FORTY THREE
Hamlet
Tragic music in background.
CAPTION: Hamlet
CAPTION: By William Shakespeare
CAPTION: Act One
Quick cut to a close shot of a big American car skidding round a corner. Music. Montage of close ups of tyres, foot on accelerator shots, etc. with a defening sound track. The car skids to a halt at the side of the kerb. Pull out to reveal it is in a smart Harley Street type location. The door opens and out gets a man in black leotard, with make-up and a small crown -- Hamlet, in fact. He goes into a doorway, presses the doorbell and waits. Cut to modern psychiatrist's office. Hamlet is lying on the couch.
The psychiatrist puts his head round door.
Enter a distinguished-looking psychiatrist in a white coat.
A fourth psychiatrist rushes in.
Two men in white coats bundle him out. Dr Natal Enters.
The two men come in and chase him out. Cut to a man at a consultant's desk in a smart West End surgery.
CAPTION: Dr Bruce Genuine, Chairman of the Psychiatric Association
Cut to Hamlet in an office. A big, impressive-looking computer beside him.
The door opens and a nurse appears.
The computer scuttles for the door, revealing that underneath it are six pairs of legs, in pin-striped trousers and expensive shoes. Cut to the same computer in a field. The nurse picks up a bazooka. The computer rises into the air, the nurse fires at it and it explodes.
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`Nationwide' type music and credits. Michael Charlton in a studio.
Cut to Dull sitting in a chair on Westminster Bridge.
A policeman walks up to him.
Cut to worried middle-aged lady, standing on the other side of the road, peering across. She has an identical chair in one hand.
The policeman pushes the reporter off and picks up the chair.
He goes across to Mrs Edgeworth, and tries to grab the other chair from her. Mrs Edgeworth resists. He clouts her and pulls the chair away. He brings it back across the road and sits down next to the reporter.
The policeman gets up, looks up the street, and selects a businessman with a briefcase, who is hurrying away from him. The policeman runs up to him, grabs his arm, twists it up behind his back and wrenches the briefcase from his hand. He opens it, gets out some paper, then drops briefcase before the amazed owner, and ambles back to his chair, neatly grabbing a pen from a passer-by's inside pocket.
The policeman sits down again and starts to draw, talking the while.
The policeman walks off. There is a crash of breaking glass. An alarm bell starts to ring. The reporter winces. The policeman walks into shot again, holding two bottles of beer. He sits down, opens th beers with his teeth and hands one to reporter who is very embarrassed.
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To lyrical music the camera pans across the road, and comes across a couple making love on the pavement. Pedestrians step over them.
Cut to the three of them in bed. Robert is in the middle. Father wears striped pyjamas, the others are nude. There is an uncomfortable silence.
Silence again.
He switches the light off. It is pitch dark. There is a long pause, then a strange scraping noise like a pencil being sharpened. The scraping is followed by sawing and is eventually replaced by short sharp knocking sounds. This goes on for some time.
There is a click. The light goes on. He looks disappointed. In his hands is a completely shapeless mass of wood and nails.
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Animated opening titles.
Banging on the wall from next door.
Cut to a middle-aged man with small moustache and neat pyjamas banging on the wall with what appears to be an Indian club.
He walks to a side wall and hangs his club on a hook beneath big old-fashioned art-nouveau sign clearly labelled `The Burlington Wall-banger'. He goes across to bed and gets in. In the bed are a party of four Japanese businessmen in suits with lapel badges, two lady American tourists with rain hats and cameras, three other moustached English gentlemen in pyjamas, four Tour De France riders, three Swedish businessmen, and Winston Churchill. In the corner of the room are three Tour De France bicycles. All the people ae watching TV. All in the bed are slightly tear-stained and sad, and eating popcorn and crisps, utterly absorbed. On TV we hear a Hamlet sad speech.
Cut to the TV set in the room. Close in on TV set to see Hamlet lying beside Ophelia, who is gazing at him intently. It is the same Hamlet we saw in the psychiatrist's scene. They are in one of those rather austere modern theatre sets.
