This is a classic moment in the movies - this weeks Comedy Dialogue of the Week is from Withnail & I:

Marwood: [pointing at a bottle of lighter fluid that Withnail is about to drink] Not even the wankers on the site would drink that. That’s worse than meths.
Withnail: Nonsense. This is a far superior drink to meths. The wankers don’t drink it because they can’t afford it.
Withnail: [having just drunk the lighter fluid] Got any more?
Marwood: No. I have nothing.
Withnail: Liar. What’s in your toolbox.
Marwood: Nothing.
Withnail: Liar. You’ve got antifreeze.
Marwood: You bloody fool. You should never mix your drinks!

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Here’s a classic exchange from Porridge, starring Ronnie Baker and Richard Beckinsale!

Godber: She had lovely…
Fletch: I know what she had lovely, this is her father you’re talking to, Godber, so be very careful!
Godber: Eyes! I was going to say. Lovely eyes.
Fletch: That’s all right then. …
Godber: She’s a canny old soul, my mum, but she only normally gives me a catalogue of family ailments.
Fletch: No news of the lovely Denise, then?
Godber: She don’t talk about Denise on account of she doesn’t approve of her - because she wears green nail varnish and doesn’t wear a bra.
Fletch: Sounds as if your fiance Denise and my Ingrid have got quite a lot in common.
Godber: Your Ingrid’s got nicer knockers.

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This weeks Comedy Dialogue of the Week is by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis, and comes from the first episode of Blackadder III. Prince George’s (Hugh Laurie) butler Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) works to undermine the Prime Minster’s (Pitt the Younger) plans to remove the Prince Regent’s income.

Calling on royalist Sir Talbot Buxomly to sway the vote in their favour, Blackadder and the Prince are astonished to find that he has died mid conversation…

EDMUND: We must move at once.
PRINCE GEORGE: In which direction?
EDMUND: Sir Talbot represented the constituency of Dunny-on-the-Wold, and, by an extraordinary stroke of luck, it is a rotten borough.
PRINCE GEORGE: Really! Is it! Well, lucky-lucky us. Lucky-lucky-luck. (as a chicken) Luck-luck-LAKK-LAKK-LAKK-LAKK-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck
-LAKK-LAKK-LAKK.
EDMUND: You don’t know what a rotten borough is, do you, sir.
PRINCE GEORGE: No.
EDMUND: So what was the chicken impression in aid of?
PRINCE GEORGE: Well, I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Erm, so, what is a robber button?
EDMUND: Rotten borough.
PRINCE GEORGE: Oh, yes, you’re right.
EDMUND: A rotten borough, sir, is a constituency where the owner of the land corruptly controls the both the voters and the MP.
PRINCE GEORGE: Good, yes…and a robber button is…?
EDMUND: Could we leave that for a moment? Dunny-on-the-Wold is a tuppenny-ha’penny place. Half an acre of sodden marshland in the Suffolk Fens with an empty town hall on it. Population: three rather mangy cows, a dachshund named `Colin’, and a small hen in its late forties.
PRINCE GEORGE: So, no people at all, then? apart from Colin…
EDMUND: Colin is a dog, sir.

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On of the most wonderful bits of comedy dialogue I’ve ever come across is the wonderfully constructed Monty Python sketch by Eric Idle, Travel Agent.

While the best interpretation of this is probably the live version (most notably the one performed at The Hollywood Bowl) the version in the second series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus is perfectly good. It concerns a potential tourist, Mr Smoketoomuch, (Eric Idle as a man who cannot pronounce the letter “c”) which enters a travel agent’s and embarks on a superbly frank monologue about foreign holidays. Despite being recorded in 1970, it seems nothing has changed…

Essentially a two hander, Mr Bounder is the travel agent, played by Michael Palin. The following exchange is particularly memorable: (more…)

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Fawlty Towers – Communication Problems:

Mrs Richards: I asked for a room with a view!

Basil: [muttering to Manuel] Deaf, mad, and blind…

[He goes to the window and peers through it.]

Basil: Ah, this is the view as far as I can remember, madam… yes, yes, this is it.

Mrs Richards: When I pay for a view, I expect something more interesting than that.

Basil: That is Torquay, madam.

Mrs Richards: Well, it’s not good enough. (more…)

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