If you were to ask anyone remotely familiar with Monty Python which sketch is best known, the overwhelming majority would undoubtedly say the dead parrot sketch shown above. In the bit, John Cleese returns his recently purchased dead parrot to the pet shop he bought it from. The pet shop owner, played by the second funniest Palin (link leads to video), Michael Palin, tries to convince Cleese that the parrot is not actually dead, nor was it when it was bought. Like everything Python, for years we’ve believed that the genius of Cleese and Palin was completely original, but like so many other things, it turns out the Greeks did it first.

dead, that’s what’s wrong with it.”

For those who believe the ancient Greeks thought of everything first, proof has been found in a 4th century AD joke book featuring an ancestor of Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch where a man returns a parrot to a shop, complaining it is dead.

The 1,600-year-old work entitled “Philogelos: The Laugh Addict,” one of the world’s oldest joke books, features a joke in which a man complains that a slave he has just bought has died, its publisher said Friday.

“By the gods,” answers the slave’s seller, “when he was with me, he never did any such thing!”

In a British comedy act Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch, first aired in 1969 and regularly voted one of the funniest ever, the pet-shop owner says the parrot, a “Norwegian Blue,” is not dead, just “resting” or “pining for the fjords.”

[From Reuters]

The ancient joke book was written by a couple of wacky Greek comedians known as Hierocles and Philagrius. It is believed that they put together the compilation of jokes, but didn’t necessarily write them. The jokes, which many have said are still used today just in modernized versions, have been made into a multi-media e-book. 71-year old British comic Jim Bowen delivers the ancient joke in front of an audience for the recording, which can be purchased online.

The English-language book will appeal to those who swear that the old jokes are the best ones. Many of its 265 gags will seem strikingly familiar, suggesting that sex, dimwits, nagging wives and flatulence have raised laughs for centuries.

In many of the jokes, a slow-witted figure known as the “student dunce” is the butt of the jokes. In one, the student dunce goes to the city and a friend asks him to buy two 15-year-old slaves: No problem,’ responds the dunce. If I don’t find two 15-year-olds, I’ll get one 30-year-old.’

In another, someone asks to borrow the student’s cloak to go down to the country. “I have a cloak to go down to your ankle, but I don’t have one that reaches to the country,” he replies.

[From Reuters]

If nothing else, your 7-year old will be rolling. Although, it is mentioned that there is a portion of the recording that is only funny if you’re aware that lettuce was considered an aphrodisiac in ancient Greece. That gives Keanu Reeves’ obsession with the shredded lettuce sandwich a whole new spin, now doesn’t it? He may very well be a sexy genius!