Bitchy
and Screechy
Author: Jess
Rating:
PG
Subjects: Monty Python, humor
Summary: Mike and Eric play a little joke on John and Jonesy. A very small reference to the "Itchy and Scratchy"
characters from The Simpsons.
Warning: Apologies to Terry Jones and John Cleese. I have much
respect for each of them and am just having a little fun with some of their
known qualities. If you're a huge fan of
either of them and don't think you can take a poke of fun at them, please turn
back now. I will ignore all flaming
emails!
Disclaimer: I am not making any money off of this. The Pythons do not belong to me, they belong
to themselves. This fic is copyrighted
August, 2003 and may not be used or altered without the expressed permission of
the author.
Part
1
(Setting: A Python script meeting at Terry Jones'
house, January 1972)
"I'm
telling you Jones, it's wrong!!"
"That's
'cos you don't know comedy when you see it,
John!!"
"How
the hell is this supposed to be funny, I ask you??"
"BECAUSE
IT BLOODY WELL IS!!!!!!"
Eric
looked back at Michael and rolled his eyes.
Mike snorted. The two had since
backed away from the table and were now standing on
opposite sides of the doorway leading into Terry's parlor, where the meeting
was being held. John and Jonesy had been going at it for at least half an hour. They had been discussing one of the sketches
written by Michael and Jonesy, though it was mostly
written by Jonesy, hence his offense to John's
"how can it be funny?" comment.
"I
told you once, I told you twice, and I am telling you for the last time, Jonesy, we're repeating ourselves!" John said adamantly with his arms folded
across his chest.
Jonesy fixed him with a piercing glare.
If looks could kill, John would be instantly dead in the cold
ground. He didn't say anything for a
couple of minutes. Then finally he leapt
from his chair, raised his eyebrows and his eyes widened...
"A-HA!!! I've finally realized it! You're INSANE, John!!" he exclaimed
with his mouth wide open.
"I
beg your PARDON???" John countered incredulously. "You're the one who gets up in arms when
you hear the truth!"
Michael
shut his eyes and sighed. He turned to
Eric.
"You
know, if this keeps up I'd suggest we mutiny," he said quietly.
Eric
chuckled.
"Not
a bad idea. From what I can see, I'm not
sure if they'd be willing to follow, though." He gestured toward Graham and Gilliam who
were still sitting at the table, quietly observing the heated argument.
Mike rolled his eyes. "What is wrong with those blokes?"
Eric
shrugged. "Guess they're so used to
it by now, they've become numb to its effects," he grinned.
Michael
shook his head. "I am really
getting sick of this. I mean, collecting
Gray and getting here late each week is bad enough, but listening to them argue
is enough to make me jump out the window.
"Hey,
Mike, you don't want to do that. You'll
give them the satisfaction of driving us mad and they'll keep at it," Eric
joked.
Michael
giggled in spite of himself.
Suddenly,
both John and Jonesy whipped their heads around and
looked straight at them.
John
raised his eyebrows.
"Can
we help you, gentlemen?" he said sarcastically.
Mike
and Eric's eyes widened and they blushed, just like two little kids who
realized they got caught doing something wrong.
"Er...no...we were
just..." Eric trailed off.
"Why
don't you two pretty boys go someplace else, tend to your voluminous quantity
of fanmail and stop distracting us!!" John interrupted.
Jonesy laughed, which prompted Gilliam and Gray to giggle.
"Pretty boys??" Michael repeated incredulously.
He
and Eric walked out of the room toward the foyer.
"I'd
like to think that was a compliment," Eric said wryly.
"Damn
those argumentative bastards," Mike said under his breath. "It's their fault we're so behind
schedule."
"Yeah,
I...." Eric trailed off. He glanced over toward the parlor where Jonesy and John were still going at it excitedly. Suddenly a grin spread across his face.
"What?"
"I
was just thinking...how satisfying it would be to have a little fun at their
expense," he said quietly.
