A long-lost comedy sketch featuring British comedy legend John Cleese and written by two of his fellow “Monty Python” alums was unearthed by film preservationists after nearly six decades.
Cleese plays a condescending bank manager opposite an “unfortunate” customer played by fellow iconic comedian Ronnie Barker in the sketch, which was broadcast in April 1967 and believed to have been lost from the BBC Archives.
The bit was written by Terry Jones and Michael Palin, who’d go on to form the comedy troupe Monty Python with Cleese in 1969.
The English film archivist group Film is Fabulous! recently discovered a copy of the sketch on a 16mm reel of comedy clips edited by a former BBC film Editor.
The skit, called “The Bank Manager,” comes from “The Frost Report,” an influential British satire series hosted by David Frost, and was part of the episode entitled “Money.”
“It showed the attitude of banks towards their customers when the latter asked for an overdraft,” Film is Fabulous! wrote in a Facebook Post last week.
Nearly all of the show’s second season is considered lost media, though audio recordings exist for every episode. The BBC had a policy of wiping television programs after broadcast in a cost-savings measure that left major gaps in its archives years before reruns and streaming were part of the routine.
The Frost Report “ruffled the feathers of the political class,” according to the film group.
By its second season, it set its sights on poking fun at banks, the judiciary and leaders of the two main political parties in the UK at the time, then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Conservative Party leader Edward Heath.
The BBC has received a digital scan of the newly uncovered footage, and the preservationists will return the original 16mm film, along with a trove of other rare and missing items, at the end of September.
The finding comes shortly after the group discovered a sketch from comedy legend Marty Feldman, renowned for roles like the hunchback Igor in 1974’s “Young Frankenstein.”
Feldman appeared as an ancient Egyptian tomb carving in the sketch, which dated back to a 1968 BBC show.
