Dead Parrot
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The Dead Parrot sketch, alternatively and originally known as Pet Shop sketch or Parrot Sketch, is a popular sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus, one of the most famous in the history of television comedy.
It portrays a conflict between disgruntled customer Mr. Eric Praline (played by John Cleese), and a shopkeeper (Michael Palin), who hold contradictory positions on the vital state of a "Norwegian Blue" parrot (an apparent absurdity in itself since parrots are popularly presumed to be tropical and not indigenous to Scandinavia).
The skit pokes fun at the many euphemisms for death used in English culture. The sketch aired in the eighth episode of the television series.
The "Dead Parrot" sketch was inspired by a "Car Salesman" sketch that Palin and Graham Chapman had done in How to Irritate People. In it, Palin played a car salesman who refused to admit that there was anything wrong with his customer's (Chapman) car, even as it fell apart in front of him. That sketch was based on an actual incident between Palin and a car salesman.
Over the years, Cleese and Palin have done many versions of the "Dead Parrot" sketch for various television shows, records albums, and live performances.
[edit] Plot
Mr Praline enters a pet shop, complaining that the parrot he has recently purchased at the location is, in fact, dead. The shopkeeper denies this and points out the beauty of its plumage, further suggesting that the bird is merely asleep. Praline is unconvinced, especially when shouting and the offer of a lovely fresh cuttlefish fails to evoke a response from the bird. Praline gets particularly suspicious when the shopkeeper pushes the cage and says "There! He moved."
Praline takes the parrot out of the cage and thumps its head on the counter ("Hellooo, Polly!"), then tosses it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor without reacting in any way. The shopkeeper remains unconvinced, claiming that it is now stunned, and that it is "pining for the fjords."
Praline points out that the only reason that the parrot had been sitting on its perch in the first place was that it had been nailed there. The shopkeeper counters that it was simply to stop it escaping. Praline disagrees in these words:
- Mr Praline: It's not pinin', it's passed on! This parrot is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its may-kar! This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace, if you hadn't nailed it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies! It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisibule! This is an ex-parrot!
The shopkeeper admits defeat, claims that he is right out of parrots, and offers a slug as replacement. The dialogue continues:
- Mr Praline: Does it talk?
- (pause)
- Shopkeeper: Not really, no.
- Mr Praline: Well, it's scarcely a replacement then, is it?
The action then moves to Bolton, or possibly Ipswich, or maybe even Notlob (Bolton spelled backwards). Much play is made of the location, including the suggestion that the confusion between the towns is due to a pun, or possibly a palindrome. Just as the dialogue is getting "too silly," Graham Chapman's no-nonsense Colonel bursts in and stops the sketch.
In And Now For Something Completely Different, the skit ended by going into The Lumberjack Song.
The double album Monty Python's The Final Rip Off features a live version of the sketch, which is slightly different from the TV version. Praline's rant about the deceased parrot includes "He fucking snuffed it!" Also, the sketch ends with the shopkeeper saying that the slug does talk. Praline, after a brief pause, says, "Right, I'll have that one then!"
In The Secret Policeman's Biggest Ball, a benefit for Amnesty International, the sketch opens similarly, but ends very differently.
- Mr Praline: It's dead, that's what's wrong with it.
- (audience goes wild)
- Shopkeeper: So it is. 'Ere's your money back and a couple of holiday vouchers.
- Mr Praline: (spends a few seconds acting and looking flabbergasted) Well, you can't say Thatcher hasn't changed some things.
[edit] The "Dead Parrot" in popular culture
At Graham Chapman's memorial service, Cleese began his eulogy by stating that Graham Chapman was no more, that he had ceased to be, that he had expired and gone on to meet his maker, and so on. Cleese went on to justify his eulogy by claiming that Chapman would never have forgiven him if he had not delivered it exactly as he did.
The same lines from the skit are frequently used to describe anything which the speaker wishes to describe as defunct or no longer viable. The name "Dead Parrot" is also sometimes used, and specifically applies to a controversial joint policy document which the Liberal Party and Social Democrats issued in 1988 in the process of their merger into the Social and Liberal Democratic Party. Shortly before her downfall as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher described this party in her deadpan 'comedy' voice, saying "this is a dead parrot, it has ceased to be." The loss of the Eastbourne parliamentary seat at a by-election to the Liberal Democrats shortly afterward was cause for David Steel, its leader at the time to say "it looks like this dead parrot gave her a good pecking!". The emblem of the Liberal democrats is a flying yellow bird.
Thatcher's comment was not wholly original, as three years previously Spitting Image had run a take-off of the Dead Parrot Sketch with David Owen, then leader of the SDP, in the role of Mr. Praline, Owen's predecessor Roy Jenkins as the shopkeeper, and the SDP ("lovely policies") standing in for the parrot itself.
