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Series 2, Episode 21: Mosquito
The cast:
HANK Graham Chapman
VOICE OVER John Cleese
ROY Eric Idle
The sketch:
(Big close-up Hank Spire (face only). He is obviously walking along, the camera is fillowing him hand held.)
Hank: Well, I’ve been a hunter all my life. I love animals. That’s why I like to kill ’em. I wouldn’t kill an animal I didn’t like. Goodday Roy.
(Pull back to reveal he is walking with his brother in fairly rough country location. They pull a small trailer with ‘high explosives’ written in large letters on the side. The trailer has bombs in it. Hank takes a bazooka from the trailer.)
Voice Over: (JOHN) Hank and Roy Spire are tough, fearless backwoodsmen who have chosen to live in a violent, unrelenting world of nature’s creatures, where only the fittest survive. Today they are off to hunt mosquitoes.
(Big close-up Roy Spira. He is obviously searching for something.)
Roy: (voice over) The mosquito’s a clever little bastard. You can track him for days and days until you really get to know him like a friend. He knows you’re there, and you know he’s there. It’s a game of wits. You hate him, then you respect him, then you kill him.
(Cut to Hank Spire who stands peering toward the horizon. Suddenly he points.)
Voice Over: Suddenly Hank spots the mosquito they’re after.
(Dramatic music. Crash zoom along Hank’s eyeline to as big a close-up as we can get of a patch in a perfectly ordinary field. Cut back to Hank and Roy starting to crawl towards some bushes.)
Voice Over: Now more than ever, they must rely on the skills they have learnt from a lifetime’s hunting. (tense music, as they worm their way forward) Hank gauges the wind.
(shot of Hank doing complicated wind gauging biz.)
Roy examines the mosquito’s spoor.
(shot of Roy examining the ground intently)
Then …
(Roy fires a bazooka. Hank fires off a machine gun; a series of almighty explosions in the small patch of field; the gunfire stops and the smoke begins to clear)
It’s a success. The mosquito now is dead.
(Hank and Roy approach the scorched and blackened patch in the field)
But Roy must make sure.
(Roy points machine gun at head of mosquito and fires off another few rounds)
Roy: There’s nothing more dangerous than a wounded mosquito.
Voice Over: But the hunt is not over. With well practised skill Hank skins the mosquito.
(Hank produces an enormous curved knife and begins to start skinning the tiny mosquito)
The wings of a fully grown male mosquito can in fact fetch anything up to point eight of a penny on the open market. (shot of them walking, carrying weapons) The long day is over and it’s back to base camp for a night’s rest.
(inside villa; Hank is cleaning bazooka)
Here, surrounded by their trophies Roy and Hank prepare for a much tougher ordeal – a moth hunt.
Hank: Well, I follow the moth in the helicopter to lure it away from the flowers, and then Roy comes along in the Lockheed Starfighter and attacks it with air-to-air missiles.
Roy: A lot of people have asked us why we don’t use fly spray. Well, where’s the sport in that?
(Shot of them driving in Land Rover heavily loaded with weapons.)
Voice Over: For Roy, sport is everything. Ever since he lost his left arm battling with an ant, Roy has risked his life in the pursuit of tiny creatures. (a peaceful river bank; Roy and Hank are fishing) But it’s not all work and for relaxation they like nothing more than a day’s fishing. (Hank presses a button and there is a tremendous explosion in the water) Wherever there is a challenge, Hank and Roy Spim will be there ready to carry on this primordial struggle between man and inoffensive, tiny insects.
(Pull out to reveal the brothers standing on a tank. Heroic music reaches a climax.)