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",
Brown-necked parrot Brown-necked parrot The brown-necked parrot ("Poicephalus fuscicollis"), sometimes known in aviculture as the uncape parrot, is a large "Poicephalus" parrot species endemic to Africa consisting of the savanna-dwelling brown-necked parrot ("P. fuscicollis fuscicollis") and grey-headed parrot ("P. f. suahelicus") subspecies. It formerly included the Cape parrot (now "Poicephalus robustus") as a subspecies before the Cape parrot was re-classified as a distinct species. German naturalist Heinrich Kuhl described the brown-necked parrot in his 1819 work "Conspectus Psittacorum". Although unsure of its country of origin, he felt it was definitely a distinct species and related to the Cape parrot. The species name