Silly Job Interview is a sketch that appears in "Man's Crisis of Identity in the Latter Half of the 20th Century," the fifth episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Synopsis[]
An interviewer (John Cleese) tells the audience that he enjoys interviewing applicants. One named David Thomas (Graham Chapman) then enters. The interviewer has him sit down, stand up, then sit back down. He continues with antics such as repeatedly greeting him, ringing a bell, abruptly counting down, and making a strange noise. David becomes increasingly confused and nervous as he does not know how to respond to the interviewer's strange behavior and believes he will not get the job. Near panic, David asks the interviewer what he should do, and gets the answer "Well, do something,". David makes a funny face, which seems to please the interviewer. The interviewer then calls a panel of judges who give David fair scores for his funny face. This irritates David who threatens to call the police and reveal the interviewers humiliation tactics, which earns him even better scores from the judges. Now full of hope, David asks the interviewer if he got the job. The interviewer, barely holding his amusement in, reveals to David that there are actually no vacancies to be filled, after which the whole room, except for a horrified David, erupts into a chorus of laughter.
Background/Trivia[]
- This sketch was originally written for and included in John Cleese's 1968 special "How To Irritate People" and adapted for Flying Circus with very few changes from the original version.
- John Cleese and Graham Chapman appear in both versions. However, the role of David Thomas was played by Tim Brooke-Taylor in the original version, and Graham Chapman and Michael Palin appeared as two of the judges towards the end of the sketch.
- As John Cleese explains in How To Irritate People, "...tax collectors, PR men and so forth have wonderful opportunities to irritate us all, but we may be able to get back at them by complaining. One man though, whose power is almost complete, against whom there is almost no redress, is the man who interviews us for a job."