Every Monty Python fan is going to be familiar with the dead parrot sketch.

BUT....did you know that there is an ancestor of Monty Python's famous dead parrot comedy sketch that has been found in a joke book, dating back to 4th Century Greece!

Here is a snippet from the BBC:

Philogelos: The Laugh Addict, which has been translated from Greek manuscripts, contains a joke where a man complains that a slave he was sold had died.

"When he was with me, he never did any such thing!" is the reply.

In the Python sketch, written 1,600 years later, the shopkeeper claims the dead parrot is "pining for the fjords".

The 265 jokes in Philogelos are attributed to a pair of jokers called Hierocles and Philagrius, about whom very little is known.

Full BBC article here

Other jokes include farts, sex, ugly wives, and a dimwit referred to as "a student dunce".

Hmmmm....does not seem so far off from modern jokes now does it????