John Cleese & Michael Palin - 'The Parrot Sketch Revisited'

[OlegKRoX]

Wow, that was a bit of a twist

[JasmineEsMi]

I love the way they pranked John Cleese on this one. The way he just looks at Michael and doesn't know what to say is hilarious :)

[JasmineEsMi]

@einootspork actually it is a proper prank, John Cleese mentioned it in an interview once :)

[kisbie]

@JasmineEsMi It's pretty obvious from the Mrs Thatcher punchline that Michael is not 'pranking' John. John remains in character throughout. They decided to change it because they had grown bored of performing the original sketch - especially when the audiences seemed to know it better than them anyway - and added the tagline because Thatcher had quoted from the sketch herself not long before.

[boldertits]

Thatcher is a right dickhead.

[Soilwar]

THIS is an EX - Parrot Sketch!

[deltaflyer5]

With the expression on John's face I wonder if that was planned or if Michael just decided to do that on the spot.

[MrGBH]

@deltaflyer5 It was planned. They just didn't tell John.

[Misishaxi]

Funny how they always get quoted word-for-word, time and time again, despite having been major proponents of surrealist, ouit-of-leftfield humor.

[muffinpopdemon]

XD Great video (Y)

[Jaysameis]

Margaret Thatcher used some of the dialogue of Dead Parrot Sketch at a public speech. She said, "This is a dead parrot. It has ceased to be, etc..." The Pythons believe Thatcher did nothing successful during her days in office, but jokingly say that as she did change something... The Parrot Sketch

That clear anything up?

[VGRetro]

What a twist!

[ZachValkyrie]

BEST! SKETCH! EVER!!!

[Notebooked]

Oh god it--it's so beautiful. Just...what.

[ShawnRavenfire]

I was NOT expecting that! That's the hardest I've laughed in days! X-D

[acquiesce100]

I think its too old now

[00WolfSpirit]

HAHAHAHAHOMG!

I think thats only really funny to those who know the parrot sketch lol. lol And it is sooo funny! lol I nearly died just now.

[jhonsebastiantv]

thank god you did'nt die.. NOT!!!

[mutedmakequiet]

wow. just wow. fucking genius.

[stairwaytoinfinite]

oh sweet jesus christ, i almost destroyed my laptop watching this. Mental note: NEVER eat a bowl of cereal whilst watching this vid for the first time.

[andreasolofsson]

@stairwaytoinfinite ROFLMAO!!!

[huntnd]

Brilliant.

[KoolDudester]

fucking dying

[NanSupertramp]

Lolz oh now this is brilliant. It's weird how much older people get in just thirteen years.

[phoenixsonrising]

Wow, how stupid can you get dinkipooxa.

[NinjaKow0]

Brilliantly done.

[EdTheGringo]

Michael has that luigi vercotti-tone in this bit

[NightmareGanon]

Well, this is a perfect example of meta-comedy. Anyone who hasn't watched te sketch would not get the point at all, while we find this one extremely funny for being what we do not expect MP to do.

[dominor18]

Wow that was great. It was really funny.

[maganashi]

You, my friend, do not understand comedy.

[savoytruffle96]

ha, i just read michael palin's diary entries, and the intro said he quit smokes in the 60's, and didn't do it again......

[1ManJusticeLeague]

xD Wasn't expecting that.

[ninjakick1983]

that was brilliant - I did not expect that lol

[tkayube]

They need to do this more often. And then they need to stop doing it.

[EbonyStorm]

heh heh revenge is sweet. I think Palin did this deliberately because Cleese always made him break down laughing while doing the big parrot speech. ;)

[DMEB]

i wonder if there is a video of thatchers speech from that conservative party conference when she used the dead parrot lines...

[Dadashs]

I remember seeing it on youtube for sure.

[HorrorFrogPrincess]

That is incredible. This is only funny if you've seen and heard the original Parrot Sketch a dozen times. Out of context it's not funny at all.

Good Lord, these men are brilliant!

[IYellalot]

I love it! I've practically memorized the original, so what do they do? They change it!

It's kind of ironic how Monty Python was so original, and now people quote it, word-for-word, like there's no tomorrow.

[NTrefren]

It's kind of ironic that nobody noticed the irony of everybody quoting Monty Python sketches exactly until xkcd complained about it. Even then, it's not really that ironic if you think about it.

I mean, quoting it word for word is merely bringing it to mind for all present; if a fan did what Monty Python does and mixed it up, all they'd get is cold stares and people saying 'You misquoted.' While it's now popular to complain that people missed the point, the complaint itself does so as well.

[NTrefren]

To elaborate: people who complain about exact quoting of the sketches miss the point that the person who quotes generally isn't doing it because they want to be funny, they're doing it because they found it funny, and are revisiting that. It's not possible to be original with a quote anyway, so complaining that fans over-quote it is silly and ignorant. I can see the reasoning behind it, but it's still silly.

[NTrefren]

Of course, Monty Python can take their old sketches and do something new and awesome whenever they damn well please, as this video clearly shows. So awesome.

