The Original Sketch

Rutland Weekend Television was a sketch programme, but as with Monty Python's Flying Circus, the sketches were usually linked together, so that the entire episode flowed smoothly from one idea to the next. The Rutles segment begins as a documentary on hospitals, in which love is looked upon as an illness to be treated. The narrator of the documentary introduces a character who suffers from love songs (played by Neil Innes), whom we see in a dressing gown, walking the grounds of a hospital, as he sings the opening lines of the song "I Must Be In Love." Suddenly, we cut to a black and white film of the Rutles performing the song, in the style of the movie "A Hard Day's Night." The sketch ends with the camera running away from the narrator and going off to the seaside.

	Hear the entire Rutland Weekend Television sketch that introduced The Rutles, in RealAudio. (Click here to find out how you can listen to the RealAudio files on this site.)