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Series 3, Episode 33: Old Lady Snoopers
The cast:
ENID Eric Idle
GLADYS John Cleese
FIRST LIFEBOATMAN Michael Palin
SECOND LIFEBOATMAN Graham Chapman
MRS. NEVES Terry Jones
MRS. EDWARDS Graham Chapman
DORIS John Cleese
OFFICER Michael Palin
The sketch:
(Sketch continues from the Lifeboat Sketch. We still hear the shouts. Close up on an elderly spinster (Gladys) holding the net curtain discreetly ajar.)
Enid: Who’s that shouting?
(We pull out to reveal a sitting room full of high-powered eavesdropping equipment, i.e. an enormous telescope on wheels with a controller’s chair attached to it, several subsidiary telescopes pointing out of the window, radar scanners going round and round, two computers with flashing lights, large and complex tape and video recorders, several TV monitors, oscilloscopes, aerials, etc. All these have been squeezed in amongst the furniture of two retired middle-class old ladies. Enid, a dear old lady with a bun, sits at the control seat of an impressive-looking console, pressing buttons. She also has some knitting.)
Gladys: (JOHN) It’s a man outside Number 24.
Enid: Try it on the five inch, Gladys.
Gladys: (looking at the array of telescopes) I can’t. I’ve got that fixed on the Baileys at Number 13. Their new lodger moves in today.
Enid: All fight, hold 13 on the five-inch and transfer the Cartwrights to the digital scanner.
(Gladys leaps over to the tape deck, presses levers and switches. Sound of tape reversing. There is a hum and lights flash on and off. A blurred image of a lady in the street comes up on one of the monitors.)
Enid: Hold on, Mrs Pettigrew’s coming back from the doctor’s.
Gladys: All right, bring her up on two. What’s the duration reading on the oscillator?
Enid: 48.47.
Gladys: Well that’s a long time for someone who’s just had a routine checkup.
Enid: (reading a graph on a computer) Yes, her pulse rate’s 146!
Gladys: Zoom in on the 16mm and hold her, Enid.
Enid: Roger, Gladys.
Gladys: I’ll try and get her on the twelve-inch.
(she climbs into the control seat of the huge mobile telescope; we cut to the view through Gladys’s telescope- out of focus at first, but then sharper as she zooms in towards the side door of Number 24) Move the curtain, Enid.
(the curtain is opened a little) Thank you, love.
(Cut to the interior of Mrs Neves’s kitchen once again. It is absolutely full of lifeboatmen. They are all talking happily and drinking cups of tea. We pick up the conversation between two them.)
First Lifeboatman: Yes, it’s one of those new self-righting models. Newhaven was about the first place in the country to get one.
Second Lifeboatman: What’s the displacement on one of them jobs then?
First Lifeboatman: Oh it’s about 140-150 per square inch.
Mrs Neves: Who’s for fruit cake?
All: Oh yes, please, please.
Mrs Neves: Yes, right, macaroons, that’s two dozen fruit cakes, half a dozen macaroons. Right ho. Won’t be a jiffy then.
(She puts a scarf on, picks up a basket and goes out of the front door. As she opens door, we hear the sound of a storm which carries us into the next shot. Cut to the deck of a lifeboat; rain-lashed, heaving, wind-tossed Mrs Neves struggles against the gale force winds along the deck. She hammers on a hatch in the forward part of the lifeboat.)
Mrs Neves: Yoohoo! Mrs Edwards!
(The hatch opens and a cosy shop-keeping pepperpot sticks her head out.)
Mrs Edwards: Hello.
Mrs Neves: Hello, two dozen fruit cakes and half a dozen macaroons.
Mrs Edwards: Sorry love, no macaroons. How about a nice vanilla sponge.
Mrs Neves: Yes, that’ll be lovely.
Mrs Edwards: Right ho.
(sound of a ship’s horn; they both look) There’s that nice herring trawler come for their Kup Kakes. Excuse me.
(she produces a loudhailer) Hello, Captain Smith?
Voice: Hallooooo!
(Mrs Edwards hurls a box of Kup Kakes off deck.)
Mrs Edwards: Kup Kakes to starboard.
Voice: Coming.
Mrs Neves: I’ll pay you at the end of the week, all right?
Mrs Edwards: OK, right ho.
(Mrs Neves struggles back along the deck. Cut to stock film of Ark Royal in a storm.)
Mrs Neves: Here; it’s the Ark Royal, Doris. Have you got their rock buns ready?
(Sound of a ship’s horn.)
Mrs Edwards: Hang on!
(Doris appears at the hatch, and hands over two cake boxes.)
Doris: Here we are, five for them and five for HMS Eagle.
Mrs Edwards: Right ho..
(takes them and throws them both overboard; an officer climbs up the side of the boat) Yes?
Officer: HMS Defiant? Two set teas please.
Mrs Edwards: Two set teas, Doris. Forty-eight pence. There we are, thank you.
(Money is handed over. The teas emerge on two little trays with delicate crockery, little teapots, milk jugs, etc.)
Officer: By the way, do you do lunches?
Mrs Edwards: No, morning coffee and teas only.
Officer: Right ho.
(holding the teas he goes up to edge and jumps overboard)