Monty Python Scripts

The News for Parrots / The News for Gibbons

The cast:

NARRATOR

Michael Palin

DARNAY

Graham Chapman

LUCY

Carol Cleveland

OLD MAN

Terry Jones

The sketch:

(Cut back to the animation again: a parrot.)

Parrot: And parrots started to announce television programs. It's 8 o'clock and time for the News.

(Cut back to the same narrator at desk.)

Narrator: Good evening. Here is the News for parrots. No parrots were involved in an accident on the M1 today, when a lorry carrying high octane fuel was in collision with a hollard ... that is a bollard and not a parrot. A spokesman for parrots said he was glad no parrots were involved. The Minister of Technology (photo of minister with parrot on his shoulder) today met the three Russian leaders (cut to photograph of Brahnev, Podgomy and Kosygin all in a group and each with a parrot on his shoulder) to discuss a £4 million airliner deal ... (cut back to narrator) None of them went in the cage, or swung on the little wooden trapeze, or ate any of the nice millet seed yam, yam. That's the end of the news. Now our programs for parrots continue with part three of 'A Tale of Two Cities' specially adapted for parrots by Joey Boy. The story so far ... Dr Manette is in England after eighteen years (as he speaks French Revolution type music creeps in under his words) in the Bastille. (cut through to a Cruikshank engraving of London). His daughter Lucy awaits her lover Charles Darnay, whom we have just learnt is in fact the nephew of the Marquis de St Evremond, whose cruelty had placed Manette in the Bastille. Darnay arrives to find Lucy tending her aged father...

(Superimposed caption: 'LONDON 1793' Music reaches a climax and we mix slowly through to an eighteenth-century living room. Lucy is nursing her father. Some low music continues over. Suddenly the door bursts open and Charles Darnay enters.)

Darnay: (in parrot voice) 'Allo, 'allo.

Lucy: 'Allo, 'allo, 'allo.

Old Man: 'Allo, 'allo, 'allo.

Darnay: Who's a pretty boy, then?

Lucy: 'Allo, 'allo, 'allo.

(And more of the same. Cut back to the narrator.)

Narrator: And while that's going on, here is the news for gibbons. No gibbons were involved today in an accident on the M 1 ...

(The narrator's voice fades.)

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