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Vocational Guidance Counsellor is a Monty Python sketch that first aired on December 21, 1969.

The sketch is credited with creating the popular stereotype of accountants being boring. Four decades on, the Financial Times reported that it still haunts the profession.

Mr. Anchovy (Michael Palin) goes to the counsellor (John Cleese) seeking a career change. The counsellor reveals that Anchovy had done an aptitude test, and that the results showed that the career Anchovy is most suited to is chartered accountancy. However, Anchovy already is a chartered accountant, a career he has done for the last twenty years, and complains that he finds the job dull. The counsellor says that, according to the aptitude test, Anchovy is a very dull person, and has traits such as being easily dominated and having no sense of humor which, while a drawback in other professions, make him even more suitable for accountancy. Anchovy reveals that his dream is to be a lion tamer, saying that his qualifications for the job are having seen them at the zoo, and having his own lion taming hat. However, it turns out that he has misidentified an anteater as a lion. The counsellor disabuses Anchovy by telling him how fierce lions really are, and shows him a picture of a lion, which scares him. Anchovy then comes up with the idea of working his way towards lion taming via banking. As he is ranting on about it, the counsellor delivers a public service announcement about the dangers of chartered accountancy.

Re-release

The sketch was included in the DVD Monty Python's Flying Circus: Set One—Volume 1 , as well as in Monty Python's Flying Circus: Graham Chapman's Personal Best , and also appeared in And Now For Something Completely Different in 1971. In this version the counsellor's description of lions is accompanied by stock footage of a lion charging the camera, which causes Anchovy to recoil in terror. At the end of the film version Eric Idle appears as a fairy to grant Anchovy's wish of seeing his name in lights, whereupon he turns into the compère of Blackmail .

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Vocational Guidance counselor, As featured in the Flying Circus TV Show - Episode 10". Orangecow . http://www.orangecow.org/pythonet/sketches/one.htm#10 . Retrieved 2009-03-23 .  
2. ^ Perry, George (1983). Life of Python . Original from the University of Michigan, Digitized May 21, 2008 (illustrated ed.). Pavilion. pp. 192. ISBN 090751622X . http://books.google.com/books?id=d_RkAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Vocational+Guidance+Counsellor%22%2B%22Monty+Python%22&dq=%22Vocational+Guidance+Counsellor%22%2B%22Monty+Python%22&ei=VyjHSaibLpG8kgT-ne3-DQ&pgis=1 .  
3. ^ Smith, Malcolm; Susan Briggs (1999). "From Bean-counter to Action Hero: Changing the Image of the Accountant". Management Accounting (UK) 77 (1): 28–30.   reprinted in Smith, Malcolm (2003). Research methods in accounting . SAGE. p. 202. ISBN 9780761971474 . http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VSat6-j9_-YC&pg=PA202&dq=%22lion+tamer%22+%22monty+python%22+accountant&num=100&client=firefox-a&output=html . Retrieved 2009-03-27 .  
4. ^ Learn the elementary bits about business, Financial Times, 14 October 2008
5. ^ Alan Parker, Mick O'Shea (2006), And Now for Something Completely Digital , pp. 44–45, ISBN 9781932857313 , http://books.google.com/books?id=G49bRxbeH1kC&pg=PA44  
6. ^ "Vocational Guidance Counsellor". shooting script . Jump Station . http://www.jumpstation.ca/recroom/comedy/python/lion.html . Retrieved 2009-03-23 .  
7. ^ "Monty Python's Flying Circus: Set One—Volume 1". Digitally Obsessed . http://www.digitallyobsessed.com/showreview.php3?ID=129 . Retrieved 2009-03-23 .  
8. ^ "Monty Python's Flying Circus: Graham Chapman's Personal Best". review . IGN. April 12, 2006 . http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:V0VI9LLZBfUJ:dvd.ign.com/articles/701/701461p1.html+%22Vocational+Guidance+Counsellor%22%2B%22Monty+Python%22,+review&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us . Retrieved 2009-03-23 .  

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