Dead Parrot sketch culture. The "Dead Parrot" sketch was inspired by a "Car Salesman" sketch that Palin and Chapman had done in "How to Irritate People". In it, Palin played a car salesman who repeatedly refused to admit that there was anything wrong with his customer's (Chapman) car, even as it fell apart in front of him. That sketch was based on an actual incident between Palin and a car salesman. In "Monty Python Live at Aspen", Palin said that this salesman "had an excuse for everything". John Cleese said on the same show that he and Chapman "believed that there was something
Friedrich Parrot Friedrich Parrot Johann Jacob Friedrich Wilhelm Parrot (25 October 179115 January 1841) was a Baltic German naturalist, explorer, and mountaineer, who lived and worked in Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia) in what was then the Governorate of Livonia of the Russian Empire. A pioneer of Russian and Estonian scientific mountaineering, he is best known for leading the first expedition to the summit of Mount Ararat in recorded history. Born in Karlsruhe, in the Margraviate of Baden, Parrot was the son of Georg Friedrich Parrot, the first rector of the University of Dorpat (today the University of Tartu) and a close friend