Hell, I might even quote it later.

[Zhilbar]

I have to admit, I thought that someone would have mentioned that the 'Norwegian Blue' was actually RED. When first watching it, I thought that was going to be a key issue in the joke deconstruction.

[SIMPFANN]

Brilliant- only they could get away with screwing with the audience that much!

[AndyMan64s]

The parrot sketch is no more! It has ceased to be!

[fullfist]

lol xD Brilliant!

[tkayube]

Missing the point, of course, but still.

[fullfist]

sorry lad i don't see what you mean.

[WildCardDave]

I don't think John Cleese was aware of the ending. That explain's why Palin left the stage, it was a prank.

[DaVinciChianti]

how old is Palin now lol even Cleese looked a little surprised lol

[liakos9171]

brilliant

[aoeud]

The joke is that they're having an argument over a very-obviously dead bird... Except in this sketch.

[Lazyguy22]

I never got the parrot sketch. Is the joke that he was using a lot of synonyms?

[DaVinciChianti]

no the synonyms just made it better lol like aoeud said the bird is dead the pet shop guy says it's pining for the fijords lol.

[timthreethreethree]

Amazing. Here we have a sketch so incredibly-well known that not doing the joke is a surprisingly funny joke in itself.

[theocean1973]

'so it is'

NICE!

[DaVinciChianti]

Have you noticed they always call Palin "Miss, Maam, Old Lady" and wat knot

[mrbeanaswell]

GENIUS

[mattgcn]

Fucking brilliant.

[rogaldorn3]

Heheh. Trust those two to keep such a classic sketch fresh.

[Reigninglead]

ROFL john cleese looks bewildered

[potterhead321]

HAHA! that was proper bo i tell thee! aka man i didnt expect that ubt still funny as original. keep it uo cleese and co.

[FilmPA]

LOL!!! That was certainly a surprise.

[sannaol]

I'm pretty sure they both knew. It was pretty obvious that John fakes being surprised and they took out kore than half of the sketch, I think that would be important to know for John :-) And that's what's funny about it, that they didn't do thye usual

[contemplativegirl21]

Question: Did John know that Michael was going to do that? In otherwords, had they planned to do the sketch that way?

I really enjoy this one, but the live version where Michael starts cracking up is my favorite.

[ISB]

Haha, I've been looking for a long long time for this Amnesty clip (together with Cook & Moore one from the same one) and who finally uploads it? A fellow from Makarska, haw! Cheers! To care, pozdrav iz Novog Sada!

[jvujcic]

Kako je zivot cudan!!! :-)

[MrsPither]

LMAO!!! That was great!! XP

[halogen123]

at the end, what was that Thatcher comment about?

[jvujcic]

''well you can't sat Thatcher hasn't changed some things''

[halogen123]

I know, but I meant how did that fit into the sketch? what did she change?

[jvujcic]

I'm not a Brit, so I don't know the details, but it was funny to me because he implied she was even behind the changing of the Parrot sketch...

they didn't call her 'Iron lady' for nothing

[bobthejedi]

@jvujcic she quoted the parrot sketch in a speech and killed it, she was so bad at comedy that she managed to make one of (if not the number one) the most funny comedy sketches of all time as funny as a car crash.

[mattxr2i]

@bobthejedi Well your comment was much funnier than a car crash. lol.

[ZachValkyrie]

@jvujcic I believe it had something to do with a comment she made about an opposing political party to the effect that it had "ceased to be" and "was no more." Supposedly, it was pretty famous at the time.

[archbaker]

she did change quite a lot, basically the same sorts of system changes that Blair has continued. The point of the comment seems to be rather the opposite, though: that the Tories promised a lot of change and delivered fairly little.

Hilarious skit, too.

[HereComeTheDrums42]

@halogen123 Margaret Thatcher used some of the sketch in one of her conferences when she was talking about the Lib Dems, so i think they were referring to that (: As in, she used some lines so they didn't want to use them any more or something. I don't know, but that's what i took from it (:

[DarthKain0]

@halogen123 She changed the whole sketch. The original one was the man behind the counter arguing that it wasn't dead, the man who bought the parrot arguing that it was.

[Hitchmeister]

She parodied the sketch once in a party political thingie about the lib dems, this was them taking it back from her :)

Classic move on a classic sketch.

[JohnCallaghanMusic]

@halogen123 Mrs. Thatcher made a speech quoting from the Dead Parrot sketch, Just in case that was bothering you after three years! :)

[username666ization]

@halogen123

Could also be a reference to Britain moving from a manufacturing to a service economy during her time in office, thus rendering traditional depictions of appalling British customer service (as in the original Parrot Sketch and Fawlty Towers) somewhat obsolete.

[lucynaribola]

absolutely priceless!!!

[EvilRobotChicken]

Python always did desconstruct every form of comedy. This was the last step. Deconstructing themselves!!

[ken131]

This is brilliant.

[MP0617]

Thank you for posting this! I´ve never seen this one before!

[MP0617]

Thank you for posting this! I´ve never seen this one before!