(Ominous music)
Voice Over: (Michael Palin) June the 4th, 1973, was much like any other summer's day in Peterborough, and Ralph Melish, a file clerk at an insurance company, was on his way to work as usual when... (da dum!) Nothing happened! (dum dum da dum) Scarcely able to believe his eyes, Ralph Melish looked down. But one glance confirmed his suspicions. Behind a bush, on the side of the road, there was *no* severed arm. No dismembered trunk of a man in his late fifties. No head in a bag. Nothing. Not a sausage. For Ralph Melish, this was *not* to be the start of any trail of events which would not, in no time at all, involve him in neither a tangled knot of suspicion, nor any web of lies, which would, had he been not uninvolved, surely have led him to no other place, than the central criminal court of the Old Bailey.
(muttering voices, Judge's gavel banging.)
Voice Over: But it was not to be (ominous music returns). Ralph Melish reached his office in Dullsells Street in Peterborough, at 9:05 a.m., exactly the same time as he usually got in!
(door opens)
Enid: Morning, Mr. Melish
Ralph: (Terry Jones) Morning, Enid
Voice Over: Enid, a sharp-eyed, clever young girl, who had been with the firm for only 4 weeks, couldn't help noticing the complete absence of tiny but tell-tale blood stains on Mr. Melish's clothing. Nor did she notice anything strange in Mr. Melish's behaviour that whole morning. Nor the next morning. Nor at any time before or since the entire period she worked for that firm.
Ralph: Have the new paper clips arrived, Enid?
Enid: Yes, they're over there, Mr. Melish.
Ralph: (faintly) Oh...
Voice Over: But for the lack of any untoward circumstances for this young secretary to notice, and the total non-involvement of Mr. Melish in anything illegal, the full weight of the law would have insured that Ralph Auldus Melish would have ended up like all who challenge the fundamental laws of our society. In an iron coffin with spikes on the inside.
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