Monty Python Scripts

'Light Entertainment Awards' with Dickie Attenborough

The cast:

DICKIE ATTENBOROUGH

Eric Idle

The sketch:

Cut to a photo of Picadilly Circus.

CAPTION:

The
British
Show Biz
Awards

CAPTION:

Presented by
Her Royal Highness
The Dummy
Princess Margaret

We mix through to the dummy Princess Margaret at a desk, as for awards ceremony. At the desk also, on either side of her, two men in dinner jackets and a pantomime goose. Bill Cotton is nowhere to be seen. High up above them, there is a screen. Enter Dickie Attenborough.

Dickie: Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chairman, friends of the society, your dummy Royal Highness. (she gives a dummy wave) Once again, the year has come full circle, and for me there can be no greater privilege, and honor, than to that to which it is my lot to have befallen this evening. There can be no finer honor than to welcome into our midst tonight a guest who has not only done only more than not anyone for our Society, but nonetheless has only done more. He started in the film industry in 1924, he started again in 1946, and finally in 1963. He has been dead for four years, but he has not let that prevent him from coming here this evening. (he gets out an onion and holds it to his eyes; tears pour out) Ladies and gentlemen, no welcome could be more heartfelt than that which I have no doubt you will all want to join with me in giving this great showbiz stiff. Ladies and gentlemen, to read the nominations for the Light Entertainment Award, the remains of the late Sir Alan Waddle.

There is awful continuity music. Terrific applause. Attenborough weeps profusely. A man in a brown coat comes in pushing a white five-foot plinth. Behind him comes another man carrying a bronze funeral urn. It has a black tie on. Cut to stock film of the audience standing in rapturous applause. The urn is put on top of the plinth and a microphone placed in front of it. Slight pause. Cut to Dickie weeping profusely. The urn clears its throat.

The Urn: (silly voice) The nominations are Mr. Edward Heath, for the new suit sketch, (zoom quickly in to film on the screen of the lady of Brussels throwing ink all over Mr. Heath; cut back to the hall for applause) Mr. Richard Baker for Lemon Curry.

Cut to Richard Baker.

Richard Baker: Lemon curry?

Cut back to urn.

The Urn: And the Third Parachute Brigade Amateur Dramatic Society for the Oscar Wilde skit.

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