The nurse from the psychiatrist's office enters.
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Animation: Ends with a poster `Boxing Tonite! The Killer vs. The Champ. 15 Rounds'.
Cut to a dressing room at Madison Square Gardens, table, chairs, towels, and the usual paraphernalia. Noise of a crowd outside. The door opens and in comes Mr Gabriello, and two assistants carrying a boxer on a stretcher. Smoke, action, excitement come in with them.
He holds up a carrier bag. gabriello goes over to it, looks inside and shouts into it.
The cleaner holds up a carrier bag.
The cleaner is ushered out.
The press surge in. The fighter is propped up.
Shot of the `New York Times' headline `Champ to be kept alive for big return'.
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During this exchange there have been six cuts to close-ups of radios of different shapes and sizes.
Pull out to reveal a pepperpot. Mrs Non-Gorilla sitting beside a radio on a park bench.
Quick cut to a hospital, doctor on a bed listening to a radio. It switches off.
Cut back to Mrs Non-Gorilla. Another pepperpot approaches.
She reveals a six-cylinder car engine on a white tray, on a trolley.
Start to pan away from them, their voices become fainter
Pan across a civic park, of which the only occupants are about ten pepperpots, dressed identically, scattered across on benches. One pepperpot is in a wheelchair. We come in to Mrs Non-Smoker, unwrapping a parcel and calling to the birds.
Shw unwraps the parcel revealing a leg of lamb which she hurls at the gathered birds. A screech. She kills a pigeon. She reaches in a another bag and produces two tins of pineapple chunks and throws them.
She chortles with delight as she hurls a huge jar of mayonnaise which smashes messily. She then throws a large frozen turkey, a jar of onions, a bag of frozen peas, and a bottle of wine. We widen as Mrs Smoker, with an identical piston engine to the last pepperpot, comes up to Mrs Non-Smoker. Quite a large area in front of Mrs Non-Smoker is littered with packaged foods and dead birds; a bird is pecking at a tin of pat�; a small pond in front of her has a swan upside down with its feet sticking in the air, a huge tin floating beside it.
They get up and go. Fade to black.
CAPTION: Act Two - A Room in Polonius's House
Cut to Frank Bough type presenter. Behind him are sports pictures.
Cut to a dentist's surgery. A dentist is filling a patient. He talks to camera.
CAPTION: Live from Epsom
Cut to housewife in a back garden standing in front of a washing line with really nasty stained washing on it: some man's trousers with very nasty stain on crotch and running down the leg; a badly torn sheet with melted chocolate biscuit stuck on it; a huge bra, with cups eighteen inches across; two pieces of bacon and a fried egg pegged on the line; and more dirty washing.
CAPTION: Live from Epsom
Cut to a property developer ina main street.
CAPTION: Live from Epsom
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Cut to Epsom racecourse, and a presenter, Brian MacThighbone, up against the paddock rail.
CAPTION: Live from Epsom
Another different silk hat comes into the bottom of frame. Again all we see is the jockey's cap.
Pause. Not even a cap is seen.
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A view of the starting stalls, shot so we cannot see inside.
CAPTION: 3.15 Queen Victoria Handicap
Cu back to the presenter in the studio; he is completely dressed as Queen Victoria, apart from his face.
Cut to Brian, dressed the same way.
Cut to the presenter.
We cut to the real Jimmy Hill dressed as Queen Victoria, veil, crown and all.
Cut to the presenter.
Cut to Hamlet.
Cut quickly back to the presenter.
The nurse enters.
Animated sketch.
CAPTION: Act Five - A Ham In The Castle
Mix to the theatre set we saw before. All the cast are dressed as Queen Victorias, except for Hamlet and Ophelia.
CAPTION: The End
They come on and take bows. Superimposed Python credits in Shakespearean style and graphics.
CAPTION:
Fade out. Fade up on a moor. An explosion has just take place. Out of the smoke a ragged man walks towards the camera.