The Bishop of Leicester

It is the dawn of time...

This earth we know so well is a smoldering, 

inhospitable place. 

No plants grow; No creature can survive. 

The hard, implacable rocks that form our mountain ranges are being crushed and folded by forces that will take millions of years to shape them. 

These are the forces! 

This is the power that drives the hand that drinks Treadmill, the mighty lager, with the world's first great taste of fish!

Mike at the Mic

Michael Palin recorded the "Treadmill Lager Sketch" in 1980 for Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album. He played the role of the Bishop of Leicester, who, for some reason, had been hired to be the corporate spokesman for Treadmill Lager. In character, Palin is in a recording studio, dramatically telling of the creation of earth in evolutionary terms with grandiose descriptions of rocks forming over millions of years. An unusual script to present a presumed creationist. But we don't know he's a Bishop until his speech is interrupted by recording engineer, Eric Idle:

IDLE: 

Bishop, don't say "of fish."

PALIN: 

Hmmm?

IDLE: 

Don't say "of fish" at the end. It doesn't mean anything.

At Last The 1948 Show album

This is one of those sketches that kinda grew on me. Actually, the whole Contractual Obligation Album had to grow on me. The album came out late in Monty Python's career and I don't think a lot of effort was put into it. How dare I make such a statement? Well, the title, for a start, Contractual Obligation Album, hints that somebody made them make this album. And the fact that many of the sketches -- not so much the songs -- were from older scripts pre-dating Python: "The Bookshop," for example, dates from 1967's At Last The 1948 Show with Cleese and Marty Feldman, and actually appears on that program's soundtrack LP...

1967 Frost Report album

Likewise, the "String" sketch also appeared on TV in 1967 but on The Frost Report with David Frost, and thus can also be found on a soundtrack album for that show called The Frost Report on Everything as "Selling String," performed by Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker, a.k.a. The Two Ronnies.

But the "Bishop of Leicester/Treadmill Lager" sketch appears to be an original, making its Python debut on the Contractual Obligation Album.

These are the forces!

This is the power that drives the band...

IDLE:

Hand!

PALIN:

Of course! Sorry! Sorry! Can't think what came over me!

IDLE:

We'll start again, Bishop, same place.

These are the forces!

This is the power that drives the hand that drinks Treadmill, the mighty lager with the world's first great taste of fish--oh damn!

PALIN:

Sorry! Sorry! I remembered the "hand" but forgot the...

IDLE:

Yes, yes. That's alright, Bishop. John? Can we edit out the "of fish?"

JOHN:

Yeah!

With the recording session over, we cut to the engineering booth where Eric Idle and Graham Chapman discuss the performance of the Bishop of Leicester and why they couldn't, instead, have gotten the Bishop of, say, Bath-and-Wells, for instance...

GRAHAM:

He's doing frozen peas for Nigel.

ERIC:

Lucky bastard! He's so good!

*** STOP PRESS ***

The "frozen peas" statement above may be a bizarre reference to the advertising business. There's a phrase used in advertising, such as, "Don't go all frozen peas on me!" which means "don't mess up the commercial by constantly questioning the script!" (In other words, "read what's on the page!") The "Frozen Peas" idiom dates back to the early 1970s when grandiose actor/director/auteur, Orson "Citizen Kane" Welles was in England recording a voiceover for a television advert for Findus' Frozen Peas, in which Welles -- while reading the script -- ends up berating not only the script, but the director, the writer, the product, and pretty much everything and everyone associated with the ad. This is a blooper reel that has been circulating for years and is quite entertaining in a "This was never meant to be heard but I can't stop listening to it" guilty-pleasure-sort of way. It's probably on YouTube. At any rate, Welles reportedly walked out of the recording session claiming "no amount of money is worth this!" Perhaps the "Bath-and-Wells" statement is a subtle reference to Mr. Welles. Perhaps not.

*** RESUME PRESS ***

Having said that, Michael Palin's Bishop goes a bit "frozen peas" on Eric Idle's Director by claiming, more pastorally than did Welles, that the commercial is -- my favorite line -- "Dochtrinely a bit of a mess..."

IDLE:

Sorry?

PALIN:

Well, all that stuff about "the dawn of time" and rocks "developing over millions of years," you know... not quite A-1 theory with our lot...

IDLE:

It's only a commercial.

(One wonders if anyone had the wherewithal to say these simple words to Orson Welles!)

PALIN:

Oh yes! Yes! Of course! Course! I'm not criticizing. It's just... well... I mean... not quite The Creation as we see it.

IDLE:

Well, good-bye.

PALIN:

Good! Good! Fine! (Oh, one more thing!) And the... uh... the check... will... be...

IDLE:

... with your agent on Tuesday, Bishop.

Why has the Bishop of Leicester got an agent? Why is he doing commercials for beer? Why is the Bishop of Bath-and-Wells doing adverts for Nigel's Frozen Peas? Why did the Bishop of Worcester do an entire Snippetty Dippetty Gift Catalog promo on one ski? And most importantly, why is Leicester pronounced "Lester" and Worcester pronounced "Wooster?"

Look for answers to these and other questions in our next exciting Another Monty Python Blog post.