Series 3, Episode 29: Erizabeth L
The cast:
MESSENGER Michael Palin
CLERK Eric Idle
QUEEN Graham Chapman
LEICESTER Eric Idle
JAPANESE DIRECTOR Terry Jones
INSPECTOR LEOPARD John Cleese
The sketch:
(Exterior of an Elizabethan palace. Elizabethan music. An Elizabethan messenger on a moped, comes up the drive and drives in through the front door.)
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: ‘ERIZABETH L’
(Cut to a long corridor. The messenger appears mopeding along the corridor very fast. He leaps off the moped and hands it to a guard at a door. The guard places the moped on a rack and the messenger enters the door going past three trumpeters who play a fanfire. He approaches a clerical figure, who stands at yet another door.)
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTIONS: ‘EPISODE THREE’
‘THE ALMALDA’
Messenger: I bling a dispatch flom Prymouth.
Clerk: Flom Prymouth?
Messenger: Flom Sil Flancis Dlake.
Clerk: Entel and apploach the thlone.
(The doors open. The messenger leaps on another moped and rides up to the throne on which sits Elizabeth surrounded by her courtiers, all of who are on motorized bicycles.)
Queen: What news flom Prymouth?
Messenger: Dlake has sighted the Spanish Freet, youl Majesty.
Queen: So! Phirip’s garreons ale hele. How many?
Messenger: One hundled and thilty-six men of wal.
Leicester: Broody herr.
Queen: Is Dlake plepaled?
Messenger: He has oldeled the whore freet into the Blitish Channer.
Queen: So, we must to Tirbuly. Reicestel! Sil Wartel Lareigh!
Groucester! We sharr lide to…
(Enter Japanese director.)
Japanese: Groucestel! Groucestel! Not Groucester. Come on, ret’s get this light. Reicestel!
Leicester: Yes.
Japanese: That was telliber.
Leicester: What?
Japanese: Telliber.
Leicester: Oh! Solly.
Japanese: When you have a rine, ling your berr.
Leicester: Ling my berr?
Japanese: (linging his berr for him) Ling ling. Rike this. And cut the broody herr. Elizabeth!
Queen: (cheesed off) Yes?
Japanese: You should be on a bicycer.
Queen: Why?!
Japanese: You rook odd rike that.
Queen: I do not look odd like this – it’s that lot that looks odd. It’s bleeding weird having half the Tudor nobility ligging around on motorized bicycles.
Japanese: It’s vely sullearist.
Queen: Horsefeathers!
Leicester: Listen mate. I’m beginning,to have my doubts about you.
Japanese: What do you mean?
Leicester: I’m telling you straight, mate. I don’t think you’re Luchino Visconti at all.
Japanese: Of course I am. Me vely impoltant Itarian firm dilectol.
Queen: You are a Nip.
Japanese: Lubbish! Me genuine wop. (sings) Alliveldelchi Loma…
Leicester: He’s bluffing.
Japanese: (sings) Vo-oorale… Ooh … Is that the time, I must fry.
( The door opens. lnspector Leopard rum through the door followed by a copper.)
Inspector: Not so fast, Yakomoto. (trumpeters play a fanfare) Shut up! (fanfare stops) Allow me to introduce myself. I am Inspector Leopard of Scotland Yard, Special Fraud Film Director Squad.
Court: Leopard of the Yard!
Inspector: The same. Only more violent. (he demonstrates this by kneeing the copper in the balls) Right, Slit Eyes Yakomoto, I’m arresting you for the impersonation of Signor Luchino Visconti, famous Italian director of such movie classics as ‘Ossessione’ (1942), ‘La Tetra Trema’ (1948), and ‘Bellissima’ (1951) – a satisfying ironic slice-of-life drama. I957 brought to the silver screen his ‘I Bianche Notre’ adapted by Dostoyevsky, a mannered and romantic melancholy of snow and mist and moonlit encounters on canal bridges. ‘Boccaccio 70’ followed five years later and the following year saw ‘The Leopard’! So impressed was I with this motion picture treatment of the Risorgimento that I went along to Somerset House and changed me own name to Leopard, preferring it to me original handle, ‘Panther’ (Aargh). 1 digress. 1969 saw ‘The Damned’, a GöStterdämmerung epic of political and industrial
shennanigans in good old Nazi Germany, starring Helmut Berger as a stinking transvestite what should have his face sawn off, the curvaceous Charlotte Rampling as a bit of tail, and the impeccable Dirk Bogarde as Von Essen. The association of the latter with Signor Visconti fructified with Dirk’s magnificent portrayal of the elderly poof what expires in Venice. And so, Yakomoto… blimey, he gone! Never mind. I’ll have you instead. (grabs the queen)
Queen: What?
Inspector: I haven’t got time to go chasing after him, there’s violence to be done.
(ANIMATION: sketch about violence.)