How to Irritate People
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, later to become one of The Goodies. 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 (see below), 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. Another sketch to recur in the Flying Circus was the Architects sketch. The "pepperpots" also recurred in many monty python sketches.
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, Cleese plays the customer, and Palin plays the salesman.
This film was directed by Ian Fordyce who also directed At Last the 1948 Show, and was made in the UK for the American market in an attempt to introduce them to the new style of British humour. For this reason the recording is made to the NTSC colour standard. The idea for the show came from David Frost. The show was forgotten for some time until it was rediscovered in the nineties, and released in - apparently - a slightly shorter version.
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.
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