The
Three Doctors
With:
Doctor
Kenneth TUPPER
Doctor
Sidney MANGE
Doctor
Reginald ROUGHROD
Two
or three EXTRAS
TITLES:
GRAMS:
Some sort of cheap,
upbeat brass combo, dripping 1970s, (a la ‘Terry and June’ or ‘On the Buses’)
with plenty of mouth trumpet and badly tuned trombone. Swanee whistle to
underline comic beats essential. If composer unavailable then cut and paste
some ‘Carry On’ themes from the internet in a random fashion. For added impact
get one of those cheap hip hop beat box artist that are ten a penny on high
streets adding ‘oh yeah’, ‘baby’, ‘ugh ugh’ and coughing up fart noises.
GRAPHICS:
A mixture of live action,
freeze frame and title cards with cartoon drawings. Use a series of freeze frames
depicting actors costumed in scrubs, pointing at medical implements, wobbling
jellies or fruits that resemble sexual organs in mock outrage / concern /
horror – delete as appropriate. Captions could include: ‘that’s a big one’,
‘chase me’, ‘You don't get anything for a pair, not in this game’, ‘didn’t he
do well’, ‘well, what a pair of wobbling melons’.
CUT
TO:
INT.
OPERATING THEATRE. DAY. 1972
Establishing shot of a
calendar denoting the 1970s and an operating theatre of some description. TUPPER
and MANGE are unpacking their
doctor’s bags, scrubbing up and so forth. MANGE
pulls out what is obviously a lunch box with ‘lunch box’ written on it in
felt tip pen, empty save for a large ordinary looking aubergine. Which he holds
up to the light. It has a post-it note stuck to it.
TUPPER:
Oh, goodness gracious me.
What have you got there, Sid?
MANGE:
Cor, blimey. It’s a rude
vegetable that Mrs Mange put in my lunchbox, Kenneth.
TUPPER:
Oh,
I say. What sort of vegetable?
MANGE:
A gigantic aubergine in
the shape of a stool bucket that’s recently been used by an incontinent patient
caught short.
TUPPER:
Oo, what a lark! I like a
rude vegetable, I do. I say, how do you know?
MANGE:
Know
what?
TUPPER:
That
it’s a stool bucket.
MANGE:
It’s written on the note
here. ‘Dear Mange. I thought if you found this rude vegetable shaped like a
used stool bucket in your lunch box, it might cheer you up. Signed, Mrs Mange.’
TUPPER:
What
a card that woman is.
MANGE:
She’d be even more of a
card if I ever found some lunch in my box. A har har.
The door to the surgery
is flung open. And we hear an EXTRA.
Two postcards are flung on the operating table.
EXTRA (O.S):
Newspapers!
MANGE:
(tapping
watch and shouting after him)
Half an hour late! Cor,
blimey, these aren’t even newspapers.
TUPPER:
Oh…what
are they, Sid?
MANGE:
Cards.
TUPPER:
Did
Mrs Mange send them?
MANGE:
Yak, yak, yak. No. They’re saucy seaside postcards, from the
seaside. From Doctor Hopperby. He’s on holiday. By the seaside. Lucky bleeder.
TUPPER:
Is
he? Ooooo. Holiday, eh? Get away.
MANGE:
Yes,
that’s right. A ha ha harr.
TUPPER:
(To
camera, raising a glass of champagne)
And
a merry Christmas to all you at home.
MANGE holds the saucy
postcard to camera so it is clearly visible. It depicts a humorous scene of a
junior doctor with forceps. He has removed the sleeping patient’s penis by
accident and is being shouted at by his senior colleague.
TUPPER:
Ooo!
What does it say, Sid?
MANGE:
Cor, blimey. I don’t get
it, Kenneth, I just don’t get it. Even I just don’t get it.
TUPPER:
Oooo. Don’t get it?
Neither do I.
MANGE:
Yak yak yak. No, no that,
this. I mean what’s it all about? Look.
A brightly coloured mock-up of an operating theatre…
TUPPER
Oooo yes, just like the
one we work in, us being fully qualified surgeons that perform…operations…on
certain parts of the male body…
MANGE:
Why do you keep
interrupting me by stating the bleeding obvious, Kenneth?
TUPPER:
Bleeding?
But we haven’t even started yet.
MANGE:
Yak, yak, yak. Now see
here Kenneth, these three surgeons…standing…
TUPPER:
Like
us…
MANGE:
Shut yer trap, Kenneth. Listen.
