Gumby

The Gumby theme song on the videos I have is different from this one. It looks like all the shows are from the 1967 series. It has the Indian Challenge episode I remember seeing on TV as a child.

Here's the song!

He was once a little green slab of clay. Gumby!
But you should see what Gumby can do today. Gumby!
He can walk into any book, with his pony pal Pokey too.
If you've got a heart then Gumby's a part of you.

The Gumby in Monty Python's Flying Circus

"My brain hurts!" - A. Gumby

Monty Python's Gumby character is instantly recognisable anywhere - round, wire-rimmed spectacles, wellies, rolled-up shirtsleeves, braces (or suspenders, for the Merkin readership) and a tank-top (sweater vest). The element that really defines the Gumby is, however, a knotted handerchief on the head - surely a symbol of ultimate Britishness.

Not overly-bright, a Gumby may have many hobbies, including flower arranging and hitting people (or himself) with bricks. I dread to think how Gumbys would vote, unless for the Silly Party. A sudden cry of "My brain hurts!" is a sure sign of Gumbyness. He makes several appearances in the show, which include:

Series 1 (Episode 9) The Gumby Crooner
Series 2 (Episode 25) Gumby Flower Arranging
Series 3 (Episode 32) The Gumby Brain Specialist

To give an example of the Gumby approach to life, I give you the Flower Arranging sketch:

(Superimposed caption: 'FLOWER ARRANGEMENT' - the camera pulls back to show a Gumby in studio with piles of flowers on a table)

Gumby: Good evening. First take a bunch of flowers... (He grabs flowers from the table.)

Gumby: Pretty begonias, irises, freesias and crymanthesums (sic - very bad pronunciation), then arrange them nicely in a vase. (He thrusts the flowers head downwards into the vase and stuffs them in wildly; he even bangs them with a mallet in an attempt to get them all in) Get in! Get in! Get in!

http://www.users.muohio.edu/mathusjb/crunchy-frog/gumbyflower.html

If they are a seperate species, I am at a loss to explain to work out how they breed - all the Gumbys I have ever seen are male. Perhaps their womenfolk are in hiding. Not suprising, really. I am indebted to thebigdb for pointing out (below) where they were all along.

guiltware = G = gun

gumby /guhm'bee/ n.

[from a class of Monty Python characters, poss. with some influence from the 1960s claymation character] 1. An act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in `gumby maneuver' or `pull a gumby'. 2. [NRL] n. A bureaucrat, or other technical incompetent who impedes the progress of real work. 3. adj. Relating to things typically associated with people in sense 2. (e.g. "Ran would be writing code, but Richard gave him gumby work that's due on Friday", or, "Dammit! Travel screwed up my plane tickets. I have to go out on gumby patrol.")

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

The Gumby Women In "Monty Python's Flying Circus"

There were, in fact, Gumbies of the womanly sort. They appeared for a few brief seconds at the end of the show containing the chemist sketch (the one where they aren't allowed to say 'semprini', or Series II, Episode 4: 'The Buzz Aldrin Show' for you technical types). The gumbies say (shriek pehaps?) the magna verba (great words) "And now for something completely different…", they change into female gumbies, and then back again saying "That was fun!"

They were real women; they were the extras from the series.

Many thank yous to the wacky people at montypython.net for supplying this info to me, and the troupe Monty Python, whose dry humor I alone understand in my house.