Living Room on Pavement

 

 

 

(A working-class lounge is arranged on the pavement. There are no walls, just the furnishings: settee, two armchairs, sideboard, table, standard lamp, a tiled fireplace with ornaments on it. There is also a free-standing inside door. Mr and Mrs Potter come out of the cinema and go straight to their chairs and sit down. Passers-by have to skirt the living-room furniture.)

 

Mrs. Potter: (Graham Chapman, settling into her chair) Oh, it's nice to be home.

 

Mr. Potter: (Michael Palin, looking round) Builders haven't been then.

 

Mrs. Potter: No.

 

(A trendy interviewer with hand mike comes into shot.)

 

Interviewer: (Eric Idle) These two old people are typical of the housing problem facing Britain's aged.

 

Mrs. Potter: Here! Don't you start doing a documentary on us, young man.

 

Interviewer: Oh please ...

 

Mrs. Potter: No, you leave us alone!

 

Interviewer: Oh, just a little one about the appalling conditions under which you live.

 

Mrs. Potter: No! Get out of our house! Go on!

 

(Interviewer turns, motions to his cameraman and soundman and they all trail off miserably)

 

Cameraman: Oh all right. Come on, George, pick it up.

 

Mrs. Potter: Why don't you do a documentary about the drug problem round in Walton Street?

 

(Cut to the camera crew. They stop, turn and mutter 'a drug problem!' and they dash off.)

 

Mrs. Potter: Oh, I'll go and have a bath.

 

(She goes to the free-standing door and opens it. Beyond it we see the furnishings of a bathroom. In the bath is Alfred Lord Tennyson, fully clad. As she opens the door we hear him reading... continued in Poets sketch)