This senior surgeon looks cross and is shouting at the junior surgeon, who is
sweating and holding his forceps above the patient’s dongler. ‘The caption
reads: ‘You blithering idiot, I ordered you to remove his spectacles.’ What’s
saucy about that? Has he got it in for spectacles?
TUPPER:
Snort.
Get it in. Saucy.
MANGE:
What
does yours say?
TUPPER:
Er...‘She’s got acute angina. Blimey. She hasn't got a bad pair of boobs either.’. I don’t get it either, Sid.
MANGE:
Get away.
(tosses
postcard aside)
What
a bleeding tosser. Yak, yak, yak.
TUPPER:
Oh, I say!
(To camera, raising a glass of
champagne)
And a merry Christmas to
all you at home.
The door to the
operating theatre is now flung open and Reginald ROUGHROD abruptly enters.
He is not in the best of
moods, being late for the impending operation.
He chucks a stethoscope
at a hat stand where it misses and catches TUPPER
in the eye.
ROUGHROD:
11 minutes late.
Defective hip hop artist at Effingham Junction.
MANGE:
Great.
TUPPER:
Super.
ROUGHROD:
It was neither great nor
super. The hip hop artist was doing some improvised beatboxing - breakdancing
on a large piece of cardboard which he’d nailed to the tracks in front of a
crowd of rush hour commuters on their way to the January Sales, blocking the
points at Shagingham Halt. There was a great deal of beatingham and 12 rounds
of boxingham by the time they caught him.
MANGE:
Too
good for him, I say. Yak, yak, yak.
Whilst the conversation
continues, the three DOCTORS are
scrubbing up, putting on plastic gloves and the like, as they do…
TUPPER:
Oh, I say. But wasn’t it
National Hip Hop Day?
ROUGHROD:
Well, possibly. As they
tossed him in front of the locomotive, he kept shouting, ‘I’m Lance, I’m Lance!
Remember the X Factor? I could be the next Susan Boyle.’
MANGE:
Yak, yak, yak. Shame.
There just aren’t enough boils to lance these days.
TUPPER:
Oo yes. Here, Sid, have you noticed it’s always National
Something Day, these days? National Dolphin Day, National Sprouts Day, National
Bin Bag Day…
MANGE:
Well, he couldn’t any
expect special consideration, just because somebody who makes greetings cards decided
it was Hip Hop Day…yak, yak, yak.
ROUGHROD:
Quite so. It was International
Overlook Your Fork Day yesterday. I put one on my chair, overlooked it, sat
down and bang – there was my fork, straight, smack, plumb up my arse.
MANGE:
Get away. Forking
painful. You won’t fork-get that in a hurry. A ha ha ha.
TUPPER:
Oh, Fork day, was it? Oh,
I say. No wonder I had trouble with road junctions yesterday. And I thought it
was Check All Testicles for Lumps day, you see? There I was, out and about, putting
my fingers up the trousers of the queue outside Boots, passing out cough drops
willy nilly….
MANGE:
Ding
Dong.
TUPPER:
Precisely.
ROUGHROD:
Shut up the pair of you.
You sound like a couple of bad actors auditioning for Carry On Willies….
TUPPER:
Oh,
I say!
(To
camera, raising a glass of champagne)
And
a merry Christmas to all you at home.
ROUGHROD:
(phone rings)
Excuse me, I’d better
take this…
(answers)
Yes CJ…certainly CJ… no I
know you didn’t get where you are today by walking around with a fork up your
arse CJ…yes I know that neither Mrs CJ or you have ever stuck forks up your
arses, CJ…Yes, I know it’s no way to pay tribute to the People’s Princess, CJ…
certainly CJ…afternoon would suit me best…
(finishes call)
Seeing CJ, 11.30 this
morning.
MANGE:
Great.
TUPPER:
Super.
ROUGHROD:
Never
mind all that. Where’s the patient?
The door to the theatre
bursts open loudly and two EXTRAS
enter carrying a corpse under a sheet. One is tall and dressed like a hotel
manager, the other is smaller and could be Spanish. They are panting, covered
in sweat / in panic mode. They dump the corpse on the operating table, The FIRST grabs the ear of the SECOND and thrusts the second’s face
towards the operating table.
EXTRA 1:
This hotel bedroom. This
hotel bed. This smack on head.
EXTRA 2:
I
no want to work here anymore.
(They
leave the way they entered.)
