ALL RIGHT
ON THE 
KNIGHT!

So shout, hip-hip-hooray,
He's a jolly good fellow…
21 today!*

Yes… my twenty-first script has just had a bottle of bubble bath broken over its bows, before sliding down the slipway… sideways.

The title is "Flimflamalot – a prank in King Arthur’s court"

All right...  it’s from the same stable as the Python’s ‘Spamalot’, which was a spin-off of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", but then the story goes all the way back to 1135 (that’s the year, not twenty-five minutes to midnight) when Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote “Historia regum Britanniae”, (“History of the Kings of Britain”) a fictional work, which includes an account of King Arthur’s conquests.

Fast forward to 1889, when the American humourist and writer, Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) wrote “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court “, which was filmed in 1931 as “A Connecticut Yankee”, starring Will Rogers. In 1949, Bing Crosby played the time-traveller in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”, which was a musical film adaptation of the novel.

“The Sword in the Stone” was a 1963 Disney animated film about Arthur's childhood, loosely adapted from T.H. White's take on the legend.

The "Carry On" team’s 1975 TV series, “Carry On Laughing” included two courtly contributions… “"Under the Round Table", and "Short Knight, Long Daze".

The French series "Kaamelott" (2005–2009) featured a humorous look at the legend.

And so it goes on...

Nothing new there then, well. apart from my script, which incidentally, could be

conveniently performed at any time of the year, as part of a regular season.

Hey… that’s cool!

Well… it was the age of shivery!

* The song, “I’m Twenty-One Today” was made popular by the English music hall comedian and singer, Jack Pleasants (1875–1924) Born in Bradford, he was a regular in pantomimes. His repertoire also included, “Come in and Cut Yourself a Piece of Cake”, “I Want to be Pally with Everyone”, “It's My Bath Night Tonight”, “Where Do Flies Go in the Winter Time?” and the self-effacing, “I’m Shy, Mary Ellen, I’m Shy”.