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Series 1, Episode 13: Quiz Program
The cast:
INTERVIEWER John Cleese
ERIC Eric Idle
MICHAEL Michael Palin
TREVOR Graham Chapman
CITY GENT Michael Palin
FAIRY Eric Idle
The sketch:
(Cut to interviewer and two small boys.)
Interviewer: (gently) What’s your name?
Eric: Eric.
Interviewer: Would you like to have a sixteen-ton weight dropped on top of you, Eric?
Eric: Don’t know.
(Brief stock shot of theatre audience applauding.)
Interviewer: How about you?
Michael: I want to have.
Interviewer: What do you want to have?
Michael: I want to have… I want to have Racquel Welch dropped on top of me.
Interviewer: Dropped on top of you.
Michael: Oh yes, not climbing.
Eric: She’s got a big bottom.
(Applause stock shot. Cut to interviewer and two city gents on their knees).
Interviewer: And what’s your name?
Trevor: Trevor Atkinson.
Interviewer: And how old are you, Trevor?
Trevor: I’m forty-two.
(Applause stock shot.)
Interviewer: (to other city gent) Are you a friend of Trevor’s?
City Gent: Yes, we’re all colleagues from the Empire and General Insurance Company.
Interviewer: And what do you do?
City Gent: Well I deal mainly with mortgage protection policies, but I also do certain types of life assurance.
Interviewer: Now if you and your pal had one big wish, Trevor, what would you like to see on television?
Trevor: I’d like to see more fairy stories about the police.
(Fairy godmother trips lightly into shot.)
Fairy: And so you shall.
(Cut to open country. A policeman cycles up and parks his bike. From the saddlebag he takes a burglar’s outfit – striped jersey, cap, and trousers. He lays them out on the Found, and inflates them with a bicycle pump. The inflated burglar runs away in speeded-up motion. The policeman blows his whistle. Three more policemen appear out of nowhere. He points forward and the four of them move off in a pixilated motion after the burglar. The burglar runs across moorland; the policemen follow him. Dick Barton theme music. The burglar lures the policemen into a large packing crate, slams the door on them and nails on it a label: ‘Do not open until Christmas’. In the background a policeman with a fairy tutu appears suddenly out of thin air. He waves his wand at the burglar, who disappears. Cut to policeman, with wand, standing in a street.)
Policeman: Yes, we in Special Crime Squad have been using wands for almost a year now. You find it’s easy to make yourself invisible. You can defy time and space, and you can turn violent criminals into frogs. Something which you could never do with the old truncheons.