Dead Parrot Sketch - Variations of The Sketch

Variations of The Sketch

In the 1971 film And Now For Something Completely Different, the sketch ends with the shopkeeper explaining that he always wanted to be a lumberjack, and ignoring Mr Praline's protests of that being irrelevant, subsequently begins singing "The Lumberjack Song".

The Monty Python Live at Drury Lane album features a live version of the sketch, which is slightly different from the TV version. Praline's rant about the deceased parrot includes "He fucking snuffed it!" Also, the sketch ends with the shopkeeper saying that he has a slug that does talk. Cleese, after a brief pause, says, "Right, I'll have that one, then!" According to Michael Palin's published diary, Palin changed his response in order to throw Cleese off. During this performance something occurs on stage that does not translate into audio, but causes the audience to break into hysterics upon Cleese's follow-up line "Now that's what I call a dead parrot"; since it occurs after the part of the sketch where Cleese bashes the dead bird on the counter, it's possible a part of the prop broke off.

On the Rhino Records' compilation Dead Parrot Society, a live performance has Palin cracking up while Cleese declares "Pining for the fjords? What kind of talk is that?" The audience cheers this bit of breaking character, but Palin quickly composes himself and Cleese declares "Now, look! This is nothing to laugh at!" before proceeding with the sketch. This version is included in the book and CD set The Best British Stand-Up and Comedy Routines, along with a transcript of the sketch and the Four Yorkshiremen sketch.

In The Secret Policeman's Biggest Ball, a benefit for Amnesty International, the sketch opens similarly, but ends very differently:

Mr Praline: It's dead, that's what's wrong with it.

Shopkeeper: So it is. 'Ere's your money back and a couple of holiday vouchers.

(audience goes wild)

Mr Praline: (looks completely flabbergasted) Well, you can't say Thatcher hasn't changed some things.

The 1976 Monty Python Live at City Center performance ended with the slug lines, followed by:

Shopkeeper: (long, long pause) ... Do you want to come back to my place?

Mr Praline: I thought you'd never ask.

In a 1997 Saturday Night Live performance of the sketch, Cleese added a line to the rant: "Its metabolic processes are a matter of interest only to historians!" In an interview on NPR's Fresh Air, Palin attributed an almost dead audience to his seeing guests reverently mouthing the words of the sketch, rather than laughing at it. To end the sketch, Palin asked Cleese "do you want to come back to my place?" to which Cleese said "I thought you'd never ask!"

In his published Diary, Michael Palin recalls that during the filming of Monty Python's Life of Brian in Tunisia, Spike Milligan (who happened to be there on holiday) regaled the Pythons with his own version of the Dead Parrot sketch, but changed "Norwegian Blue" to "Arctic Grey".

In a 2002 interview with Michael Parkinson, John Cleese said that when he and Palin were performing the sketch on Drury Lane, Palin made him laugh by saying, when asked if his slug could talk, "It mutters a bit" instead of "Not really." When Cleese eventually stopped laughing, he couldn't remember where they were in the sketch. He turned to the audience and asked them what the next line was, and people shouted it at him, causing him to wonder, "What is the point of this?" He also says that when he and Palin were asked to do the sketch for Saturday Night Live, they sat down together to try to remember the lines, and when they got stuck they considered just going out and stopping somebody on the street to ask how it went, since everybody seemed to have it memorised.

Margaret Thatcher famously used the sketch in a speech at the Conservative Party Conference in 1990, before ending the speech by commenting, "And now for something completely different."

Trey Parker and Matt Stone made a South Park version of the sketch containing Cartman angrily returning a dead Kenny to Kyle's shop. Most of the lines are the same in the original sketch. It ends when Terry Gilliam's animations play around with Cartman and everything is crushed by the giant foot.