Let’s get one thing settled - the Olympics are always taken very seriously, but back in the day the Monty Python team showed the world just how silly they really are…

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At long last, the page you’ve been waiting for!

The original version of Quintessential Comedy featured the first in a series of articles and essays about comedy. Kicking it off was a piece on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which finally (!) I’ve reproduced here…

Dipping back to the past, remembering the things we saw and did is almost always done through rose-tinted glasses. The same is certainly true of comedy. Looking back at popular sitcoms of the day such as Please Sir! or Man About the House leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, and while Love Thy Neighbour might be a true depiction of the age, it’s modern revisionism to claim that it was cleverer than anyone ever knew at the time. (more…)

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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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