The infamous Monty Python Undertaker sketch

[TMF Jeff]

This is fucking hilarious. The punchline especially, is just brilliant.

The audience was told in advance to protest, because the BBC would only air the sketch if the audience booed and then rushed the stage. But they sort of screwed it up, because most of them are cracking up 😎

Also apparently because of the firecode, only a few audience members were allowed onstage.

So the audience protest is fake, but what really happened is that after the show aired, the BBC deleted this sketch from the master tape, so it was completely gone. It was only recovered years later from a tape of an American broadcast of the show.

What makes this particularly funny is that it comes at the end of a show that was entirely full of tasteless jokes about cannibalism and they had just run a really gross cartoon. So they made a joke out of saying they were now going to finally do something clean, and this is what they came out with...

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[evilwomanhehe]

I REALLY wish our networks would show reruns of this show.

There is nothing like British humour.

 

[-Hari-]

wow, ive never actually seen that one....and I call myself british... ooooh the shame!!!

 

[slacker2114]

Monty Python is the greatest comedy team of all time, bar none. I've watched them since I was about 12 years old when I first found them on late night PBS.

To me, there is nothing they've done that wasn't friggin' hilarious. Hell, even John Cleese's eulogy for Graham Chapman was funny.

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[TMF Jeff]

To me, there is nothing they've done that wasn't friggin' hilarious. Hell, even John Cleese's eulogy for Graham Chapman was funny.

That was hilarious, I had never seen that before. 🙂

But I do remember at the Aspen Comedy Festival where they got some kind of lifetime achievement award, they brought out his ashes, with a Graham Chapman mask under the vase, and then promptly spilled him in the floor and cleaned him up with a dust buster 🙂

(spill occurs at about 6 minutes)

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[Dussicar]

Weird!

I was thinking about this sketch only yesterday!

I remember the wraparound premise of the whole episode was that the Queen was supposedly going to tune in during the show at some point.

 

[Artoo]

I still for the life of me fail to see what was so offensive about that skit that the BBC did what they did.

 

[TMF Jeff]

I still for the life of me fail to see what was so offensive about that skit that the BBC did what they did.

I'm just speculating, but I think to SOME people, it's POSSIBLE, that the idea of comparing vomiting your mother into her casket after having eaten her corpse, to an actual fumeral, could be construed as offensive.

 

[Artoo]

I'm just speculating, but I think to SOME people, it's POSSIBLE, that the idea of comparing vomiting your mother into her casket after having eaten her corpse, to an actual fumeral, could be construed as offensive.

Pshaw.

Although I guess when it was aired, the people who run the BBC were a little more sensitive than they are now.

 

[RobAce]

Monty Python was one of the funniest things ever.

Of course I prefer Blackadder, the funniest British Comedy EVER in my opinion.

Jeff, you really should check out some Blackadder, start off with Blackadder the Third and Forth. To me anyway the funniest of the series.

Rob

 

[Musicroxmysox]

I love Monty Python!

 

[BellaRisa]

Monty Python was one of the funniest things ever.

Of course I prefer Blackadder, the funniest British Comedy EVER in my opinion.

Jeff, you really should check out some Blackadder, start off with Blackadder the Third and Forth. To me anyway the funniest of the series.

Rob

Blackadder is some of the best comic writing to ever air. But nothing has been or will ever be as good as Python, and I say this as a true devotee of both british and american comedy from old Richard Lester material to Stan Freberg to Titus. Hell, the Python Fish License sketch KILLS me to this day, and I've heard it so many times I know it by heart; it's genius

 

[milagros317]

LMFAO
Great, just fabulous. 😀

 

[SamuelKhan]

Monty Python is the greatest comedy team of all time, bar none. I've watched them since I was about 12 years old when I first found them on late night PBS.

To me, there is nothing they've done that wasn't friggin' hilarious. Hell, even John Cleese's eulogy for Graham Chapman was funny.

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Even dead, Graham is still funny.

 

[Cy/MiG]

New one to me.

Good times.

Always enjoyed a little Monty Python.

 

[slacker2114]

But I do remember at the Aspen Comedy Festival where they got some kind of lifetime achievement award, they brought out his ashes, with a Graham Chapman mask under the vase, and then promptly spilled him in the floor and cleaned him up with a dust buster 🙂

(spill occurs at about 6 minutes)

That's priceless! I've never seen that before. I think what's funniest about it was how, after knocking over the urn and fussing over the ashes, they just sat back down and non-chalantly pick up where they left off in the conversation.