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
Mascarene parrot of the scientific names, such as "Mascarinus obscurus" and "Coracopsis obscura". The unidentified parrot may have been a grey parrot ("Psittacus erithacus") instead. Another unidentified parrot specimen, this one brown and housed in Cabinet du Roi, was described by the French naturalist Comte de Buffon in 1779 under his entry for the Mascarene parrot, in which he pointed out similarities and differences between the two. The English palaeontologist Julian Hume has suggested the possibility that this might have been a lesser vasa parrot, if not a discoloured old Mascarene grey parakeet ("Psittacula bensoni"). The specimen is now lost. English zoologist