mystico.)
Tenant: Yes, we received a note from the Council saying that if we ceased to believe in this building it would fall down.
Voice Over: You don't mind living in a figment of another man's imagination?
Tenant: No, it's much better than where we used to live.
Voice Over: Where did you used to live?
Tenant: We had an eighteen-roomed villa overlooking Nice.
Voice Over:. Really, that sounds much better.
Tenant: Oh yes - yes you're right.
(Cut to stock shot of block falling down in slow motion. Cut back to tenant and wife inside. Camera shaking and on the tilt.)
Tenant: No, no, no, of course not.
(Cut to stock film again. The building rights itself. Cut back to interior again. Camera slightly on tilt. They are holding bits of crockery etc.)
Tenant: Phew, that was close.
(Cut to tracking shot from back of camera car again. This time El Mystico striding through the towering blocks, his cloak swirling behind him.)
Voice Over: But the construction of these vast new housing developments, providing homes for many thousands of people, is not the only project to which he has applied his many talents. He also has an Infallible Pools Method, a School of Spanish Dancing and a Car Hire Service. (cut to Mystico at wheel of his little Austin 30, his amazing eyes riveted on the road ahead; Janet occasionally tactfully guides the steering wheel) What is the driving force behind a man of such endless energies, and boundless vision? Here as with so many great men of history, the answer lies in a woman .., (the camera pans over on to Janet and starts to zoom in on her as she watches the road ahead; cut to a nineteenth-century engraving of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra) As Antony has his Cleopatra ,.. (cut to picture of Napoleon and Josephine) as Napoleon has his Josephine ... (cut to Janet lying on a bed in , negligie in a rather seedy hotel) So Mystico has his Janet.
(Mystico leaps from top of the wardrobe on to the bed with a lusty yell. Cut to montage of black and white photos of Janet in various stage poses: three poses against black drapes; one against a building; one posed outside a terrace house with notice reading 'School of Spanish Danring- Dentures Repaired'.)
Voice Over: Yes. Janet ... a quiet, shy girl. An honours graduate from Harvard University, American junior sprint record holder, ex-world skating champion, Nobel Prize winner, architect, novelist and surgeon. The girl who helped crack the Oppenheimer spy ring in 1947. She gave vital evidence to the Senate Narcotics Commission in 1958. She also helped to convict the woman at the chemist's in 1961, and a year later (cut to Janet shaking hands with a police commissioner) she gave police information which led to the arrest of her postman. In October of that same year (cut to photo of Janet with a judge and a policeman standing on either side of her smiling at the camera) she secured the conviction of her gardener for bigamy and three months later personally led the police swoop (cut to Janet in a street with goggles of policemen clustering round her grinning at the camera and two people obviously naked with blankets thrown over them) on the couple next door. In 1967 she became suspicious of the man at the garage (cut to a photo of a petrol attendant filling a car) and it was her dogged perseverance and relentless enquiries (another rather fuzzy photo of the man at the garage peering through the window of cash kiosk) that two years later finally secured his conviction for not having a license for his car radio. (final photo of five police, Janet and the man bm the garage in handcuffs all posing for the camera) He was hanged at Leeds a year later (cut to Janet posing outside a prison) despite the abolition of capital punishment and the public outcry. Also in Leeds that year, a local butcher was hanged (cut to a blurred family snap of a butcher in an apron with a knife) for defaulting on mortgage repayments, and a Mr Jarvis (photo) was electrocuted for shouting in the corridor.
* * *
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'Mortuary Hour'
As featured in the Flying Circus TV Show - Episode 35
* * *
The cast:
FIRST RADIO VOICE
John Cleese
D.J. VOICE
Eric Idle
BATTERSBY
Terry Jones
SECOND RADIO VOICE
Graham Chapman
WANG
John Cleese
MAYOR
Graham Chapman
PEER
Michael Palin
ATTENDANT
Carol Cleveland
* * *
The sketch:
(Cut to a mortuary. Various trolleys lie about with corpses covered by sheets. Two workers are sitting at a low make-shift table with cups of tea and a transistor radio, shelling eggs and dropping them in a pickling jar.)
1st Radio Voice: ... and Premier Chou En Lai, who called it 'a major breakthrough'. Twelve men were accidentally hanged at Whitby Assizes this afternoon whilst considering their verdict. This is one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Britain since Tuesday. (music)
DJ Voice: Well it's thirteen minutes to the hour of nine-nine-nine, here on wonderful Radio One-One-One! So if you're still lying in your big, big bed, now is the time to get up out of it! We've got another thirteen hours of tip-top sounds here on Wonderful Radio One! (brief funny noises) Sorry about that ... So unless you have brain cells, or have completed the process of evolution, there's a wonderful day ahead!
Batterdby: (switching the radio off) It must be on Radio Four. ('he gets another radio out from underneath the table) Radio Two. (he gets another radio out) ... Three ... (he opens the top of the third radio and gets out a fourth; he switches it on)
