From the 3rd series of Monty Python and “Monty Python’s Brand New Papperbok”
Transcribed by Jonathan Partington
The man who speaks in anagrams
Palin: Hello, good evening and welcome to another edition of Blood Devastation Death War and Horror, and later on we’ll be meeting a man who does gardening. But first on the show we’ve got a man who speaks entirely in anagrams.
Idle: Taht si crreoct.
Palin: Do you enjoy it?
Idle: I stom certainly od. Revy chum so.
Palin: And what’s your name?
Idle: Hamrag - Hamrag Yatlerot.
Palin: Well, Graham, nice to have you on the show. Now, where do you come from?
Idle: Bumcreland.
Palin: Cumberland?
Idle: Stah’t it sepricely.
Palin: And I believe you’re working on an anagram version of Shakespeare?
Idle: Sey, sey - taht si crreoct, er - ta the mnemot I’m wroking on “The Mating of the Wersh”.
Palin: “The Mating of the Wersh”? By William Shakespeare?
Idle: Nay, by Malliwi Rapesheake.
Palin: And what else?
Idle: “Two Netlemeng of Verona”, “Twelfth Thing”, “The Chamrent of Venice”….
Palin: Have you done “Hamlet”?
Idle: “Thamle”. ‘Be ot or bot ne ot, tath is the nestquoi.’
Palin: And what is your next project?
Idle: “Ring Kichard the Thrid”.
Palin: I’m sorry?
Idle: ‘A shroe! A shroe! My dingkom for a shroe!’
Palin: Ah, Ring Kichard, yes… but surely that’s not an anagram, that’s a spoonerism.
Idle: If you’re going to split hairs, I’m going to piss off. (Exit)
The page written for people who dislike anagrams
Hello, and welcome to a page written entirely for people who dislike anagrams. Hi, anagram-haters everywhere! Down with all words or phrases formed with the letters of another! This page is specially dedicated to all who hate and despise the pathetic practice of shuffling letters to form different meanings. Let us make one thing clear from the start, there will be no anagrams on this page at all. None whatsoever. So any anagram lovers can just turn to their own page, where they will find their pathetic practice sufficiently catered for. We want none of you here. For too long we anti-anagrammatists have had to put up with the smugness of those who possess the reprehensible ability to perceive concealed meanings hidden in words or phrases. Now no more; this page is guaranteed free from anagrams. So just you put your feet up and relax without worrying whether you are reading concealed anagrams or not. Don’t you just hate those bores who can crack an anagram faster than they can pour the irate? I’m sorry. That wasn’t an anagram. It was a typing error. It should of course have read ‘I rate her pout’. Oh dear. I’m sorry again. That wasn’t a typing error. It was a printer’s slip. The phrase ‘heat our tripe’ should have read ‘I rape her tout’. Oh golly. Sorry. I’m afraid that owing to a mistake in the proof-reading the phrase ‘rip her eat out’ has been wrongly corrected to ‘ripe teat hour’. It should of course have read ‘at trip out here’. Oh crikey. I’m terribly sorry but the phrase ‘our pi theatre’ which we wrongly informed you was ‘the route pair’ should have been printed ‘rather I toupe’’ and not ‘ripe hate hour’. Oh no. Drat the bally thing. I’m most frightfully sorry but the phrase ‘Report the A.U.I.’ has been wrongly given as ‘therapeutior’, when it should quite obviously have read ‘opiate hurter’.
Anagrams - A statement
It looks very much as though this page written especially for people who dislike anagrams has been sabotaged. It appears that someone has infiltrated the text at a crucial stage and tampered with the words, so that certain phrases have been red teal (7). We apologise to all haters of anagrams for the annoyance. It’s all very ira tit gin r (10). But there you ear (3). What can neo od? (3-2). We are taking legal pests (5) to tup (3) the matter right but until then we can only loose a pig (9). The Tiredo (6).
The announcement for people who like figures of speech
An announcement
Because of the Anagrams dispute it has been decided to devote the rest of this space to a page specially written for people who like figures of speech, for the not a few fans of litotes, and those with no small interest in meiosis, for the infinite millions of hyperbole-lovers, for those fond of hypallage, and the epithet’s golden transfer, for those who fall willingly into the arms of the metaphor, those who give up the ghost, bury their heads in the sand and ride roughshod over the mixed metaphor, and even those of hyperbaton the friends. It will be too, for those who reprehend the malapropism; who love the wealth of metonymy; for all friends of rhetoric and syllepsis; and zeugmatists with smiling eyes and hearts. It will bring a large absence of unsatisfactory malevolence to periphrastic fans; a wig harm bello to spoonerists; and in no small measure a not less than splendid greeting to you circumlocutors. The World adores prosopopeiasts, and the friendly faces of synechdotists, and can one not make those amorous of anacoluthon understand that if they are not satisfied by this, what is to happen to them? It will attempt to really welcome all splitters of infinitives, all who are Romeo and Juliet to antonomasia, those who drink up similes like sparkling champagne, who lose nothing compared with comparison heads, self-evident axiomists, all pithy aphorists, apothegemists, maximiles, theorists, epigrammatists and even gnomists. And as for the lovers of aposiopesis – ! It will wish bienvenu to all classical adherents of euphuism, all metathesistic birds, golden paranomasiasts covered in guilt, fallacious paralogists, trophists, anagogists, and anaphorists; to greet, welcome, embrace asyndeton buffs, while the lovers of ellipsis will be well-met and its followers embraced, as will be chronic worshippers of catachresis and supporters of anastrophe the world over.