Monty Python's Flying Circus (TV Series)

The All England Summarise Proust Competition (1972)

Eric Idle: Summarise Proust Announcer, Second Voiceover, Third Climber, Patrice, Advert Voice, Second Fireman, Veronica, First Booth, Mr. Smoke-Too-Much

Photos 

Quotes 

• Veronica Smalls : Hello, last week on "Party Hints" I showed you how to make a small plate of goulash go round 26 people, how to get the best out of your canapés, and how to unblock your loo. This week I'm going to tell you what to do if there is an armed communist uprising near your home when you're having a party. Well obviously it'll depend how far you've got with your party when the signal for Red Revolt is raised. If you're just having preliminary aperitifs - Dubonnet, a sherry or a sparkling white wine - then the guests will obviously be in a fairly formal mood and it will be difficult to tell which are the communist agitators. So the thing to do is to get some cloth and some bits of old paper, put it down on the floor, and shoot everybody. This will deal with the Red Menace on your own doorstep. If you're having canapés, as I showed you last week, or an outdoor barbecue, then the thing to do is set fire to all the houses in the street. This will stir up anti-communist hatred and your neighbours will be right with you as you organize counter-revolutionary terror. So you see, if you act promptly enough, any left-wing uprising can be dealt with by the end of the party. Bye!

• Voiceover : Good evening, and welcome to the Arthur Ludlow Memorial Baths, Newport, for this year's finals of the All-England Summarize Proust Competition. As you may remember, each contestant has to give a brief summary of Proust's "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu," once in a swimsuit, and once in evening dress. The field has now narrowed to three finalists, and your judges tonight are: Alec and Eric Bedser, ex-Surrey cricketers; Stewart Surridge, ex-Captain of Surrey; Omar Sharif; Laurie Fishlock, ex-Surry opening batsman; Peter May, the former Surrey and England Captain; and Yehudi Manuhin, the world-famous violinist and the President of the Surrey Cricket Club.

• Mr. Smoketoomuch : Well I saw your advert in the paper and I've been on package tours several times, you see, and I decided that this was for me.

  Bounder of Adventure : Ah, good.

  Mr. Smoketoomuch : Yes, I quite agree with you, I mean what's the point of being treated like a sheep, I mean I'm fed up with going abroad and being treated like a sheep, what's the point of being carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Boventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their 'Sunday Mirrors', complaining about the tea, 'Oh they don't make it properly here do they not like at home' stopping at Majorcan bodegas, selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in cotton sun frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cause they overdid it on the first day!

  Bounder of Adventure : Yes, absolutely, yes, I quite agree...

  Mr. Smoketoomuch : ...and being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Bontinentals with their international luxury modern roomettes and their Watney's Red Barrel and their swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending to be acrobats and forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging in to the queues and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss your bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night there's a bloody cabaret in the bar featuring some tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some big fat bloated tart with her hair Brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners.

  Bounder of Adventure : Yes, yes, now...

  Mr. Smoketoomuch : ...and then surrounded by adenoidal typists from Birmingham with diarrhea and flabby white legs and hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel, and then, once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman ruins where you can buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleedin' Watney's Red Barrel, and one night they take you to a local restaurant with local color and coloring and they show you there and you sit next to a party of people from Rhyl who keeps singing 'Torremolinos, Torremolinos' and complaining about the food: 'Oh! It's so greasy isn't it?' and then you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic and Dr. Scholl Sandals and last Tuesday's 'Daily Express' and he drones on and on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up all over the Cuba Libres.

  Bounder of Adventure : Will you be quiet please?

  Mr. Smoketoomuch : ...and sending tinted postcards of places they don't know they haven't even visited: 'To all at Number 22, weather wonderful, our room marked with an "X", wish you were here...

  Bounder of Adventure : Shut up.

  Mr. Smoketoomuch : '... food very greasy but we have managed to find this marvellous little place hidden away in the back streets...

  Bounder of Adventure : Shut up!

  Mr. Smoketoomuch : '... where you can even get Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and onion...

  Bounder of Adventure : SHUT UP!

  Mr. Smoketoomuch : '... crisps and the accordionist plays "Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner"' and spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried Watney's sandwhiches...

  Bounder of Adventure : SHUT YOUR BLOODY GOB!

  [Mr. Smoketoomuch continues on and on...]