78h: Eric Idle / Kate Bush

Cochise at Oxford

Professor ... Eric Idle
Student #1 ... Dan Aykroyd
Student #2 ... Laraine Newman
Student #3 ... John Belushi
Student #4 ... Gilda Radner
Student #5 ... Garrett Morris
Cochise ... Bill Murray
Student #6 ... Jane Curtin

[Title graphic: a photo of the Oxford University campus in Great Britain with a text that reads: COCHISE AT Oxford]

Don Pardo: Time now for Cochise at Oxford. This week, Episode One: Tea and Tomahawks. We join Cochise's new rhetoric professor as he asks the last question on an exam.

[Dissolve to a classroom where a white-haired professor paces back and forth leading his students through an oral exam. Everyone wears black robes.]

Professor: And one final question. Would you prefer to spend a fortnight in an onion cellar searching for, uh, um, man's inhumanity to man -- or ... have all of Thomas Hardy's furniture start swelling up, say, two, three, four times its normal size? You in the onion cellar or Mr. Hardy's furniture? No doubt frightening the dear old man half out of his wits into the bargain. Couches and tables bulging up this way and that -- and there dear Mr. Hardy staggering back in disbelief searching his poetic soul for some explanation for this horrid vision. Your insignificant selves in an onion cellar or the incomparable Thomas Hardy, perhaps even struck down by a milk lorry in his attempt to flee the horrors of inflated chairs and ottomans, outsized highboys, engorged love seats, goliath Queen Anne tables, bulbous end tables and all the other villainy that makes this abhorrent vision worthy of rejection. All done? Very well. Put your pens down. Quick! What weighs more: a pound of flesh nearest the heart or a pound on the head?

Students: A pound on the head!

Professor: Who had hemorrhoids?

Students: Napoleon!

Professor: Mayberry-Sims, how do you get down from an elephant?

Student #1: [politely] I'm not Mayberry-Sims, sir.

Student #2: I know, sir!

Professor: What's your name?

Student #2: Names aren't important, sir.

Professor: Quite right! How do you get down from an elephant?

Student #2: Well, you wait until they get into your pajamas and then you shoot them down.

Professor: Hm hm hm? The hand that rocks the cradle, pulls the pajama cord -- is that it?

Student #3: Pulls the trigger more than likely, sir.

Professor: Mayberry-Sims, what have you to say to that?

Student #1: [politely] I'm not Mayberry-Sims, sir.

Professor: Where the devil is Mayberry-Sims?

Student #4: He was hit, sir!

Professor: Was he shot?

Student #1: In his pajamas.

Professor: What was he doing in his pajamas?

Students: Sleeping!

Professor: Very good. Now, all of you, an exercise. I want you all to empty the left-hand side of your brains. Empty all the thoughts out of the left-hand side and leave the right as it is. [students flop over and moan as if lobotomized] Mm hm. Mm hm. Now, you are experiencing a form of abject clarity. Now, tell me, which came first -- the chicken or the egg? [students moan incomprehensibly] Doesn't anybody know? Somebody must know. Who came first -- the chicken or the egg? [Cochise, in full Apache regalia, enters dramatically, accompanied by a stereotypical Indian musical theme] Ah! You must be the new fellow. How do you do? [they shake hands, students moan] All of you! All of you, fill up the left side of your brains again, please! [students slowly return to normal] Now, then, this is Cochise, a full-blooded Apache Indian.

Students: A woo-woo Indian or a India Indian?

Professor: Uhhhh... [looks at Cochise] A woo-woo Indian, I would say. [to Cochise] Do you have a book? [Cochise solemnly touches a book he carries under his arm] Good. Go sit down there with the Catholics.

Students: There's no room!

Professor: Well, make some room. Come on, now. [Cochise takes a seat at the end of the second row and watches in astonished silence as the Professor and his students run through their nonsensical exchanges] Now, then, class ... What's your favorite law?

Students: The Natural Law!

Professor: Whyyyyy?

Students: Because it's all-natural!

Professor: Who enforces the Natural Law?

Student #5: The police, usually.

Professor: Name something that isn't covered under the Natural Law.

Student #6: Artificial flowers and unlicensed physicians.

Professor: Good! Anyone else?

Student #1: Everything that isn't ... natural.

Professor: Perfect! What isn't natural?

Student #2: Oh! For an animal to act in a most unusual way.

Professor: Really? Does the Natural Law permit a creature to befoul itself?

Students: Never!

Professor: What about ducks?

Students: Ducks?!

Professor: Consider ducks. If a duck were to wet, would it not soil its own large, webbed feet?

Student #3: Ducks are wet in the water -- they'd swim away from it.

Professor: What about the ones that walk around on the shore? Surely they're not running into the sea whenever the pressing need to take a leak is with them!

Student #6: Well, they lift their leg.

Professor: What?! And then they put their foot right down in the big orange puddle?

Students: How unnatural!

Student #5: Well, they ARE ducks.

Student #4: Are you suggesting that their feet are too big?

Student #2: I know! They urinate and run at the same time!

Student #1: [to the other students] I think Elizabeth was on to something there, uh, with this lifting the leg business. Perhaps they lift their leg and instead of putting it down again, they - they simply ... hop away.

Professor: Like this, you mean?

[The Professor, standing at the chalkboard at the front of the room, starts hopping up and down on one foot. Apparently fed up with this insanity, Cochise rises from his seat, a tomahawk in his hand. He takes aim and throws it at the Professor. Then we pan over to the Professor whose deadpan face is only inches away from the tomahawk which is embedded in the chalkboard beside him. The Professor turns to the class, annoyed.]

Professor: Who threw that? Come on. [Cochise stands stone-faced] Who was it?

[The Professor looks around the room indignantly as we dissolve back to the title graphic: COCHISE AT Oxford]

Don Pardo: Don't miss Episode Two: Drums Along the Thames -- next time on Cochise at Oxford.


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