Michael
raised an eyebrow.
"It
seems they're a bit pissed off that we are known for being 'pretty boys'...I
was wondering how many Python fans know about THEIR true nature," Eric
continued.
"What
are you suggesting, Idle?" Mike grinned.
Eric
put his finger up to his lips and gestured for he and
Mike to go outside. They exited Jonesy's house and descended the front steps.
"I
have a Super 8 camera back at my flat.
Next week when we meet again, I'm going to smuggle it into Jonesy's house. As
soon as they start going off, the camera starts rolling," he giggled mischieviously.
Michael
laughed.
"Oh
dear, I reckon they'd be right embarrassed if they saw themselves going mad on
film," he giggled.
"And
not just next week, but every time we meet to work on the scripts. We'll build up quite a collection of...er...material. Then
we'll present it to
Mike
raised his eyebrows.
"You're
serious??" He put his hand over his mouth to stifle the laughter.
Eric
nodded.
"Old
Bitchy and Screechy won't know what hit them," he grinned.
"Hey,
I quite like that. 'The Bitchy and
Screechy' show,"
Mike laughed.
"You
work on the concept, I'll work on the theme song," Eric winked.
Michael
nodded and waved to Eric as he got into his car and drove away.
**************************************************************
Part
2
The
following week, Michael met Eric as soon as he arrived at Jonesy's
house. He made his way up to Eric's car.
"Did
you bring the camera?" he asked.
Eric
nodded. "Yup, it's right
here," he answered, holding up a black shoulder bag.
"How
are we going to do this without John or Jonesy
knowing?" Mike suddenly asked, concerned.
"When
it looks like they're going to go off on each other, I'll quietly leave the
room, or excuse myself. I'll conceal
myself in the doorway and start filming."
Michael
nodded. They made their way up to Jonesy's house, giggling.
Michael
was about to knock when the door swung open violently.
"MIKE!!
ERIC!! It's about bloody time you got here!!" Jonesy
screeched.
"What?"
Michael asked curiously.
"You're
ten minutes late!! And don't give me the excuse that you had to give Graham a
lift. because he's already here!!" Jonesy squealed.
Michael
furrowed his brow as he saw Graham already sitting at the table with John and Gilly. He looked at
Graham questioningly.
"David
gave me a lift over here," Graham shrugged.
"Oh,"
Mike answered, a bit dumbfounded.
Suddenly,
Eric couldn't hold back and he reached for the camera inside the shoulder bag,
turned it on and aimed it right in Jonesy's face as Jonesy screamed:
"GET
YOUR ARSES IN HERE!!!"
He
then stomped inside and headed for the kitchen as he heard the teakettle go
off. Eric fought hard to hold back the
laughter.
"What
did you do??" Michael said quietly with an amused grin on his face.
"I
aimed the camera right for Jonesy's face as he was
screaming. I zoomed in a bit, so there's
a nice close-up on his face, I'm afraid," he giggled.
"Hmm,
that would be a good lead-in for the first episode," Mike grinned.
Eric
nodded as they made their way to the parlor.
They hoped they could get through this meeting without bursting into
laughter.
********************************************************
The
meeting started off placidly, with each of the Pythons (save Gilliam, who only
gave some rough ideas of what his cartoons would be about) presenting their
ideas for sketches. Close to an hour
into the meeting, however, Jonesy and John got into
another heated discussion. John started
bitching again that all the sketches were thinly veiled rehashes of earlier
sketches, while Jonesy loudly defended the sketches
and kept insisting that John was crazy.
At one point, Jonesy rose from his chair,
sauntered up to John, and began poking him in the chest (not an easy feat as
John had almost a good foot over Jonesy) to emphasize
his argument.
As
soon as he heard a slight raise in their voices, Eric quietly got up and left
the room. No one seemed to notice he was
gone except for Mike, who kept his head down most of the time so they wouldn't
see him smirking. Eric hid himself
behind the door, just peeking the camera slightly
around the corner so he could get a good view of the room inside. He tried very hard to stifle his giggles.
