My dear readers, I just got back from attending the simulcast of the final night of Monty Python Live (Mostly), the long talked about Monty Python reunion for one last big show before the five surviving members join the late Graham Chapman in the bleedin’ choir invisible. While I’d have given anything to see it live – slim chance given tickets told out in just over 43 seconds – I can’t describe just how it felt to see it at all. Not just for getting to see the last (in all likelihood) performance of Monty Python mind you, but for doing so in a packed theater full of fellow fans, all looking at each other knowingly as certain old favorites were set up, laughing uproariously just as much as we’d done the first time we saw them, and joining in an admittedly heartwarming sing-a-long of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life“. It’s an experience I fully encourage you to seek out while it’s still replaying in theaters.

It’s really hard to do proper justice to the impact Monty Python had on comedy and popular culture. It’s been said that they did for comedy what the Beatles did for music, but even that falls short, because we’d have still had rock and roll without the Fab Four, but comedy today would be unrecognizable without Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. World-famous for their surrealist, unconventional style of comedy, so unbrandable they invented the word Pythonesque just to describe it, Monty Python’s wide-reaching influence has turned them into a comedic and cultural institution.

Like countless other young fans before me, I can recall sessions of laughing fits watching episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, quoting Monty Python and the Holy Grail nearly word for word among my friends, and considered it a rite of passage when I was kicked out of church once for singing “Every Sperm is Sacred“. Monty Python has been bringing laughter to the world since 1969, its no small shame that, even if this doesn’t turn out to be their last time together, that the day is fast approaching that the final curtain calls for the five remaining members.

That said, I can think of no better way to memorialize the (more than likely) last bow of the Flying Circus, than by counting down what I feel to be the Top Ten Best Monty Python Sketches. I only had one ground rule making this list: I am limiting the nominees to sketches from the original run of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. There’s nothing wrong with the Monty Python movies mind you, but I feel it best to examine and enjoy the movies on their own merits – and indeed you should, it’s a triage of some of the funniest material ever put to film. Much the same, I fully encourage you to watch as much of the original TV series itself – it was only by intense and repeated study that I managed to put this list together after all, and if these be the brightest gems of the bunch, Monty Python’s Flying Circus as a whole is still a comedic gold mine. Plus, you can’t tell me which of your favorites I may have missed if you don’t have any to choose from!

And now for something completely different, the Top 10 Best Monty Python Sketches.

10) Crunchy Frog



Kicking off our list is a sketch centered on a pair of hygiene inspectors sent to inquire about a chocolatier’s merchandise, that’s offers a bit too much truth in advertising. Chiefly it’s ‘Crunchy Frog’, which is quite literally a frog coated in chocolate, crunchy because “if we took the bones out, it wouldn’t be crunchy, would it?”, followed by Ram’s Bladder Cup, Anthrax Ripple, Cockroach Clusters, and others. It’s largely centered on wordplay and the growing absurdity of the chocolates in question.

Though similar to the Cheese Shop sketch, I gave Crunchy Frog the edge for two reasons. The first is that, in addition to the back and forth between John Cleese and Terry Jones, we get Graham Chapman’s expressive and increasingly nauseous reactions to the descriptions of each candy. The second, is pop cultural legacy, with several of the candies listed in the sketch referenced elsewhere, including Harry Potter, which has since made selling Chocolate Frogs and Cockroach Clusters part of its own merchandising empire – wonder if the Whizzo Chocolate Company had a trademark?

9) Dirty Fork



Also known as the Restaurant Sketch, this Monty Python classic is a highlight of one of the troupes trademarks: taking what would be an otherwise mundane event – in this case a night out at a restaurant – and then adding their Pythonesque flair for utter insanity – where a complaint about a dirty fork results in the manager committing suicide, the head chef threatening to kill the patrons, and culminating in a punch line so bad not even I can condone the pun.

Of course, the Python’s did that for a reason in this sketch – another big trademark of Monty Python was for the sketches to end abruptly, most famously with the uniformed Colonel played by Graham Chapman stopping the sketch claiming ‘it’s too silly’, then breaking the fourth wall in explaining the sketch before ushering in the new one. Monty Python would go to great lengths to avoid making punch lines, and in many ways, this sketch is their own way of explaining why. Plus, it’s actually used as part of the educational curriculum in Britain – who ever said Monty Python isn’t educational?

8) Nudge Nudge



Also called “Candid Photography”, this sketch is set in a pub where an enthusiastic young man, played by Eric Idle, keeps asking a dour older gentleman, played by Terry Jones, questions about his wife and personal life of an increasingly sexual nature, interspersed with variances of the titular phrase, ‘nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.’ It doesn’t go where you think it goes, trust me, know what I mean?

The personal favorite Monty Python sketch of Elvis Presley himself, the King certainly had good tastes. The buildup, contrasting characters, and infectious over-enthusiasm from Idle only makes it all the funnier when the other shoe falls. It’s also another notable Monty Python contribution to the English language, with the phrase ‘nudge nudge, wink wink‘ now universally recognized as an idiom for sexual innuendo. Now that’s a phrase that’s been around a bit, eh squire?

