A very silly walk AF archive / Alamy

Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks sketch has been making audiences laugh for 50 years, and now we have a sense of just how silly its star’s walking style is. An analysis shows that John Cleese’s comedic gait is about 6.7 times more variable – or sillier – than standard human walking.

To biologists who study the origin and evolution of bipedal walking, the Ministry of Silly Walks television sketch is famous, says Nathaniel Dominy at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. It gives a sense of some of the extreme variation …