Diverting somewhat from the mainstream of their remit, Nathan and Ben celebrate the 45th anniversary of the original broadcast of Eric Idle’s Rutland Weekend Television by watching the first episode, “Gibberish”, and weighing it against half a century of Python comparisons.

Sources and References

Eric Idle and Neil Innes interviewed by the NME about the first series of Rutland Weekend Television, answering the question, “how did the Rutland team manage to produce an L.E. programme on a Presentation budget?“

A review of RWT in the London Times by Alan Coren, lamenting the lack of coverage after episode two.

Michael Palin introduces The Bonzos on Do Not Adjust Your Set as they are about to perform their song, “Death Cab For Cutie” — a title you might recognize.

This Wikipedia list of British regiments is the source for “The Five and Threepennies” and possible other origins for the Rutland “Old Impossibles”.

And most of the answers from the Monty Python Rutland Weekend Minute quiz came from this New York Times article by David Waldstein about cheating in chess, and this embedded 1997 Times article about Kasparov by Bruce Weber.

And here are three articles from 2015, 2016, and 2017 looking back at RWT over the breadth of its entire run.  Many links are now dead.