Dead Parrot sketch Palin attributed an almost dead audience to his seeing guests reverently mouthing the words of the sketch, rather than laughing at it. To end the sketch, Palin asked Cleese, "Do you want to come back to my place?" to which Cleese said, "I thought you'd never ask!" In his published diary, Michael Palin recalls that during the filming of "Monty Python's Life of Brian" in Tunisia, Spike Milligan (who happened to be there on holiday) regaled the Pythons with his own version of the Dead Parrot sketch, but changed "Norwegian Blue" to "Arctic Grey". In a 2002 interview with Michael
Broad-billed parrot sexes may have had different colours, which would explain some of the discrepancies in old descriptions. Johannes Pretorius (on Mautirius from 1666 to 1669) kept various now-extinct Mauritian birds in captivity, and described the behaviour of the broad-billed parrot as follows: Though the broad-billed parrot may have fed on the ground and been a weak flier, its tarsometatarsus was short and stout, implying some arboreal characteristics. The Newton brothers and many authors after them inferred that it was flightless, due to the apparent short wings and large size shown in the 1601 "Gelderland" sketch. According to Hume, the underlying pencil