One of my all-time favorite Monty Python bits, from their "Flying Circus" TV show on the BBC, is the "Awful Visitors" sketch.
It starts out touching, granted. Victor and Iris are well into a quiet, romantic evening of drinks at Victor's home. After so many months working together in the soft-toy department, they're at last building a relationship that could turn into something very special. The lights are low, the music is gentle and moving.
But then the loud-talking Arthur Name shows up ("Name by name but not by nature"), who insists Victor and he met at the pub recently. Victor doesn't know why this man would invite himself over at a time like this; he hardly even knows him. Arthur Name turns up the lights, replaces the moving music with "The Stars And Stripes Forever," and reacquaints himself with Victor (so he hopes) with a little joke he heard down at the pub:
"What's brown and sounds like a bell? Dung! Ha ha, good one, eh?"
Before either Victor or Iris know it, Arthur has invited over as well a big gaggle of dysfunctional humps and creeps. The next to rear their...um...interesting heads are big, overstuffed Mr. Equator and his homely wife.
"The name's Equator, Brian Equator. Like round the middle of the earth, only with an 'L.' Bwa, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...This is my wife Audrey, she smells a bit but she has a heart of gold. Bwa, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..."
Then the doorbell sounds again. "Who the hell's that?!" yells Victor. He's sorry he asked; it's Mr. Freight, in underpants, cape, eye makeup, gloves, boots and cigarette holder, all sparkly purple and silver. "Oh my, what a simply gawstly place." Mr. Equator reacquaints himself: "Arthur, cremm de men-thee for my friend. How are you, you great poof."
(Remember that this was from a time when certain lifestyles were still largely mocked in Europe. Bear with me, please.)
"I found this simply chawming little man outside the Odeon," says Freight. He's the next guest: a shabby, retching little sicko who says he's brought over a goat. "He's been feeling a bit sick. I only hope he don't go on the carpet."
In the process, among other things, Mr. Equator sits on the cat, sexually harasses Iris twice, and when he sits down so hard in a chair that it collapses, Mrs. Equator is set laughing and laughing, until: "Ooh. I wet 'em."
At about that time, Mr. Freight's shabby lover announces: "The goat's just done a bundle."
Finally, when a huge bunch of Welsh miners are allowed in, Victor can't take anymore: "Look, get out, all of you, get out!! Go on, get out!"
Mr. Equator: "I beg your pardon?"
Victor: "I'm turning you all out. I'm not having my house filled with filthy perverts, now look, I'm going to give you all just half a minute, and then I'm going to call the police. So get out, all of you!!!"
Mr. Equator's response is simple. "I don't much like the tone of your voice." And he draws a gun and shoots Victor. It all ends with the whole bunch (minus Victor, of course, and Iris) singing "Ding-Dong Merrily On High."
I love that sketch.
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