Russell Brand and Tracey Ullman Sing the Wonders of “Asstrology” in Eric Idle’s What About Dick?

Mon­ty Python alum­nus and Spa­malot cre­ator Eric Idle’s new musi­cal What About Dick? tells the sto­ry of the “birth of a sex toy invent­ed in Shag­is­tan in 1898 by Deep­ak Obi Ben Kings­ley” (Eddie Izzard). It’s also about the decline of the British Empire as told by a piano (Idle). Oh, there’s quite a bit more, but I won’t rehearse the plot—let’s get right to a clip, shall we? In the above num­ber, “What About Asstrol­o­gy,” Aunt Mag­gie (Tracey Ull­man) and the young Dick (Rus­sell Brand), who live togeth­er in an Edwar­dian nov­el, sing about her meta­phys­i­cal tal­ent for read­ing the future on people’s bums. The exchange begins: “What is it exact­ly that you do?” to which Ull­man responds in Cock­ney, “I’m an aaassss read­er.” Then they launch into song. Yes, it’s as ridicu­lous as it sounds, and as fun­ny (if that’s what you’re into), and par­takes of the Pythons’ unique abil­i­ty to skew­er the pre­ten­sions of reli­gion, new age goofi­ness, and hocus pocus of all kinds with clas­sic music hall humor and flat­u­lence jokes.

So mark your cal­en­dars: this Novem­ber 13 is “Dick Day,” when What About Dick? is avail­able for dig­i­tal down­load, and you’ll want to get your hands on it (sor­ry). Idle ratch­ets up his pro­fane silli­ness with a cast “you’ll nev­er see… togeth­er again doing some­thing like this.” Idle has assem­bled the finest minds of British com­e­dy for a show he calls “Oscar Wilde on acid or like Down­ton Abbey, only fun­nier”: Brand, Ull­man, Idle, Bil­ly Con­nol­ly, Tim Cur­ry, Eddie Izzard, Jane Leeves, Jim Pid­dock, and Sophie Win­kle­man. If this cast doesn’t make you shoot out of your chair and yell Hooray for Dick! or some­thing like that, you’re clear­ly not the prop­er audi­ence for this show.

Go ahead, watch the trail­er right above and vis­it the offi­cial site for updates and more awk­ward, off-col­or Britishisms.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.