The Marriage Guidance Counsellor sketch is from the second Monty Python's Flying Circus episode, "Sex and Violence", first broadcast late on Sunday, 12 October 1969. It was also featured in the 1971 spinoff film And Now for Something Completely Different.
The sketch features Michael Palin and Carol Cleveland as a married couple (Arthur and Deirdre Pewtey) and Eric Idle as their marriage counsellor. The marriage guidance counsellor flirts with a receptive Mrs Pewtey rather than giving the couple advice, and Mr Pewtey fails to react to this behaviour and stand up for himself, even to the point where he meekly leaves the room when asked by the counsellor, who is clearly about to make love to Mrs Pewtey. In the television version, an American cowboy (John Cleese) convinces him he must "be a man" while in the film version, the voice of God convinces him.
The television version of the sketch ends with Mr Pewtey getting hit in the head with a chicken by a knight in a suit of armour (Terry Gilliam). In And Now for Something Completely Different, it ends with a 16-ton weight being dropped onto Pewtey's head. The words "So much for Pathos!" pops up after the weight lands on him.
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or guidance:
“The concerts you enjoy together
Neighbors you annoy together
Children you destroy together
That make marriage a joy”
—Stephen Sondheim (b. 1930)
“The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors.”
—Tristan Tzara (1896–1963)