The Bruces sketch involves a group of stereotypical Australians who are members of the Philosophy Department at the fictitious University of Woolloomooloo, and all named Bruce, with a common fondness for beer and a hatred of “pooftahs.” Terry Jones plays a “pommie” professor, Michael Baldwin, joining the department and meeting his colleagues for the first time. Since his name is different from that of everyone else, Baldwin is given the moniker “New Bruce” to avoid confusion.
The sketch is one of the most quoted from the series, partly due to the fact it also featured regularly in the team’s stage shows, where it would be capped with a performance of The Philosophers’ Song. The song does not feature in the original TV version, which instead ends with the first Bruces saying “Sidney Nolan! What’s that?” pointing to the ear of fourth Bruce returning to that episode’s running theme, “how to recognize different parts of the body.” It’s also a shame that in the televised version, Cleese blows the delivery of, perhaps, the funniest line in the script.
You probably saw the ending coming, but it still works. This sketch is listed among Terry Jones’ favorites, featured on the PBS Monty Python’s Personal Best special.
In this short skit, Arthur Ewing (Jones) has “musical” mice, reputedly trained to squeak at specific pitches. He claims they will then play The Bells of Saint Mary. The unbridled zeal shown by Jones even as he’s being dragged off the stage makes the sketch.
Though certainly not reaching Jones’ level in drag, Eric Idle was arguably the most feminine-looking of the bunch. He often played female characters in a more straightforward way, only altering his voice slightly, as opposed to the falsetto shrieking used by the other Pythons, which is illustrated perfectly by this short but hilarious sketch.
The Guild returned on a later episode to reenact the first heart transplant, in predictably similar fashion.
Buying an Ant appeared in season four episode two. This was shortly after Cleese had left the troupe, allegedly due to the repetitive nature of much of the work and difficulty in working with an increasingly drunken Graham Chapman. Eric Idle portrayed Chris Quinn, a naive patron of the “ant department”, in a large department store. Michael Palin played the exploitive salesman, as he often did in Monty Python bits.
The sketch was one of several in the episode featuring a recurring theme of ants and a mysterious individual named Michael Ellis.
Several cineastes report from the set of Scott of the Antarctic, where enthusiastic but incompetent director James McRettin (Cleese) and producer Jerry Shipp (Idle) battle their way through the demands of their dim-witted, big-name stars and the elements while shooting a Hollywood epic on location in England.
This sketch was apparently inspired by the 1948 film about Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to be the first to the South Pole, while braving polar lions and giant electric penguins. Okay, that last part may have been embellished in the Python version.
Graham Chatman plays the straight man enjoying a date at home as several obnoxious visitors including a goat with diarrhea (of course) arrive, throwing his quiet evening into chaos and tragedy.
Through an endearing and resolute apology, Eric Idle gets away (well, almost) with murder.
Terry Jones and his wife, played by Carol Cleveland, visit the oddest mattress shop in England.
Commonly referred to as the “Seventh Python,” or the “Python Girl,” Carol Cleveland was the most important female performer in the Monty Python ensemble. Originally hired by producer/director John Howard Davies for just the first five episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, she went on to appear in approximately two-thirds of the episodes as well as in all of the Python films, and in most of their stage shows as well.
The premise of this sketch is that each salesman in the store has his own unique quirk, but are “otherwise perfectly all right”.
In this sketch, Ron Obvious, played by Terry Jones, is encouraged by his less than scrupulous manager to undertake several dubious stunts for publicity. Michael Palin steals most of the scenery as Luigi Vercotti, a recurring mafioso-esque character who also appeared in the Piranha Brothers sketch.
Palin and Jones collaborations were more visual, and more fanciful conceptually than the verbal, confrontational style of Cleese and Chapman. Cleese has confirmed that “most of the sketches with heavy abuse were Graham’s and mine, anything that started with a slow pan across countryside and impressive music was Mike and Terry’s, and anything that got utterly involved with words and disappeared up any personal orifice was Eric’s.”
