Monty Python Scripts

Ant Complaints

The cast:

LIFT WOMAN

Michael Palin

CHRIS QUINN

Eric Idle

FIRST ASSISTANT

Graham Chapman

MANAGER

Terry Jones

ASSISTANT

Michael Palin

GLADYS

Graham Chapman

The sketch:

(Continues from 'Documentary on Ants'. Cut back to the store. Inside the lift.

Chris: stands there with his ant in his hand. There are also two ladies in German national costume. The lift lady, who has a wall-eye, a wooden leg, a tooth-brace, a hearing aid, a hilt-up shoe, a neck-brace, and a hook is reciting.)

Lift Woman: Second floor ... stationery, leather goods, tribal head injuries, cricket bats, film stars, dolphinafiums.

(The lift stops with some difficulty. The German girls get out with their baggage. In gets a man in Greek national costume holding an oar.)

Lift Woman: Third floor ... cosmetics, books, Irish massage, tribal head'. gear, ants.. (Chris starts to get out) but not complaints about ants!

Chris: Oh, where do I go to complain?

Lift Woman: Straight on, then left, then fight past the thing, then, up the little stairs, then right by where it's gone all soft, then down the wobbly bit, past the nail, past the brown stain on the wall to your fight and it's the door marked exit straight ahead of you on the left.

Chris: Thank you.

Lift Woman: (the doors shut but we can just hear her voice) Fourth floor... kiddies' vasectomies...

(The ant counter. It is obviously the same place with a roughly made sign 'Complaints '. Chris is standing there with the original Assistant, who now has a plate in his lip and an enormous false chin about eight inches long and six inches across.)

Chris: I don't want you.

First Assistant: (speaking with difficulty) Oh, something wrong with your little ant friend... ?

Chris: No! I'm not going to tell you.

First Assistant: Something missing in the leg department?

(The Manager appears.)

Manager: Can I help you, sir?

(Chris looks down and sees that the Manager is half in a sack.)

Chris: No! No! No! No!

Manager: Oh, it's all right, sir, it's for the sack race later on.

Chris: No, no, no, I want to speak to the General Manager, I want to complain.

Manager: Oh, well you want the Toupee Hall in that case, sir.

Chris: The what?

Manager: The Toupee Hall, Mr. Ellis. (he hops off)

(Chris approaches a stocking counter where lady Assistant is sewing two heavies who are trying on nylons over their heads. Chris speaks to the Assistant.)

Chris: (embarrassed) Excuse me - could you tell me the way to the Toupee Hall, please?

Assistant: Sorry?

Chris: The Toupee Hall.

Assistant: The what?

Chris: The Toupee Hall.

Assistant: Oh, the Toupee Hall (loudly) Gladys, where are toupees now?

Gladys: Toupees? (people start to look)

Assistant: This gentleman wants one.

Gladys: (even louder) A toupee?

Chris: Well, no, actually...

Gladys: I think they're in surgical appliances now.

Assistant: That's fight, yes, you go left at artificial limbs and hearing aids, right at dentures and it's on your left just by glass eyes. It doesn't say toupees to avoid embarrassing people, but you can smell 'em.

(People by this time have formed a ring round to see who it is.)

Chris: Thank you.

(As he moves off people peer at his head.)

Woman: (to friend) You can see the join.

(Chris in order to avoid this embarrassment, dives into the nearest department. A sign over the door reads 'Victorian poetry reading hall'.)

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