The day I went ROTFLMAO

The expression "Rolling on the Floor Laughing my (anything with an A) off" was a mere IM emoticon and a over-used abbreviation until I saw Monty Python's Scott of the Antartic/Sahara sketch.

Some of Monty Python's sketches are so brilliant that you could save eighty-one with any of the stitches in your stomach. But the aforementioned Scott sketches hit me right in the solar plexus with the insanity of it all. The plot of the sketch is by itself not extraordinary given such past glories like the "Dead Parrot" sketch or "Spanish Inquisition" or "the Hungarian Phrasebook". It consists of a faux-"Making of" production of a "20th Century Vole" film called "Scott of the Antartic" on location. The location turns out to have some great sunshine and sand, so many people set out to paint the sands white and nail pieces of white rubber around. Eventually, they decide to call it "Scott of the Sahara" and paint the sands "yellow again".

Scott and gang (with sledges) are accosted by a "crazed desert lion", so Scott begins a deadly battle, described thus in the script I found online:

The four are walking along. Suddenly they stop, stare, and react in horror. Scott steps to the front to defend the others. Intercut, non-matching stock shot of lion running out of jungle and leaping at camera. Scott waits poised and is then struck by completely rigid stuffed lion. Montage of shots of him wrestling, firstly with the stuffed lion, then with an actor in a tatty lion suit. The lion picks up a chair, fends Scott off, smashes it over his head. Finally Scott kicks the lion on the shin. The lion leaps around on one leg and picks up a knife. Scott points, the lion looks, Scott kicks the knife out of the lion's paw. He advances on the lion, and socks him on the jaw. The lion collapses in slow motion. After a pause, phoney blood spurts out.

This paragraph does no justice to the mayhem on screen that Michael Palin and the lion get to. My screams of laughter brought everyone rushing to again verify my state of mental health. I was finally doing it. I was rolling on the floor surely laughing something beginning with an A off.

Pune BCL members will find this in one of the "Monty Python's Flying Circus" DVDs in that establishment. Just don't watch it after too heavy a meal.

The scripts can be found all over the Web, but a good collection is here. One link for this sketch is here.