“Cut to Sam Trench at roadside.

TRENCH: Well something certainly is happening here at Tolworth roundabout, David. I can now see Picasso, he’s cycling down very hard towards the roundabout, he’s about 7550 yards away and I can now see his painting . . . it’s an abstract . . . I can see some blue some purple and some little black oval shapes . . . I think I can see . . .

A Pepperpot comes up and nudges him.

PEPPERPOT: That’s not Picassothat’s Kandinsky.

TRENCH: (excited) Good lord, you’re right. It’s Kandinsky. Wassily Kandinsky, and who’s this here with him It’s Braque. Georges Braque, the Cubist, painting a bird in flight over a cornfield and going very fast down the hill towards Kingston and . . . Piet Mondrianjust behind, Piet Mondrian the Neo-Plasticist, and then a gap, then the main bunch, here they come, Chagall, Max Ernst, Miro, Dufy, Ben Nicholson, Jackson Pollock and Bernard Buffet making a break on the outside here, Brancusi’s going with him, so is Gericault, Ferdinand Leger, Delaunay, De Kooning, Kokoschka’s dropping back here by the look of it, and so’s Paul Klee dropping back a bit and, right at the back of this group, our very own Kurt Schwitters . . .

PEPPERPOT: He’s German!

TRENCH: But as yet absolutely no sign of Pablo Picasso, and so from Tolworth roundabout back to the studio.”

—Monty Python, from the very first Episode One: Whither Canada, 1969.