Dead Parrot sketch appearance on "The Muppet Show", Cleese appears as a pirate attempting to take over a spaceship during a "Pigs In Space" sketch. At the end of the sketch, he demands of the smart-mouthed talking parrot on his shoulder, "Do you want to be an ex-parrot?" In 1989's "The Secret Policeman's Biggest Ball", a benefit for Amnesty International, the sketch opens similarly, but ends very differently: In a 1997 "Saturday Night Live" performance of the sketch, Cleese added a line to the rant: "Its metabolic processes are a matter of interest only to historians!" In an interview on NPR's "Fresh Air",
Grey parrot Grey parrot The grey parrot ("Psittacus erithacus"), also known as the Congo grey parrot or African grey parrot, is an Old World parrot in the family Psittacidae. The Timneh parrot "(Psittacus timneh)" was earlier treated as conspecific but has since been split as a full species. The grey parrot is a medium-sized, predominantly grey, black-billed parrot. Their average weight is , with an average length of and an average wingspan of . It has darker grey over the head and both wings, while the head and body feathers have a slight white edge to them. The tail feathers are red.