It's.......

[Elomin Sha]

Monty Python's 40th Anniversary Today.

Well it's been forty years since Monty Python's Flying Circus and I think I can say it has enriched our lives in some way or another, be it pining for the Fjords, being attacked by old ladies and not expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

What has been everyone's favourite sketch/moment in the last 40 years?

One of mine has to do when the Python's went to Germany to show them how to be funny with a German version of their show. They wanted to go to a concentration camp for a visit but it was closed. Chapman leant over to their translator and said: "Tell them we're Jewish." Lo and behold they were let in.
Another is the Live at Aspen when Cleese says he has brought the deceased (Chapman) with them - in an urn. Then during the even the urn gets kicked over, vacuumed up and eaten by Cleese.

[Bruze&Badder]

Too many favorites to share them all. The one line that goes through my head often lately is "DENSDALE!! DEEEENSSDAAALLLE!!" (a coworker of mine is named Dale and thats all I can think of when I hear his name.

[Nevrmore]

The Argument Clinic has some of the best wordplay ever broadcast on television.

[InsaneFool]

I loved in Live At the Hollywood Bowl, where Eric Idle wandered all around the audience just talking non-stop...I can't remember what skit it started with, but the others were chasing him around, and he even left and appeared later during another sketch.

[Darkblade87]

My favorite skit has to be Spam, I love Spam, Spam, beans, and Spam. I also want to note I love their animation, I haven't really seen a lot of animators that took advantage of animation like Terry Gilliam did for the show.

[Annchan]

my favorite, I have only seen once. Don't know what it's called and have never been able to find it again.

It starts off with a bunch of people dressed really preppy like, then one guy comes onto the screen and asks "Anyone for tennis?" This leads to a tennis ball getting thrown and it hurts someone, they call and hurt someone else. In the end everyone is dead (even someone in impaled on a piano keyboard) and is really bloody.

[Nevrmore]

my favorite, I have only seen once. Don't know what it's called and have never been able to find it again.

It starts off with a bunch of people dressed really preppy like, then one guy comes onto the screen and asks "Anyone for tennis?" This leads to a tennis ball getting thrown and it hurts someone, they call and hurt someone else. In the end everyone is dead (even someone in impaled on a piano keyboard) and is really bloody.

Salad Days.

[tak197]

I'm a purist: all of Holy Grail, and the Lumberjack Song.

[meisbored]

Some friends and I had a marathon of the Python movies on Saturday the 3rd, which was also my birthday. Sunday the 4th was also the 20th anniversary of Graham Chapman's death. Also, somewhere in the opening credits of one of them there was a "Graham Stark", at which I snorted, to the confusion of others in the room.

[VanHelsing23]

"Now I know some hospitals where you get the patients lying around in bed!"

Happy anniversary.

[TCS Concordia]

I love the Holy Grail film, sketch wise anything Gilliam did, The Killer Joke and Election Night.

[CommanderKeen]

My favorite is the byproduct from holy grail-Spamalot

[Allen!]

A B C D E F G
ERIC THE HALF A BEE

[elvor]

The Cheese Shop sketch, for some reason. I especially like the random musician in the background.

[Mats]

My favorite parts are the small tie-in sketches that they did.

Like the "It's five O'clock and it's time for the penguin on top of your television set to explode" *the penguin on top of the television set promptly explodes*

Oh and also: Philosophical football.

[AlexanderDitto]

I absolutely love the dead parrot sketch. I'm also rather fond of the Ministry of Silly Walks (which I am surprised no one has mentioned yet) and The Galaxy Song from Meaning of Life which is infinitely singable and wonderful and "Self Defense against Fruit," which I seem to remember had me laughing so hard I was in physical pain.

Supposin' he's got a point-ed stick?!

Ooh, ooh, and there's "The Funniest Joke in the World" documentary, and the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch. "There were 150 of us living in a shoebox in the middle of the road!"

[TCS Concordia]

I absolutely love the dead parrot sketch. I'm also rather fond of the Ministry of Silly Walks (which I am surprised no one has mentioned yet) and The Galaxy Song from Meaning of Life which is infinitely singable and wonderful and "Self Defense against Fruit," which I seem to remember had me laughing so hard I was in physical pain.

Supposin' he's got a point-ed stick?!

Ooh, ooh, and there's "The Funniest Joke in the World" documentary, and the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch. "There were 150 of us living in a shoebox in the middle of the road!"

Foul,

Four Yorkshiremen was orginally done on At Last The 1948 Show and while Cleese and Chapman were in it the other two were Tim Brook-Taylor and Marty Feldman

[Elomin Sha]

I loved in Live At the Hollywood Bowl, where Eric Idle wandered all around the audience just talking non-stop...I can't remember what skit it started with, but the others were chasing him around, and he even left and appeared later during another sketch.

It was Booking a Holiday. In the tv series it interrupted the dinosaur sketch sketch. In Hollywood Bowl it interrupted the pie in the face routine.

[Mad Madam Mimm]

Our drama studies class were given the objective of coming up with a sketch using people in confined spaces. I so convinced our group to do a skecth based on the monty python Goldfish bit (their faces CG'd onto goldfishes who swim around going "'ello Bob" for about ten minutes before john cleese fish says "well what do you expect from a tank of fishes?").

[ThrashJazzAssassin]

I liked the sketch entitled "Why don't people actually put the subject of the thread into their thread title?" That one was hilarious.

[Metcarfre]

Personally, the musical number "Every Sperm is Sacred" from Meaning of Life had me howling. I had to pause it numerous times. Also, Self Defence Against Fruit.

[wilson_x1999]

It's either Ministry of Silly walks or The Funniest Joke In The World, I love those so much XD

[Theremin]

At last,an excuse to binge on Python!

The height obsessed archaeologists were bravura by the way.

[empath]

Dude, I virtually got MARRIED on <alt.fan.monty-python>

Some of my faves have been mentioned:
Cheese Shop
"Figures. Predictable, really. T'was an act of purest optimism to pose the question in the first place..."

Four Yorkshiremen*
"And if you try to tell young people of today that, and they won't believe you."

Self Defense Against Fruit
"What if he's got a bunch?" "SHADDAP!" "What if he's got a pointed stick?" "SHADDAP!"

The Argument Clinic ("It's not just saying 'no it isn't'." "Yes it is." "No it ISN'T!"),

Election Night Special ("I'm getting....I'm getting...a buzzing in my ear....EYUGH!! *stamp*" ... "Can I just say this the first time I've been on TV?" "No-I'm-sorry-there-just-isn't-time")


Others that range among my favourites include:

The Naughty Chemist
"Who's got the chest rash?"
*buxom woman raises hand*
"Have to get a bigger bottle."

Hungarian Phrasebook
"Do you waaaant to come back to my place? Bouncy-bouncy!"

Military Fairy (careful, it's a little loud)
"Right! Stop That. 's silly. And a bit suspect, I think."

Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink
"...he asked him knowingly..."

The Kilimanjaro Expedition
"<elaborate road itinerary of trans-England route>...through Africa to Nairobis. We take the South road out of Nairobis for about twelve miles, and then ask."
"Does anyone speak Swahili, sir?"
"Oh, yes; I think most of them do down there."

But my absolute favourite has to be:

Falling from Buildings
"Look! Two people-three people have just fallen past that window!"
...
"Must be a board meeting."
"Oh yeah."



*long, satisfied sigh*

Thanks for the reverie, Elomin.







Footnote: Original sketch or not, it's still one my faves; so NYAH!

[James]

The argument clinic is far and away my favorite sketch Monty Python or otherwise.