by southtyrolean
Ancient Greeks pre-empted Dead Parrot sketch – Yahoo! News:
[Via http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081114/sc_nm/us_greeks_comedy_1]
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. It’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it.”
For those who believe the ancient Greeks thought of everything first, proof has been found in a 4th century AD joke book featuring an ancestor of Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch where a man returns a parrot to a shop, complaining it is dead.
The 1,600-year-old work entitled “Philogelos: The Laugh Addict,” one of the world’s oldest joke books, features a joke in which a man complains that a slave he has just bought has died, its publisher said on Friday.
“By the gods,” answers the slave’s seller, “when he was with me, he never did any such thing!”
[More]
Nothing new under the heavens. It is really interesting that every culture seems to have the student dunce jokes. Coming from Texas, we had our own.
I wonder if they had a Flying Sheep sketch? Or Argument Clinic? I wonder what the Greek equivalent of Four Yorkshire Men would be?
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