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",
Mulga parrot Mulga parrot The mulga parrot ("Psephotellus varius"), also known as the many-coloured parrot, is endemic to arid scrublands and lightly timbered grasslands in the interior of southern Australia. The mulga parrot was given its current scientific name of "Psephotellus varius" by American zoologist Austin Hobart Clark in 1910, after its name "Psephotus multicolor" was ruled invalid as the original combination ("Psittacus multicolor") had been used for another species. In 1955, British evolutionary biologist Arthur Cain reviewed various described subspecies and found none were valid. Cain concluded in 1955 that within the genus "Psephotus" the mulga parrot was more closely related