ellauri160.html on line 806: It is really sweet that Germans and others have adopted something and that this sketch is special for them. I respect that and don’t doubt for a second the genuine love and admiration some have for Dinner for One. But I am really surprised to see Monty Python compared with Dinner for One. I have to say it was painful to sit through. Painfully, painfully bad and unfunny. That’s why it has never caught on in Britain. I suppose we must have a very different sense of humour to that of Scandinavia and the German-speaking countries. We don’t consider it funny if someone falls over something. There’s nothing subtle or clever or nuanced about it (Rowan Atkinson’s absurdist physical comedy went down so well due to its complexity, think of the sketch where Mr. Bean makes the sandwich on the park bench and it gets progressively more and more absurd, he gets the fish out of water and slaps it against the bench to kill it before eating it, etc. now that is funny, and food fights in general). It’s not funny the first time the butler falls over the tiger-skin rug and it gets progressively more and more irritating each time he does it. You can spot the punchline a mile off and so the end of the sketch falls very flat. It’s nothing whatever to do with the length of the sketch or its obscurity or difficulty finding it: people still seek out all the comic greats on Youtube, like that fat man watsisname, or Charlie Chaplin who bravely made fun of your Hitler.
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