How to Irritate People

File:HowToIrritatePeopleDVD.jpg

Cover of the DVD version.

How to Irritate People is a 1968 television mockumentary written by John Cleese. It also features future Monty Python collaborators Michael Palin, Graham Chapman, and Connie Booth, as well as comic actor Tim Brooke-Taylor. In various sketches, Cleese demonstrates exactly what the title suggests - how to irritate people, although this is done in a much more conventional way than the absurdity of similar Monty Python sketches.

The notable features of this show are the "Car Salesman" sketch (precursor of the Dead Parrot sketch), Cleese's definition of a 'Pepperpot', and the "Airplane Pilots" sketch.

The "Job Interview" sketch, starring Cleese as the interviewer and Brooke-Taylor as the interviewee, was later performed almost unchanged in the first season of Monty Python's Flying Circus with Chapman as the interviewee.

The "Car Salesman" sketch, in which Palin refuses to accept customer Chapman's claim that a car he sold is faulty, later inspired Python's Dead Parrot sketch in which the malfunctioning car is replaced by an expired parrot and Cleese plays the customer.

This film was directed by Ian Fordyce who also directed At Last the 1948 Show, and was apparently produced for the American market in an attempt to introduce them to the show's style of humour.

DJ Yoda has sampled sections of this for his music.

The show has appeared on DVD, sometimes with "irritating" backward packaging and deliberately faulty navigation.