The Mouse Problem

"The Mouse Problem" is a Monty Python sketch, first aired in 1969 as part of Sex and Violence, the second episode of the first season of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

In the sketch, an interviewer (Terry Jones) and linkman (Michael Palin) for a fictional programme called The World Around Us, investigate the phenomenon of "men [who] want to be mice". The programme bears a striking similarity to an episode of Panorama; even its theme tune, the fourth movement of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 1, was the theme tune of Panorama at the time.

A "confessor" (John Cleese) is interviewed about his experience as a mouse: when he was a teenager, he got drunk at a party and experimented with cheese, and gradually came to accept his mouse identity. "It's not a question of wanting to be a mouse — it just sort of happens to you," he tells the interviewer. "All of a sudden you realize… that's what you want to be." The "programme" features undercover footage of a "mouse party", where Cleese explains that "there's a big clock in the middle of the room, and about 12:50 you climb up it and then... eventually, it strikes one and you all run down". He also points out that there's "a farmer's wife" present. Then follows a discussion with psychiatrist and conjuror, The Amazing Kargol (Graham Chapman), about what attracts men to the mouse lifestyle. A series of vox pops illustrates societal attitudes towards mice men, and several historical figures who were mice, such as Julius Caesar, Napoleon "and, of course Hilaire Belloc", are shown. The programme also includes footage of men in mouse costumes being led into police stations, newspaper headlines about mouse scandals and mouse rights demonstrations, and photos of "mouse clubs".

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