ROUGHROD:
(consulting
a clipboard)
Excellent. This must be
the patient. Says here that he is due for penile surgery. Or, as we Doctors
call it, penile surgery. Now, has
anybody got medical records?
TUPPER:
Er…When You’re in love
with a Beautiful Woman by Doctor Hook?
MANGE:
A
har har har.
ROUGHROD:
Disgraceful.
(pulling back the sheet,
checking for a pulse)
Strange. Seems to be
dead. Why would a dead man want his penis removed?
MANGE:
Perhaps he was feeling
stiff. Yak. Yak. Yak.
ROUGHROD:
Even
worse.
(He notices something
sticking out of the corpse’s jumper and extracts it. A kipper. He now holds
this up.)
What’s the meaning of
this? A mouldy kipper shoved up his jumper. And please…nobody say anything
along the lines of ‘that’s a bit fishy’…
The door is flung open
again and the two EXTRAS enter,
seize the corpse and drag it out, banging the door behind them.
The door reopens, EXTRA 1 rushes in, snatches the kipper
from ROUGHROD and pauses at the
door.
EXTRA:
Er…Kipper’s
off. Sorry.
(He
slams the door.)
MANGE:
I
could’ve told him that. Yak, yak, yak
TUPPER:
Oh yes, the whole place
whiffs of fish now. Reminds me of something. I just can’t put my finger on it…
MANGE:
You keep your filthy finger out
of Mrs Mange’s knickers, Kenneth. Yak, yak, yak.
TUPPER:
Oh, I say!
(To
camera, raising a glass of champagne)
And
a merry Christmas to all you at home.
ROUGHROD:
Why
does he keep saying that, Mange?
MANGE:
Gawd knows. Here,
Kenneth, why do you keep saying that when it isn’t even bleeding Christmas, you
twerp? Have you been sticking your balls up prematurely, again?
ROUGHROD:
Baubles,
Mange, baubles.
MANGE:
And
the same to you. A har har.
TUPPER:
Oh, I say. Here, stop it.
Who are we going to operate on now?
The door to the theatre
opens yet again, this time more slowly and reveals an EXTRA, a short man with a flat cap in a camel hair coat with his
back the DOCTORS.
EXTRA:
(Speaking
to someone unseen)
Easy does it Trigger,
play it nice and cool, son, nice and cool, know what I mean?
The EXTRA falls through the door landing at the feet of the three DOCTORS. Before he can get up, the DOCTORS wrestle him to the operating
table. The EXTRA all the time struggling
and protesting in cod French phrases as he is secured with straps.
EXTRA:
Boeuf a la mode, pot
pourri, mon dieu, crème de menthe, etc
ROUGHROD:
Now then, now then, of
course you’re worried, it’s a perfectly normal reaction during penis removal.
You won’t feel a thing…don’t struggle…it’ll soon be over…
They anaesthetise the
struggling EXTRA, who appears to go
under, then sits upright before finally succumbing
EXTRA:
Even the sonic
screwdriver won’t get me out of this one.
Cutaway to close ups of
the three DOCTORS who examine the EXTRA’S goolies critically, now masked
in a sinister fashion and holding implements somewhat menacingly.
MANGE:
Cor
blimey. That’s a tiddler, isn’t it?
TUPPER:
Oh, I don’t know. If my pussy
saw that it would give him the willies.
ROUGHROD:
Quiet, the pair of you.
Tupper? Proceed with the operation.
TUPPER:
Oh,
I say…well if you insist…
We have a montage of
sweating brows, ticking clocks, medical instruments being passed between the DOCTORS with stereotypical orders along
the lines of ‘scalpel’, ‘forceps’, ‘rude aubergine’; set to music connoting
drama and danger.
Eventually, the operation
is over. TUPPER mops his brow and
smirks. The camera pulls back and we see the forceps he is holding up in
triumph. ROUGHROD double takes and
his face gradually convulses in anger. He points a shaking finger. The scene
ends as close to the saucy postcard from the start as is possible. We see now
that there is a pair of spectacles in the forceps that TUPPER is holding.
TUPPER:
What?
ROUGHROD:
You blithering idiot. I
ordered you to remove his testicles!
MANGE:
Yak, yak, yak
EXTRA:
(Waking
up and looking at TUPPER)
Blimey. You haven't got a bad pair of boobs, either.
ALL
and EXTRA:
(raising glasses of champagne to camera)
And a merry Christmas to all you at home.
CUT
