Title: How Not to Be Seen
Original Airdate: 8/12/1970
Guest starring: Carol Cleveland, Lewis Alexander
First a man is admonished by his boss for his terrible advertising campaign for Conquistador Coffee.
And now for something completely different - completely different - completely different - completely different, it's: a man applying for a job as assistant editor, an advertisement for American Defense, an advertisement for Crelm Toothpaste, an advertisement for Shrill Petrol, a murder mystery, an interview with film director Martin Curry, people who lived in the city for a long time, an overview of different religions ("Crackpot Religions"), an instructional video on how not to be seen ("How Not to Be Seen"), and a performance of "Yummy Yummy Yummy I've Got Love in my Tummy" by Jackie Charlton and the Tonettes.
For those of you who missed that, here it is again in 30 seconds...
Tropes:
- Faux-To Guide: "How Not to Be Seen".
- Freudian Slip: At first, it seems rather random when the presenter and interviewer keep using dental terms in place of cinematic terms, but then... (See Ignore the Disability below)
- Ignore the Disability:Presenter: From the world of the theatre we turn to the world of dental hygiene. No, no, no, no. From the world of the theatre we turn to the silver screen. We honour one of the silver screen's outstanding writer-dentists... writer-directors, Martin Curry, who is visiting London to have a tooth out, for the pre-molar, er... premiere of his filling-film next Toothday-Tuesday, at the Dental Theatre-Film Theatre. Martin Curry, talking to Matthew Palate. Padget!Interviewer: Martin Curry, welcome. One of the big teeth-uh, big points that the American critics made about your latest film, The Twelve Caesars, was that it was on so all-embracing a topic. What made you undertake so enormous a tusk, uh, task?[We see the reason for the slips: the interviewee has two gigantic front teeth]Interviewer: ...well, let's have a look at a clip in which Julius Incisor...Caesar talks to his generals...
- I Thought Everyone Had Big Teeth: Martin Curry is a film director who makes films where every character has enormous teeth, this is because he has overly large teeth himself; and when asked by a normal toothed person about the dental appendages, he doesn't understand what's so odd. This is followed by several people with different abnormalities (man with large ears, man with large nose, man in drag) also thinking the film was weird, except for another person with big teeth who thought it was just fine.
- Metaphorgotten: In a Terry Gilliam animation, Uncle Sam promotes American Defence to help fight communism, using teeth to demonstrate how communism can infect people. Then another spokesman promotes Crelm toothpaste, using cars to demonstrate how the competition doesn't compare. Then a third spokesman promotes Shrill Petrol using black and white cards. Yeah, it's pretty confusing.
- Motor Mouth: Theatre critic Gavin Millarnote , when reviewing Neville Shunt's latest play.Some people have made the mistake of seeing Shunt's work as a load of rubbish about railway timetables, but clever people like me, who talk loudly in restaurants, see this as a deliberate ambiguity, a plea for understanding in a mechanized world. The points are frozen, the beast is dead. What is the difference? What indeed is the point? The point is frozen, the beast is late out of Paddington. The point is taken. If La Fontaine's elk would spurn Tom Jones the engine must be our head, the dining car our oesophagus, the guard's van our left lung, the cattle truck our shins, the first-class compartment the piece of skin at the nape of the neck and the level crossing an electric elk called Simon. The clarity is devastating. But where is the ambiguity? It's over there in a box. Shunt is saying the 8.15 from Gillingham when in reality he means the 8.13 from Gillingham. The train is the same only the time is altered. Ecce homo, ergo elk. La Fontaine knew his sister and knew her bloody well. The point is taken, the beast is moulting, the fluff gets up your nose. The illusion is complete; it is reality, the reality is illusion and the ambiguity is the only truth. But is the truth, as Hitchcock observes, in the box? No there isn't room, the ambiguity has put on weight. The point is taken, the elk is dead, the beast stops at Swindon, Chabrol stops at nothing, I'm having treatment and La Fontaine can get knotted.
- Off the Chart: Mr. Frog's (S. Frog's [Shut up!]) sales campaign for Conquistador Coffee sends the sales graph plummeting through the horizontal axis and off the bottom of the page.
- Our Slogan Is Terrible: The Conquistador Coffee sketch. "The tingling fresh coffee which brings you exciting new Cholera, Mange, Singapore Ear, Dropsy, the Clap, Hard Pad, and Athlete's Head. From the House of Conquistador."
- Rail Enthusiast: Mr. Neville Shunt is a train fanatic who writes a play called It All Happened on the 11:20 from Hainault to Red Hill via Horsham and Reigate, calling at Carshalton Beeches, Malmesbury, Tooting Bec and Croydon West, which is a murder mystery that is solved by the casts' encyclopedic knowledge of the train schedules.
- Repetitive Audio Glitch:
- A shot of the beautiful English coast is accompanied by dreamy music, until the music starts skipping. It's playing on a gramophone, and the announcer's hand enters and lifts up the needle. He then says "And now for something completely diff—", and then he starts skipping for a while until he gets it out.
- And then the opening titles follow suit.
- Later, during some vox pops, a record player says that it has been running quite well. Then, a business man wants to say that he is not "stuck in a rut-stuck in a rut-stuck in a rut" and a woman has to bump him to get him out of his skipping.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: In the "How Not to Be Seen" sketch, "When we called at their house, we found that they had gone away on two weeks' holiday... However, a neighbor told us where they were." (Blows them up.) "And here is the neighbor who told us where they were." (Blows him up.) "Nobody likes a clever dick."
- Speak of the Devil: The animation at the end of the "Crackpot Religions" sketch originally showed a repairman trying unsuccessfully to fix a utility pole
(to which Jesus was crucified), and complaining "Devil take it all!" Cue an earthquake and the Devil popping out of the fault line for a sales pitch... and then apologizing because it was a bad time for a sales pitch. This scene was deleted from reruns and was only restored on the Blu-ray releases of the series. - Stuff Blowing Up: It becomes obvious in the "How Not to Be Seen" sketch that the presenter just wants to blow people up.
- Take That!: In the "Crackpot Religions" Vox Pops, Idle briefly appears as John Lennon saying, "I'm starting a war for peace", as a crack at Lennon's "War is over" campaign.
- Tasty Gold: In the "Crackpot Religions" sketch.
- Vox Pops: "Well, I've been in the city for X years, and..." (insert funny joke about upperclass British folk here)
