A brontosaurus and four yorkshiremen

You sometimes forget what riches are to be found on Youtube (scant roses scattered among the many turds, with a good nose or a trusty map needed to steer you right), and it was only recently that I thought to check what Monty Python material may be found there; the answer, apparently, is a lot.

Monty Python started on BBC the year I was born and ran for five years, until 1974, and was an effectively unique and never equalled mix of surreal imagery and humour. I did not discover Python in real time, being far more concerned at the time with learning to walk and talk (although I am sure my early efforts at both were silly enough to be consistent), and I actually first discovered it actually through the films ('Life of Brian', of course) and cassettes of the live shows.

There is so much to discuss on Python I think I will come back to it on several posts in the future, but I will kick off now with two sketches which are not perhaps as famous as the Dead Parrot or the Cheese Shop, but which I discovered on those early tapes and still love.

The first is the theory of Miss Anne Elk on brontosauruses, featuring a simply wonderful performance by John Cleese:



I particularly love the spin-off idea of 'Elk theories' scientific observations that are not theories but merely minimal accounts, of which I have come across a few in my ofter life in research.

The second sketch is of Four Yorkshiremen looking back from a position of comfort on their early lives and trying to outdo each other in painting the bleakest of pictures:



This sketch, according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, actually predated Flying Circus, being first performed in 1967, but by a group include Cleese and Chapman, and never appeared on the show itself, although it was in their live shows (including the famour one at the Hollywood bowl).

I cannot say that all Monty Python shows were classics, or that every sketch worked for me, but there is a hell of a lot of gold there, and I will use Youtube to mine some more of it in the future.