When
the meeting ended and everyone got up to leave, Mike walked past Eric and
raised his eyebrows questioningly.
Eric
grinned and nodded.
Over
the next few weeks, Eric made sure he brought the camera each time they
met. Luckily no one ever noticed that he
had it, or that he had left the room.
***************************************************************
Close
to the end of January, Mike met Eric down at the BBC, since they were going to
present the material to
"Well,
I got four weeks worth of material on here," Eric said, gesturing toward
the film reels he brought. "Would
have gotten more, but at last week's meeting I think Jonesy
was starting to get suspicious."
"Can't
have that, can we?" Mike grinned.
Duncan
Wood, a tall, thin, middle-aged man, entered the room.
"Well...Mister
Idle. Mister
Palin." He began.
Michael
and Eric nodded and smiled.
"I
understand you have some material you'd like me to take a look at...for a
possible television series?"
Eric
nodded and presented the reels to
"What
is the premise?' He asked as he loaded the first reel into the projector.
"Well...we
thought the Python fans might like to see what goes on behind the scenes,"
Mike said timidly.
"Especially
fans of John and Jonesy. They might like to see what these chaps are
really like," Eric giggled.
As the projector started up, suddenly a large, slightly blurred
extreme closeup of Terry Jones' face appeared in
front of the camera.
"GET
YOUR ARSES IN HERE!!!"
He
turned and looked at Michael and Eric while pointing to the screen, going,
"Is that..?"
Eric
grinned and nodded.
Fortunately
for them, he found it quite amusing. He
howled with laughter upon seeing Jonesy walk up to
John, angle his head upward and poke John in the chest, which caused John to
pull himself up to his full height. It
made him look like an angry cat threateningly arching its back.
The
second reel of film proved to be even more amusing. At one point John picked up a Melmac plate and banked it off Jonesy's
head. If the plate was made of porcelain
it wouldn't have been as funny as it would probably send Jonesy
to the hospital. But seeing some light
durable material bouncing off of Jonesy's head was
actually pretty funny.
In
another instance, Jonesy actually picked up a chair
and threw it at John. It missed its
intended target and ended up only a few inches from Jonesy's
cat, which screeched almost as loud as Jonesy ever
could. When the physical abuse failed at
attempting to make them laugh, the verbal abuse more than made up for it. John bitched about ridiculous things, such as
Jonesy's gut blotting out the sun. Jonesy countered
with a snide remark about John losing his hair.
And, of course, nothing could make up for Jonesy's
high-pitched squealing.
"Oh my God!! Please turn this off before I spill a gut!"
Just
as Jonesy was about to hurl a glass ashtray at John,
Eric stopped the film.
"So,
what do you think?" Mike asked, turning toward
"What
do I think? Do you know how long it's
been since I've laughed this hard?" the man answered, still giggling.
"I
can't imagine," Eric said facetiously.
"Well,"
Michael
and Eric turned to each other and smiled.
"Thanks
very much for your time,
As
they left the room,
*****************************************************************
Part
3
A
few months later, the Pythons were at the BBC, about to tape the
"All-England Summarize Proust Competition"
episode. Mike and Eric were grinning
knowingly at each other almost the whole time.
Today was the day that their new "series" would be debuting
and they wanted to make sure John and Jonesy would
see it.
Eric
knocked on the dressing room door. He
entered and found Mike in his costume for the "Travel Agent"
sketch. He was sitting in front of the
mirror, combing his hair. He noticed
Eric and turned around.
"About ready?" Eric asked.
Mike
raised his eyebrows questioningly.
Eric
gestured out into the hallway and grinned.
A
grin slowly spread across Michael's face and he nodded.
"I'll
wheel a television set out into the main room," he said quickly as he and
Eric left the room.
Michael
found a TV set sitting on a cart and wheeled it out into the room where the
others were sitting, reviewing their lines.
