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Flogging A Dead Parrot
This recently rediscovered tape appears to contains shocking audio from Monty Python's first meeting with commissioners... in a world where sexism in comedy is flipped.
Melon Comedy, the creators of this sketch explain: "Flogging a dead parrot is set in a female gaze world. We wrote it in response to the Writers' Guild research that women make up 11% of commissioned comedy writers - which is frankly a bit of a circus in 2020.
"Obviously we mean no disrespect to the Pythons who we love more than life itself - we just want to use comedy to make a point that in commissioning there is still a way to go for equality...!
"As writer/performers MelonComedy, when we first started out we would get emails from agents and production companies saying that they 'loved the work but they already have a female led sketch show in the works'. We can take rejection but at least make it because we can't write, or our ideas suck; not our gender? Do men ever get rejected on the basis that there's already a male led-sketch show, we wondered? How far could you push that? What if the best all male sketch show that ever lived were told that? Then we heard Gail Renard on a podcast talking about their Writers' Guild survey which found that TV comedy writers are still only 11% women. Off the back of this staggering stat we wrote Flogging a dead parrot.
"Comedy 50:50 is the change we all want to see in the comedy world. It is a hard industry to get into, unless you have a weeble-like tenacity. But Comedy 5050's events and writing opportunities are already making a huge difference to representation. So it is an honour to release this film on International Women's Day in support of them and the great work they are doing to strive for equality in comedy."
| Jonathan Hansler | John Cleese (Voice) |
| Emmy McMorrow | Ensemble Actor |
| Lorelei Mathias | Ensemble Actor |
| Robin Bailes | Ensemble Actor |
| Steve Kent | Ensemble Actor |
| Nick Ewans | Ensemble Actor |
| Alan Devey | Ensemble Actor |
| Lorelei Mathias | Writer |
| Emmy McMorrow | Writer |
| Lorelei Mathias | Director |
| Ben Matthews | Editor |
| Dominic Pietruszka | Editor |
| Michael Powell | Sound Designer |
| George Turner | Sound Designer |