Monty Python Scripts

Up Your Pavement

The cast:

VOICE OVER

Michael Palin

CHAIRMAN

Eric Idle

The sketch:

A high street. Musical theme played on a banjo à la `Steptoe and Son' opening. Cut to a tracking shot of two tramps walking jauntily along. They are very arch, over-the-top jolly fellows. They nod at the occasional passer-by and do mock bows to a city gent.

CAPTION: Up Your Pavement

CAPTION: By the Rev. and Mrs. A. G. Phipps

CAPTION: From an idea by Lord Carrington

They come to a litter bin, root in it, and one of them produces a newspaper. He hands it to the other, looks in again and brings out a pork pie. He looks in again, his eyes light up, and he produces a bottle of champagne. He passes it to his mate. He looks in again and finds two highly polished glasses. Meanwhile over all this and as they set off down the road together we hear:

Voice Over: Taking life as it comes, sharing the good things and the bad things, finding laughter and fun wherever they go -- it is with these two happy-go-lucky rogues that our story begins. (by this time the tramps have walked out of shot; cut to a shot of a sports car up on the pavement with the legs of the two tramps sticking out from underneath; the music turns more urgent and transatlantic) For it is they who were run over by Alex Diamond ... (appropriate music; a James Bond character climbs out of the car and looks down at the dead tramps) international crime fighter ... (shot of him rushing into a film première past photographers with flashing bulbs) and playboy ... (cut to him on yacht) fast-moving ... tough-talking ... (still of him with Henry Kissinger; cut to him striding down a street) and just one of the many hundreds of famous people who suffer from lumbago, the epidemic disease about which no one knows more than this man ... (we see him go into a doorway; cut to a low angle close up of Dr Koning donning gloves prior to the operation; the music changes to the Kildare theme) Dr Emile Koning ... doctor ... surgeon ... proctologist ... and selfless fighter against human suffering, whose doorbell (cut to a doorbell and pan down) was the one above the hero of our story tonight ... (pan down to find the doorbell and name) Rear-Admiral Humphrey De Vere! (the door opens and the rear-admiral comes striding out; naval music; he walks up the road) Yes! This is the story of Rear-Admiral Humphrey De Vere ... or rather, the story of his daughter ... (cut to a still of a young inspired and devoted nurse; the music instantly changes to the heroic) For it was her courage, foresight and understanding that enabled us to probe beneath the sophisticated veneer of ... (mix to impressive college grounds) the Royal Arsenal Women's College, Bagshot ... (zoom in across lawns towards the college building) and learn the true story of this man ... (the camera suddenly veers off away from college and homes in on a solitary bush from which appears a seedy fellow in a terrible lightweight suit of several years ago that has got all stained and creased around the crutch) Len Hanky! Chiropodist, voyeur, hen-teaser. The man of whom the chairman of Fiat once said...

Chairman: Che cosa è lo succiacatori do polli?

CAPTION: What is a hen-teaser?

The phone rings. He answers it dynamically and we zoom in on his tense, alert, executive face.

Voice Over: Yes! Tonight we examine the career of Gino Agnelli! The man who started from nothing to build up one of the greatest firms in Europe. (mix through to stock film of a big car-producing plant) And whose telescope was bought from the shop part-owned by a man who, at the age of eight, stole a penknife from the son of this man's brother's housekeeper's dental hygienist's uncle. (as each of these things is mentioned we see a momentary flash of a still of each) The Reverend Charlie `Drooper' Hyper-Squawk Smith (at this point the freeze frame starts moving as the chaplain lifts himself out of the cockpit and jumps down beside his Spitfire) the cleft-palated RAF chaplain, who single-handed shot down over five hundred German chaplains. (smiling cheerfully he crosses off another emblem of a vicar in a German helmet on the side of the plane. Beside this is written ``Here we come Kraut'' Luke 17, verse 3) This is the story of the men who flew with him ... it really is!

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