Here.
My personal favorite is this.
Yeah, the one in the OP is the one I had in mind.
But my personal favorite is the version a friend and I performed at our high school talent show in 1982. Got huge laughs even though I had to improvise a bird cage and parrot with a paint can lid, wire hanger and a blue glove.
Dear God, that was brilliant.
It really hammered home the point made in the second panel of this xkcd.
After watching the original (which I might have seen, long ago), I have to ask, did the phrase “pining for the fjords” come from this sketch?
I’m pretty sure.
I like the one on their Final Ripoff CD. For the most part, it’s the same, but the ending is different… and I like it!
What’s the ending on that one?
Cleese told a story once about doing the sketch in some public forum, and Palin throwing him a curveball. As we know, the story ends like this:
“I’ve had a look, and we’re right out of parrots.”
“I see, I see, I get the picture.”
“I’ve got a slug.”
“…does it talk?”
“Not really, no.”
“Well, it’s scarcely a replacement, then, is it?”
But on this occasion, Palin threw in a new line:
“I’ve got a slug.”
“…does it talk?”
“Well, it mutters a bit.”
And Cleese apparently started laughing so hard they couldn’t concluded the sketch as normal.
I had the same surprised reaction… totally didn’t expect it. I was driving when I heard it and if I hadn’t been stopped at a light when I heard it, I would have had to pull over because I was laughing so hard.