He took hold of the extension cord and plugged it in.
"Palin,
what the hell are you doing?" John demanded.
"The
atmosphere here is a bit tense, so we thought we could lighten the mood by
putting on the telly," Mike smiled.
John
rolled his eyes.
"What's
on?" Gilliam asked curiously.
Mike
feigned ignorance and shrugged his shoulders.
"Don't
know. But it can't hurt to find
out."
He
switched the television on and tuned it into BBC2.
Suddenly
an announcer's voice proclaimed, "The News at 10 will not be shown
today. And now we bring you a new program...The
Bitchy and Screechy Show."
The
remaining four Pythons eyed the set curiously.
Suddenly,
cutesy music began to play, over an alternating montage of pictures of John and
Jonesy with their mouths wide open and angry looks on
their faces. Eric's voice sung...
They
bitch,
and
screech
They
bitch and bitch and screech
Bitch
bitch bitch
Screech
screech screech
The
Bitchy and Screechy Show!
The
opening credits ended with a shot of Jonesy throwing
a chair at John, finishing with a loud crashing sound effect.
John
and Jonesy's jaws dropped.
The
scene opened with a shot of Michael sitting at a desk, wearing a gray suit, red
tie, and with his hair combed nicely. He
appeared in his usual sunny disposition.
"Good
morning," he smiled. "This
program is for all the Terry Jones and John Cleese
fans out there, and we know there's a lot of you. You've seen them as they appear in Flying
Circus, in the "And Now For Something Completely
Different" film, and even on stage.
But, do you really know them as we do?"
"What
is this crap??" John exclaimed.
"Shh, I want to hear this," Graham addressed him. "It seems quite interesting."
John
glared at him.
On
the television, Michael continued...
"Each
man is an enigma, cloaked in mystery.
For those of you who'd like to get to know them almost as well as anyone
could, we have quite a treat for you.
These secret bits of footage from Python script meetings dated January,
1972 reveal Terrence Jones and John Marwood Cleese as they truly are.
Sit back and enjoy."
He
ended his statement with a quick little grin.
The
footage began with the close-up of Terry's face screaming at Eric and Mike to
get their arses inside. Peals of laughter from the studio audience
were heard in the background.
Eric
and Mike found it hard to keep a straight face, but Gilliam and Graham started
cracking up.
Jonesy blushed bright red.
Suddenly
the camera cut back to Michael at the desk.
"Not
just another pretty face," he joked.
Jonesy ran up to the TV and glared at Mike.
"MICHAEL,
YOU TRAITOR!!!" he squealed.
Mike
raised an eyebrow at him and grinned.
As
the show wore on, more footage of John and Jonesy
bawling each other out was shown, intercut with
commentary from Michael. Nearing the
end, Michael explained to the audience how the footage was procured, and asked
the cameraman to come forward.
Eric,
dressed in a casual tee shirt and a pair of jeans, walked up to the desk. He turned toward the audience with a cheesy
grin, and they clapped.
"Now,
sir, as I understand it, you filmed all this footage?" Mike asked.
Eric
nodded, grinning widely.
"That's
right, mate. With me lovely Bolex Super 8 camera
here!" He held up the Super 8
camera.
Mike
grinned back.
"Well,
sir, you've made this audience laugh."
He turned toward the audience. "Right?"
The
audience answered with cheers. Eric
smiled and bowed at the audience.
"Surely
you deserve something for being responsible for such mirth. Therefore we have something special for
you," Mike continued with a cheesy grin.
Eric's
eyes widened and he began jumping up and down excitedly.
"OOOOOOH
OOOOOOH what do I win???" he asked.
Michael
looked toward the camera with a slight grin and raised his eyebrows up and
down. He reached into the desk draw and
pulled out a pair of earplugs.
"Your
very own pair of earplugs, to safeguard you from the endless bitching and
screeching you encounter every week!"
John
and Jonesy sputtered angrily.
Back
on the TV, Eric graciously accepted the earplugs.