7) Self-Defense Against Fresh Fruit



Think things can’t get any more ridiculous than a self-defense class teaching grown men how to defend themselves against attackers wielding fresh fruit? How about if the methods involve cartoonish 16-ton weights and tiger traps? Just don’t mention pointed sticks.

This sketch where John Cleese plays an erratic self-defense teacher who gleefully murders his own students – and then claims it was in self-defense – is a simple one, but the actions and reactions of the Pythons makes it funny from start to finish.

6) The Lumberjack Song



Originally written in 15 minutes as filler when they had no idea how to segue from the preceding sketch, the Lumberjack song has since become a Python classic. Starting with Michael Palin leaving the last sketch, expressing his desire to lop down trees in British Columbia, his best girl at his side, and breaks into song with a choir of Mounties backing him up.

The pleasure here is the slow burn reveal with each verse of the song, and the confused reactions of the Mounties, and slowly spreading look of shock on Connie Booth’s face as they find out our lumberjack friend is a cross-dresser who ‘wishes he’s been born a girlie, just like his dear papa’. It’s crude and a bit juvenile, but it doesn’t get any less funny. Monty Python it its musical, cross-dressing finest.

5) Upper Class Twit of the Year



Five blue-blooded twits – such sterling examples including Nigel “Incubator” Jones, whose best friend is a tree and works as a stockbroker – must work their way through an obstacle course including events like walking in a straight line, kicking a beggar, and backing into an old lady with their sports car. This is the 127th Upper Class Twit of the Year Show, Monty Python’s fifth best sketch, and one of my personal favorites.

Written as Monty Python’s way of thumbing their noses at British high society, with narration from John Cleese similar to what you’d expect from a horse race, the Python’s really go above and beyond into making the titular Twits the most detestable dimwitted toadies imaginable – one of them even manages to run himself over with his own car – and you can’t help but laugh as natural selection goes to work. It’s also one of the most imitated Monty Python sketches.



Why yes, there is a version with Hipsters.

4) The Ministry of Silly Walks



Though well-known for their wordplay and absurdist humor, Monty Python was also well-known for being masters of slapstick and physical humor, and nowhere is that more on display with the sketch so famous, John Cleese now hates it because he got tired of getting requests to do it, The Ministry of Silly Walks.

Centered on a civil servant at the titular government agency, which as the name implies, all walk in exaggerated silly variations, as he negotiates a grant with a hopeful applicant to develop his own “silly walk”. No doubt a large part of the humor comes from how straight it is played, which draws attention to the satirical heart of the sketch, which pokes fun at the extremes of government bureaucracy, to the point Cleese’s character laments that the Ministry of Silly Walks is less funded than the Ministry of Defense.

3) The Funniest Joke in the World



The so-called Funniest Joke in the World was the closing sketch to the first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, “Whither Canada”, you’d think a sketch promising that much in the title alone would simply be a setup for disappointment – instead, it’s as good a primer for Monty Python’s brand of humor as you could ask for, and if not the funniest sketch they ever did, it easily makes number three on my list.

The premise, like most of their sketches, is a simple one, then stretched to hilarious extremes, in this case, a joke that is so funny, that once you’ve read it or heard it, you die laughing. Which in this case, results in the joke being used as a weapon by allied forces in World War II, with Germans dying in droves of lethal laughter fits.

Oh, and for those of you with the morbid curiosity as to what this killer joke is:

On the off-chance I may have just killed anyone who can read German, I am so sorry. Moving on…

2) The Spanish Inquisition



“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” It’s so iconic, I wager a good many of you shouted it at your computer screens as soon as you saw the title. Its inclusion as one of Monty Python’s best is as expected as Michael Palin stumbling over his listing of fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency… so on and so on.

Of all of Monty Python’s sketches, the Spanish Inquisition is perhaps the best of example of the troupes abilities as comedians – they took something as horribly infamous as the Spanish Inquisition, and turned up the absurdity to such a degree that it’s been almost impossible to take it seriously every sense. It’s a potent reminder of the power of comedy, and the lasting cultural impact of Monty Python – a power not even those shiny red uniforms can match.

And what is the best Monty Python sketch of all time?

1) Dead Parrot



Monty Python’s most famous, most quoted and in my humble opinion, the very best sketch they ever produced. It’s quite likely the finest bit of sketch comedy ever penned or performed, and one of the funniest things you will ever watch.

Inspired by a trip by Michael Palin to the mechanic, who insisted there was nothing wrong with his car, the exchange between the disgruntled customer, played by John Cleese, and Michael Palin, playing the shopkeeper, is Monty Python at it’s very best. Palin grasping at straws as to explain why the Parrot isn’t dead, Cleese’s every increasingly exasperated metaphors and monologues driving home just how very dead the parrot is, even the distinctive thunk the parrot makes when its head is rapped on the counter, everything from timing to wordplay in this sketch is absolutely perfect.

The parrot may be dead, but this sketch will live on for all time. As shall Monty Python.