Monty Python's famous Dead Parrot sketch was based on one written 1,600 years ago in Ancient Greece. Historians have revealed it is in the world's oldest joke book - entitled Philogelos, or The Lover of Laughter, reports The Sun. In the fourth-century version, a man goes up to a slave trader and moans: "The slave you sold me died." Under the law then, he was entitled to damages. The trader replies: "Did he? By the gods, when he was with me he never did such a thing!"
Monty Python's famous Dead Parrot sketch was based on one written 1,600 years ago in Ancient Greece.
Historians have revealed it is in the world's oldest joke book - entitled Philogelos, or The Lover of Laughter, reports The Sun.
In the fourth-century version, a man goes up to a slave trader and moans: "The slave you sold me died."
Under the law then, he was entitled to damages.
The trader replies: "Did he? By the gods, when he was with me he never did such a thing!"
