Laejoh writes "Monty Python's 'Dead Parrot sketch' — which appear John Cleese — is some 1,600 years old. A classic scholar has proved the point, by espial a Greek version of the world-famous piece. A comedy duo called Hierocles and Philagrius told the prototypal version, only rather than a parrot they used a slave. It poignant to a man who complains to his friend that he was sold a slave who dies in his service. His attendant replies: 'When he was with me, he never did any such thing!' The joke was discovered in a lot of 265 jokes called Philogelos: The Laugh Addict, which dates from the fourth century AD. Hierocles had gone to meet his maker, and Philagrius had doubtlessly ceased to be, long before John Cleese and Michael Palin reinvented the yarn in 1969."

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