Monty Python's Flying Circus/Funny

Can we just count this whole show as one giant Crowning Moment of Funny? No?

Okay, then!

• Let's start with Self Defense Against Fresh Fruit. If a homicidal maniac comes at you with a banana, shoot him. If you don't have a gun, run for it.
  • OR pull the lever that will release a 16-ton weight on the adversary.
  • OR release the tiger.
  • On its own it's just a one-dimensional joke, but the pure insanity of the self-defense instructor (played by John Cleese) kicks the whole thing Up to Eleven.
• The World's Deadliest Joke. A joke whose humor is so intense that the man who wrote it (and all who subsequently read the whole thing) died in a fit of shrieking laughter. Taken to hilarious extremes with its apparent use in World War Two (in a German translation).
• The Mouse Problem, a thinly-disguised criticism of society's views on homosexuality during the late 60s ...
  • ... especially funny considering a behind-the-scenes event that happened later, which combined Crowning Moment of Funny with Crowning Moment of Awesome. A woman sent a letter to the BBC saying that she heard one of the Pythons was gay and that whoever it was should be put to death. Graham Chapman was in fact a homosexual, but—depending on who's telling the story—either John Cleese (because he wanted to leave the show anyway) or Eric Idle (who just thought the whole thing hilarious) anonymously wrote back to the woman assuring her quite solemnly that the gay Python had been unmasked and duly stoned to death. Cleese then, of course, failed to appear in the next series. The woman's reaction to this is unknown.
• The Dirty Fork. From a restaurant customer making a "by the way" remark about his fork, all the way to the entire restaurant staff scattered as dead bodies around the customer's table.
  • One of the ways the Pythons enhanced the effectiveness of their humor was to eliminate the punchlines from their jokes. A snarky one-liner as payoff for an epic comic situation is to the Pythons what meat is to vegetarians. They demonstrate this in Dirty Fork (an occasion never repeated) with a deliberately bad punchline. "Lucky we didn't say anything about the dirty knife." Just as they predicted, the audience booed.
• Nudge Nudge Wink Wink Nudge Nudge Snap Snap Grin Grin Say No More.
• Sam Peckinpah's Salad Days.
• MY BRAIN HURTS!
• Any time Raymond Luxury Yacht appears.
• The "Storytime" sketch. "Discipline? Naked? With a melon?"
• "Mind you, I don't know whether you've really considered the advantages of owning a really fine set of modern encyclopedias!"
• "I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay! I sleep all night, I work all day! ... I cut down trees, I wear high heels, suspendies and a bra. I wish I've been a girlie, just like my dear mama!" (it's not until And Now For Something Completely Different that it's changed to 'dear papa') "Ooooh, Bevis! And I thought you were so rugged!"

"Dear Sir, I wish to complain in the strongest possible terms about the song which you have just broadcast, about the lumberjack who wears women's clothes. Many of my best friends are lumberjacks and only a few of them are transvestites. Yours faithfully, Brigadier Sir Charles Arthur Strong (Mrs). P.S. I have never kissed the editor of the Radio Times."