Wikipedia provides an object lesson in how to take something funny and kill it dead, dead, dead, dead.
Light-hearted music then begins to play and Palin performs a simple merry dance which consists of dancing towards Cleese, lightly slapping him in the face with two small pilchards, and returning to his starting spot. After Palin does this four times he returns to standing stiff and still. In traditional British dancing, of which this is reminiscent, one would now expect the other dancer to repeat these steps.
Sigh.
