Monty Python's famous Dead Parrot sketch is actually a lot older than thought - 1,600 years older.
An ancestor of the comedy sketch has been found in a joke book dating back to Greece in the 4th Century.
Philogelos: The Laugh Addict has been translated from Greek manuscripts.
Among the 265 jokes is one where a man complains that a slave he was sold had died.
'When he was with me, he never did any such thing!' is the reply.
In the 1969 Python comedy sketch, the shopkeeper, played by Michael Palin, tells irate customer John Cleese, that the dead parrot is 'pining for the fjords'.
The jokes are attributed to Hierocles and Philagrius, who may have been the Laurel And Hardy of their day, but about whom very little is known.
Comedian Jimmy Carr said some of the jokes in Philogelos are 'strikingly similar' to modern ones, with subjects including farts, sex and ugly wives.
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