John Cleese on At Last the 1948 Show

At Last the 1948 Show is part of the prehistory of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Written and performed by Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Marty Feldman, this sketch show was broadcast nationally by ITV in 1967.

Here talkingto Dick Fiddy about it in front of a British Film Institute audience, John Cleese is agreeably surprised at how good it was. 

Though it's worth pointing out that, well before Python, Round the Horne and The Goon Show were into subverting broadcasting conventions. Both dragged the BBC announcer into the show, for instance.

And a point that's got me into more than one Twitter argument: the Four Yorkshiremen sketch comes from At Last the 1948 Show and not Monty Python.

But you try an' tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you.