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Series 3, Episode 35: Bull-Fighting/British Well-Basically Club
The cast:
PRESENTER Eric Idle
BRIGADIER John Cleese
The sketch:
(On the underneath of the bed is a presenter on a chair. The underneath of the bed also consists of a flat as for current affairs-type programme, with ‘Probe’ written above narrator.)
Presenter: Many people in this country are becoming increasingly worried about bull-fighting. They say it’s not only cruel, vicious and immoral, but also blatantly unfair. The bull is heavy, violent, abusive and aggressive with four legs and great sharp teeth, whereas the bull-fighter is only a small, greasy Spaniard. Given this basic inequality what can be done to make bull-fighting safer? We asked Brigadier Arthur Farquar-Smith, Chairman of the British Well-Basically Club.
(Cut to a brigadier.)
Brigadier: Well, basically it’s quite apparent that these little dago chappies have got it all wrong. They prance round the bull like a lot of bally night club dancers looking like the Younger Generation or a less smooth version of the Lionel Blair Troupe,
(getting rather camp) with much of the staccato rhythms of the Irving Davies Dancers at the height of their success. In recent years Pan’s People have often recaptured a lyricism …
(a huge hammer strikes him on the head; he becomes butch again) and what we must do now is to use devices like radar to locate the bull and SAM missiles fired from underground silos, to knock the bull over. Then I would send in Scottish boys with air cover to provide a diversion for the bull, whilst the navy came in round the back and finished him off. That to me would be bull-fighting and not this pansy kind of lyrical,
(getting camp) evocative movement which George Balanchine and Martha Graham in the States and our very own Sadler’s Wells…
(the hammer strikes him on the head again) Troops could also be used in an auxiliary role in international chess, where…
(the lights go off) What? … oh…
Badger: (voice over) I’ll put the lights on again for a pound.