150 Monty Python Sketches (and a Related Prank)

Some­one did a lot of leg­work and pulled togeth­er a heap of Mon­ty Python videos on YouTube. The list includes one famous seg­ment called “Dead Par­rot,” which is notable part­ly because it’s fun­ny, and part­ly because it forms the basis of a sec­ondary joke.

To make a long sto­ry short, there are some folks out there called “scam­baiters” who take revenge against 419 scam­mers — you know, the peo­ple who gen­er­ate those emails that begin some­thing like this: “I have picked-up the trust and courage to write you this let­ter with divine con­fi­dence that you are a reli­able and hon­est per­son who will be capa­ble for this impor­tant busi­ness trans­ac­tion believ­ing also that you will let me down either now or in the future.” When one scam­baiter named Mike Berry received one such email, he some­how man­aged to turn the tables on the scam­mers and duped them into recre­at­ing the Python Dead Par­rot skit. The prank all gets explained at the start of the video below, and you can read more about it here.