Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Scene 5: Ex-Leper
text in yellow is from the Director’s Cut
[music]
BRIAN: Have I got a big nose, Mum?
MANDY: Oh, stop thinking about sex.
BRIAN: I wasn’t.
MANDY: You’re always on about it… morning, noon, and night. ‘Will the girls like this?’ ‘Will the girls like that?’ ‘Is it too big?’ ‘Is it too small?’
MANDY: Get your filthy little mind off it! You’re forty years old, now. You should have grown out of all that.
BRIAN: I’m only just getting interested in it, Mum.
MANDY: It’s time you got interested in a job, my lad.
LEPER #1: Spare a shekel.
LEPER #2: God bless you, sir.
LEPER #3: Alms for a leper.
LEPER #4: Alms for a leper.
EX-LEPER: Alms for an ex-leper. Bloody donkey owners. All the same, aren’t they? Never have any change. Oh, here’s a touch. Spare a talent for an old ex-leper.
MANDY: Buzz off!
EX-LEPER: Spare a talent for an old ex-leper.
MANDY: A talent? That’s more than he earns in a month.
EX-LEPER: Half a talent, then.
MANDY: No, go away!
EX-LEPER: Come on, Big Nose. Let’s haggle.
BRIAN: What?
EX-LEPER: All right. Cut the haggling. Say you open at one shekel. I start at two thousand. We close about eighteen hundred.
BRIAN: No.
EX-LEPER: Seventeen-fifty?
MANDY: Go away!
EX-LEPER: Seventeen-forty.
MANDY: Look. Will you leave him alone?
EX-LEPER: All right. Two shekels. Just two. Isn’t this fun, eh?
MANDY: Look. He’s not giving you any money, so piss off!
EX-LEPER: All right, sir. My final offer: half a shekel for an old ex-leper.
BRIAN: Did you say… ‘ex-leper’?
EX-LEPER: That’s right, sir. Sixteen years behind the bell, and proud of it, sir.
BRIAN: Well, what happened?
EX-LEPER: I was cured, sir.
BRIAN: Cured?
EX-LEPER: Yes, sir, a bloody miracle, sir. God bless you.
BRIAN: Who cured you?
EX-LEPER: Jesus did, sir. I was hopping along, minding my own business. All of a sudden, up he comes. Cures me. One minute I’m a leper with a trade, next minute my livelihood’s gone. Not so much as a by your leave. ‘You’re cured mate.’ Bloody do-gooder.
BRIAN: Well, why don’t you go and tell him you want to be a leper again?
EX-LEPER: Ah, yeah. I could do that, sir. Yeah. Yeah, I could do that, I suppose. What I was thinking was, I was going to ask him if he could make me a bit lame in one leg during the middle of the week. You know, something beggable, but not leprosy, which is a pain in the arse, to be blunt. Excuse my French, sir, but, uh–
MANDY: Brian! Come and clean your room out.
BRIAN: There you are.
EX-LEPER: Thank you, sir. Thanks– Half a denary for me bloody life story?
BRIAN: There’s no pleasing some people.
EX-LEPER: That’s just what Jesus said, sir.
[baaaa]
[clunk]