Monty Python's Travel Agent Sketch

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                        Monty Python's Flying Circus!
                                  presents
       From Episode 31: "The All-England Summerize Proust Competition"

                          The Travel Agent Sketch

           (Fade up on close up of picture of Everest.  Pull back to reveal
           travel agent's office.)

Bounder:   (MICHAEL)  Mount Everest, forbidding, aloof, terrifying.  The
           highest place on earth.  No I'm sorry we don't go there.  No.
           (By the time Bounder is saying his last sentence the camera has
           revealed the office and Bounder himself sitting at a desk.
           Bounder now replaces the telephone into which he has been
           speaking.  After a pause the tourist -- Mr Smoke-Too-Much --
           enters the office and approaches Mr Bounder's secretary.)

Tourist:   (ERIC)  Good morning.

Secretary: (CAROL)  Oh good morning.  (sexily)  Do you want to go
           upstairs?

Tourist:   What?

Secretary: (sexily) Do you want to go upstairs?  (brightly)  Or have
           you come to arrange a holiday?

Tourist:   Er ... to arrange a holiday.

Secretary: Oh, sorry.

Tourist:   What's all this about coming upstairs?

Secretary: Oh, nothing, nothing.  Now, where were you thinking of
           going?

Tourist:   India.

Secretary: Ah one of our adventure holidays!

Tourist:   Yes!

Secretary: Well you'd better speak to Mr Bounder about that.  Mr
           Bounder, this gentleman is interested in the India Overland.
           (Tourist walks over to Bounder's desk where he is greeted by
           Bounder.)

Bounder:   Ah.  Good morning.  I'm Bounder of Adventure.

Tourist:   My name is Smoke-Too-Much.

Bounder:   What?

Tourist:   My name is Smoke-Too-Much.  Mr Smoke-Too-Much.

Bounder:   Well, you'd better cut down a bit then.

Tourist:   What?

Bounder:   You'd better cut down a bit then.

Tourist:   Oh I see!  Cut down a bit, for Smoke-Too-Much.

Bounder:   Yes, ha ha ... I expect you get people making jokes about your
           name all the time, eh?

Tourist:   No, no actually.  Actually, it never struck me before.  Smoke
           ...Too...Much!

Bounder:   Anyway, you're interested in one of our adventure holidays, eh?

Tourist:   Yes.  I saw your advert in the bolour supplement.

Bounder:   The what?

Tourist:   The bolour supplement.

Bounder:   The colour supplement?

Tourist:   Yes.  I'm sorry I can't say the letter 'B'.

Bounder:   'C'?

Tourist:   Yes, that's right.  It's all due to a trauma I suffered when I
           was a spoolboy.  I was attacked by a bat.

Bounder:   A cat?

Tourist:   No a bat.

Bounder:   Can you say the letter 'K'?

Tourist:   Oh yes.  Khaki, king, kettle, Kuwait, Keble Bollege Oxford.

Bounder:   Why don't you use the letter 'K' instead of the letter 'C'?

Tourist:   What you mean ... spell bolour with a 'K'?

Bounder:   Yes.

Tourist:   Kolour.  Oh, that's very good, I never thought of that.

Bounder:   Anyway, about the holiday.

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

Bounder:   Ah good.

Tourist:   Yes I quite agree with you, I mean what's the point of being
           treated like a sheep, I mean I'm fed up going abroad and being
           treated like a sheep, what's the point of being carted around in
           busses, 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 cos they 'overdid it on
           the first day'!

Bounder:   (agreeing patiently)  Yes.  Absolutely, yes, I quite agree...

Tourist:   And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellevueses
           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
           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:   (beginning to get fed up)  Yes, yes, now...

Tourist:   And then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with diarrhoea
           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 then 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 Tuesday's 'Daily Express'
           and he drones 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 Cuban Libres.

Bounder:   Will you be quiet please.

Tourist:   And sending tinted postcards of places they don't know they
           haven't even visited, 'to all at number 22, weather wonderful
           our room is marked with an "X".  Wish you were here.'

Bounder:   Shut up.

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

Bounder:   Shut up!

Tourist:   'Where you can even get Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and
           onion...'

Bounder:   Shut up!!!

Tourist:   '...crisps and the accordionist plays "Maybe its because I'm a
           Londoner"' and spending four days on the tarmac at Lutton
           airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried
           Watney's sandwiches...

Bounder:   Shut your bloody gob!  I've had enough of this, I'm going to
           ring the police.

           (He dials and waits.  Cut to a corner of a police station.  One
           policeman is knitting, another is making a palm tree out of old
           newspapers.  The phone rings.)

Knitting Policeman:  Oh...take it off the hook.  (they do so)

           (Cut back to the travel agent's office.  The man is still going
           on, the travel agent looks crossly at the phone and puts it
           down.  Then picks it up and dials again.)

Bounder:   Hello, operator, operator...I'm trying to get the police...
           the police yes, what?  (takes his shoe off and looks inside)
           nine and a half, nine and a half, yes, yes...I see...well can
           you keep trying please...

           (Through all this the tourist is going on:)

Tourist:   ...and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are vomiting and
           throwing up on the plastic flowers and they keep telling you
           it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in
           Iceland waiting to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can
           pick you up on the tarmac at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and
           you sit on the tarmac until six because of 'unforeseen
           difficulties', i.e. the permanent strike of the Air Traffic
           Control in Paris, and nobody can go to the lavatory until you
           take off at eight, and when you get to Malaga airport
           everybody's swallowing Enterovioform tablets and queuing for the
           toilets and when you finally get to the hotel there's no water
           in the taps, there's no water in the pool, there's no water in
           the bog and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet, and
           half the rooms are double-booked and you can't sleep anyway...
           (The secretary comes in and looks into the camera.)

Secretary: Oh!  Sorry to keep you waiting...will you come this way
           please...

           (The camera follows her as she leads us out of the office, with
           agent and client still rabbiting on, down a short passage to a
           documentary interview set where the two participants are sitting
           waiting.  We follow her into the set.)

Secretary: Here they are.  (she turns to the camera again, which moves
           a little towards her, as if waiting to be summoned)  Just here
           will do fine!  Goodbye.
    

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Monty Python's Travel Agent Sketch

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