In John Cleese's duet act with his daughter in Six Ways to Skin an Ocelot, he did a Californian version of the Dead Parrot sketch, replacing the parrot with a trophy wife.
Another British television comedy Not The Nine O'Clock News referred to the Parrot Sketch in their sketch about "Python Worshippers":
- Bishop: In the words of John Cleese, whenever two or three are gathered together in one place, then they shall perform the Parrot Sketch.
- Interviewer: It is an ex-parrot.
- Alexander Walker & Bishop (in unison): It has ceased to be.
They also performed another sketch called "Not the Parrot Sketch".
Quest for Glory II features a "Dead Parrot Inn" in Raseir.
When Michael Palin and John Cleese made surprise appearances on Saturday Night Live, they recreated the Parrot Sketch.
A short South Park skit, created specially for the BBC's Python Night, paid homage to the Parrot Sketch. Cartman tries to explain to Kyle, the shopkeeper, that Kenny is dead, borrowing nearly all of the dialogue from the Parrot sketch. An inside joke comes from the fact that the character Kenny dies nearly every episode and strangely is alive the next episode. Directly after the sketch, Trey Parker and Matt Stone discuss the opportunity of creating more Monty Python homages while letting Terry Gilliam do South Park. The two then blackmail Terry by showing his kidnapped mother.
A Stargate SG-1 episode, "Into the Fire" includes a short scene where Col. O'Neill, after killing Hathor, tries to convince her followers that she's an "ex-goddess," saying, "She's gone. She is no more. She's… well, let's face it, she's a former queen."
The sketch was also parodied in an episode of EastEnders, where Jim Branning took his dead bird back to the pet shop. Wherein the two shop assistants go about recreating the sketch, much to Jim Branning's bemusement.
Also in 2001, the Australian sketch show The Micallef Pogram [sic] included a brief parody at the beginning of its last episode. The reversal here was that the bird was alive, with the Mr Praline-type character soon realising his error. Later the host complained that the anorak and type of bird were wrong as well.
Jerry Fodor, a philosopher known for his extensive use of jokes in his writings, describes a theory on concepts in his brief essay Having Concepts: a Brief Refutation of the Twentieth Century rhetorically saying "But this parrot too is pretty certainly dead".
On his 2005 tour of New Zealand, John Cleese recreated the Parrot Sketch, substituting a dead sheep for the parrot.
The British comedy programme The Office, written by and starring Ricky Gervais, also contains a brief reference to the dead parrot sketch. David Brent's (played by Ricky Gervais) and Chris Finch's quiz team are named the Dead Parrots and they repeat the line: "it rests in peace, if you hadn't nailed it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies!" when introduced, to which the quiz-master, Gareth, laughs and simply says "Monty Python" while being the only one apart from Brent and Finch who looks amused.
On Jasper Carrot's 24 Carrot Gold Tour (where the audience voted for the material in the show) he opened with the joke: "Someone from Newark wanted the dead parrot sketch. Newark, the only city in England that's an anagram of Wanker."
The Neko Desktop Accessory for Macintosh System 7 allowed the mouse to be configured as a blue bird, which was claimed to be a "Norwegian Blue Parrot."
There's a brief mention of the Norwegian Blue on page 245 of Jasper Fforde's book The Big Over Easy (Mary Mary and Lord Spongg admire it for its "beautiful plumage).
In the classic computer game Colossal Cave Adventure, a small bird is in evidence at one point in the game. When the player attempts to FEED BIRD, the program responds with "The bird is not hungry (it's just pining for the fjords)" -- an obvious early reference to the Dead Parrot Sketch.
In the MUD Walraven, if one attempts a combat action on a corpse, the system reply is "This is an ex-parrot!"
In John Cleese's appearance on The Muppet Show, he plays a traditional pirate in a Pigs in Space segment. When the parrot on his shoulder nags him, he threatens it: "Do you want to become an ex-parrot?"
A list of different breeds of swamp dragon in Terry Pratchett's The Last Hero includes "The Nothingfjord Blue. Wonderful scales, but a tendency to homesickness".
The "Asian Bride Shop" sketch in Goodness Gracious Me, although starting off as a parody of the Cheese Shop sketch, ends with a customer complaining his bride is dead.
The Christmas 1998 issue of David Langford's science fiction newsletter Ansible includes a lengthy parody of the sketch by Simon Bradshaw, based on Ken Macleod's suggestion that the upcoming technological singularity might get hit by the (then also upcoming) Millennium Bug.[1]
The character of Norweigan "Weej" Blue appears in the comic Hopeless Savages.