"Oh, thanks muchly, mate!! You're a life-saver!"
Michael
looked at the camera, furrowed his brow and silently mouthed, "thanks muchly mate?"
The
studio audience laughed.
"Well,
that's all for this week. There will be
many more laughs to come, so stay tuned until next week!" Mike
declared.
The
end credits began rolling...
"The
Bitchy and Screechy Show was conceived and written by Eric Idle and Michael
Palin
Theme
song written and sung by Eric Idle
Produced
by Duncan Wood for BBC-2
With
special thanks to John Marwood Cleese
and Terrence Jones
Keep
On Bitchin' and Screechin', Chaps!
No,
really! We need a steady supply of footage here!
(c) BBC Colour 1972"
Following
the credits was a replay of Jonesy throwing the chair
at John, which ended in a freeze-frame and studio audience laughter.
John
leapt up out of his chair.
"SHUT
THIS RUBBISH OFF!!" he yelled.
"What
have you guys gotten into?" Gilliam asked with an amused grin on his face.
"Quite simple, actually." Mike began.
"The
'pretty boys' have fought back in their own special way!" Eric said
smugly.
"Don't
encourage them, Gilliam!" John snapped.
He turned toward Eric and Mike.
"Do
you know what this is??" he asked excitedly.
Mike
and Eric glanced at each other and shrugged innocently.
"This
is slander!!" John continued.
"I can sue you for this! In fact, maybe I will!"
Mike
and Eric rolled their eyes.
"Yeah,
go ahead and do that, John. I don't
think you'll have much of a case when they see your mannerisms up close,"
Graham suddenly interjected.
"Oh,
shut up, Chapman!!" John growled.
"I can't believe you're taking their side! Lay off the drink so you can talk sensibly
for once!"
"After
this I'll need a good drink," Graham said wearily.
"Jones?"
John
looked curiously over at Jonesy who was sulking, his
back turned away from them. He finally
turned around, marched up to Mike and looked him straight in the eye with a
menacing glare.
"You..."
he began.
"OUR
RELATIONSHIP IS OVER!!" he yelled, practically foaming at the mouth.
Michael
raised an eyebrow at him.
"So
I reckon the wedding's off?" He said amusedly.
Suddenly,
Jonesy's glowering expression melted and his mouth
lifted up into a smile. He started to
giggle, and finally broke into all-out laughter.
Michael
eyed him curiously.
"You
know, there was a moment there where I wanted to literally rip your head
off," Jonesy laughed.
Mike
continued to stare at him.
"This
was all a joke, right? You wanted to get
back at me for treating you two so harshly that one time, right?" Jonesy continued.
Michael
looked warily at Eric, then back at Jonesy.
"Er...yeah. Right." He
grinned sheepishly.
"So
it's not a REAL television program, right?" Jonesy
grinned.
"Er......no, no it's not," Mike answered. Eric shook his head.
Jonesy smiled. "Well. You've certainly taught me to lighten up a
little."
He
left the room, leaving Mike and Eric to look at each other curiously. John just sneered at the two of them before
leaving the room with almost a campy bitchiness.
Eric
and Mike shrugged their shoulders and began to laugh once John had left the
room.
***************************************************
Two
weeks later...
Mike
curiously opened up an envelope he had received from the BBC. It was from
"4
May 1972
Mr.
Palin,
I
regret to inform you that "The Bitchy and Screechy Show" has been
cancelled. Two individuals who shall go
nameless approached my office with a grievance against the transmission of this
program. One in particular threatened
legal action if I didn't yank it from the airwaves.
Once
again I am truly sorry.
Regards,
Duncan
Wood
cc:
Mr. Eric Idle"
Michael
snorted. He knew full well who the two
individuals were, especially the one who threatened legal action. Oh well, better to have the show cancelled
than have to defend ourselves in court against Jonesy
and John.
Luckily
Eric kept the two film reels, he thought to himself as a sly grin grew onto his
face...
FIN