Monty Python's 40th Birthday

Four decades on, the image of John Cleese’s increasingly hysterical pet-shop customer — pacamac buttoned up, hair plastered down, vowels strangulated — remains one of the most memorable in television history. No other comedy series has seared itself into the national consciousness quite like Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

And, if the sketches were ever to be placed in order of popularity, Cleese’s confrontation with the chirpily evasive Michael Palin — the shopkeeper who simply will not admit that the inert “Norwegian blue” is dead — would undoubtedly come top. Indeed, when Channel 4 counted down the 50 greatest comedy moments, the “Dead Parrot” sketch perched at number two, just below the, frankly, far inferior “Lou and Andy at the swimming pool” sketch from Little Britain.