Cheese Shop sketch
The "Cheese Shop" sketch is a famous sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus. It is a fairly typical John Cleese set-piece. In essence John Cleese attempts to purchase some cheese from the cheese shop; unfortunately the proprietor, Mr. Henry Wensleydale1 (Michael Palin, as usual playing the obstructive shopkeeper to Cleese's irate customer) appears to have not one single variety in stock, not even a morsel of Cheddar cheese, 'the world's most popular cheese...'. The slow crescendo of bouzouki music (played by live musicians in the shop) in the background mirrors Cleese's growing anger as he lists various cheeses to no avail. The main joke or punchline of this sketch is when John Cleese, who at the beggining said he wasn't annoyed by the music, suddenly loudly interupts the musicians and tells them to stop.
The sketch was parodied by Alexei Sayle in an episode of The Young Ones. Sayle rushes into a shop and asks if it is a cheese shop. When the Palinesque proprietor replies "No, sir." Alexei says, "Well, that sketch is knackered then, innit?"
Another pastiche was a script circulated on the Internet in early 2004 which parodied the SCO v. IBM lawsuit. In the script, a judge, taking Cleese's role, inquires of the Palinesque attorney for The SCO Group as to the evidence he will be presenting for his suit, only to discover after a monotonous line of questioning similar to the original sketch that SCO has no evidence at all. The script was a sharp parody of the quality of the SCO lawsuit, implying that it was exceedingly frivolous.
1In the sketch itself Palin refers to his character's name simply as "Mister Wensleydale". However, the name "Henry Wensleydale" appears above the shop front in the series of stills that precede the original TV version of the sketch.
