WTTW Channel 11 - Monty Python's Flying Circus - "Missing Political Choreographer Opening" (1980)

Well this is something pretty darn rare. Here's the opening of a WTTW Channel 11 broadcast of an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. It was the episode "A Book at Bedtime" (originally from 1973 - Season 3; Episode 12). Sound ordinary so far? Well, it isn't. The opening of the show includes a sketch that has essentially been lost.

The official DVD release of this episode doesn't have it (known as the "Political Choreographer" sketch) - in fact, the only copy that was known to exist up until this point was from a broadcast of the episode on WNED-TV, a PBS station in Buffalo, NY - from 1978. If you look at that clip you'll see that it unfortunately has a Chryon burned into the picture with the phone number to make a pledge at. This home-recorded tape was apparently donated to the BBC or whoever handles the Python product (not completely sure on this part of the story yet) and it was cleaned up as much as possible and added as an extra on one of the Flying Circus DVD releases. Includes:

A mostly complete Python mini-skit created for promoting WTTW's pledge break season, featuring Terry Jones as a "pervert" and Graham Chapman as the interviewer.

We then see a brief flash of someone during the pledge break - anyone know who he is?

Finally the person recording this cut out the WTTW "Warning" but luckily started up again before the episode actually started.

This aired on local Chicago TV on Sunday, March 9th 1980 at 10:30pm.

Add To

You must login to add videos to your playlists.