The Tracks Proper : Side 1

Side 1 Track 1

Flying Sheep (a) The Sketch

So anyway, the album begins just as the TV series did, with a sketch called Flying Sheep. Terry Jones and Graham Chapman reprise their television roles as a City Gent and Country Bumpkin, respectively. And respectably. Right off the bat, someone who has never heard nor seen Python before can respect their writing abilities based on the dialogue in this sketch. Chapman is not a redneck-type country bumpkin of the Jeff Foxworthy/Junior Samples blue collar comedy school:

"It is my belief that these sheep are labouring under

the misapprehension that they are birds!

Observe their behaviour..." 

"A sheep is not a creature of the air; it has enormous difficulty in the comparatively simple act of perching..."
 

"As for flight, their bodies are totally unadapted to the problems of aviation..."

"That's a depressing prospect for an ambitious sheep." 

Now remember, it's the country guy saying this! Not the city gent. You never hear Larry the Cable Guy or Gomer Pyle or any other stereotypical country bumpkin speak so eloquently and multi-syllabically. Right out of the box, you can tell that this record is not traditional sketch comedy. It's... well... something completely different.

Terry Jones and Graham Chapman in the original TV version of Flying Sheep

There are always a few differences between the TV versions of Python sketches and the album versions, but I'm not going to cover each and every difference between them. That'd be tedious: in the TV version, Jones says, "oh, jolly good!" when Chapman tells him he lives here, but on the album he says, "oh, good for you!" But I will cite differences if I think they are interesting enough.

Flying Sheep (b) French Interpretation

What exactly are the commercial
possibilities of ovine aviation?

The Flying Sheep sketch is followed-up on the album by a brief dialogue between John Cleese and Michael Palin speaking mock-French as they discuss the "commercial possibilities of ovine aviation." (I looked it up: Ovine means of, relating to, or possessing the characteristics of sheep; just as Bovine means of, relating to, or possessing the characteristics of oxen, cows and/or buffalo. You can learn a lot from Monty Python albums.) (Providing of course you've got a dictionary nearby.) 

This same French bit -- unofficially known as le Pouffe Celebre -- also followed the Flying Sheep sketch on the first episode of the TV series, but lasted much longer, due to the fact that on TV they had visuals to keep you interested. On the album, it's just some French gibberish that leads into the next little bit of the vox pop of pepperpots discussing their likes and dislikes of French versus German philosophers.

Flying Sheep (c) Pepperpots Vox Populi

"Oh, we get lots of French people
around here!" "All over!" "Yess!"

WTF are Pepperpots? Pepperpots are the little old ladies that you see running amok on Monty Python's TV show. It's the guys dressed in drag and speaking in high voices. John Cleese and Graham Chapman started calling these short, stout, round, often loud ladies pepperpots because they're rather shaped like pepper pots.
So WTF does Vox Populi mean? It's a Latin phrase meaning Voice of the People. More popularly known as Man-In-the-Street interviews, Vox Pops are a major linking device used often on the Monty Python TV show, but not so much on the albums. The pepperpots appear briefly, here on the Monty Python's Flying Circus record, answering the question:

INTERVIEWER:

How do you get along with French people?

PEPPERPOTS:

Oh very well! Yessss. So do I, yes! So does Mrs. E!

I like them... They think well, don't they... I mean, be fair:

Blaise Pascal, Jean Paul Sartre, Voltaire, Rene Descartes...

INTERVIEWER:

What do think of the Germans?

PEPPERPOTS:

RUBBISH!! Rubbish! Emmanuel Kant! 

Bloody "Ego posits itself!" My foot!

Nietzche?! HAH!

This, according to Python, is what little old ladies talk about in supermarkets. 

And now for something completely different...

Pepperpots & a Pepperpot

Side 1 Track 2

Television Interviews (a) Link Announcer

Four and a half minutes into Monty Python's Flying Circus we hear -- for the first time -- the phrase And Now For Something Completely Different. Eric Idle holds the honor of being the first Python to say the phrase, both on this album and on the TV series. He says it as a television announcer abruptly changing the pace of the programming, in this case, getting away from the pepperpot vox pops and into an interview program. There is no fanfare for the first time this phrase is used, there is no audience applause or even laughter. That's because this phrase was never meant to be a Python catch phrase, even though in 1971 it became the name of their first movie.

And now for something completely different was simply a phrase used by REAL television announcers when abruptly jumping from one type of program to another. For example, going from a show about horse jumping into a popular music program, a BBC announcer would state, "And now for something completely different, we present..." and so on. On a trivial note (and, really, isn't this and almost every other blog out there based on trivial notes?) on the 1967 British ITV series At Last The 1948 Show, which featured John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Marty Feldman, and Tim Brooke-Taylor, the show's announcer and link-person, The Lovely Aimie MacDonald, utters the phrase and now for something completely different when linking two sketches together. If you want, you can see it if you buy the At Last The 1948 Show DVDs. (Speaking of links, here's a link to Amazon.com.)

Soundtrack album for At Last The 1948 Show featuring
Python's John Cleese and Graham Chapman as well as
The Lovely Aimi MacDonald (inset)

(And yes, any time one mentions The Lovely Aimi MacDonald, one must refer to her as The Lovely Aimi MacDonald in full, always.)

But now back to the album at hand, er, foot, Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Television Interviews (b) Arthur Frampton : The Man With Three Buttocks

The album continues to follow the sketches from the first episode of the TV series with an interview of a man claiming to have... well... a bit to spare in the botty department. (British slang, botty = bottom.) Cleese is the uncomfortable interviewer, too timid to even mention his guest's... er... affliction on the airwaves:

"With me now is Arthur Frampton who... er... ahem, 

Mr Frampton, I understand that you... umm... 

is that chair comfortable?"

In the televised version of this sketch, Mr Arthur Frampton is portrayed by Terry Jones. Here on the album, the tri-buttocked guest is played by Michael Palin. One might assume this to be an "equal time"measure, since Jones just had a major speaking part moments earlier in the Flying Sheep sketch and Palin had yet to be heard.

Jones (right) as Frampton in the TV series. Curious Cleese (left) as the Interviewer.

As uncomfortable as Cleese is to mention this delicate subject to his audience, Mr Frampton is, to say the least, proud...

"I got three cheeks!"

He is not, however, as willing to... well... back up his claim.

INTERVIEWER:

We were wondering if you could see your way clear... to... well... giving us a quick... a quick... visual...

er... Mr Frampton -- Will you take your trousers down?

FRAMPTON:

What??!! I'm not taking me trousers down on television, what do you think I am?

In a gag not incorporated into the audio-only version on the record,
a BBC cameraman attempts to glimpse Arthur Frampton's tri-cheek claim.

INTERVIEWER:

Now see here, Mr Frampton! It's perfectly easy for someone to come along here to the BBC simply claiming that they have a bit to spare in the botty department... 

the point is our viewers need proof!

FRAMPTON:

I've been on Persian Radio... and The Forces Network!

More to come...