The Bruces sketch is a famous sketch from the TV show Monty Python's Flying Circus

Monty Python's Flying Circus

Monty Python’s Flying Circus is a BBC TV sketch comedy series. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines...

, and appears in episode 22, 'How to recognise different parts of the body'. It involves a group of stereotypical

Stereotype

A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...

 lounging Australians who are revealed to be the Philosophy Department at the fictitious University of Woolamaloo (a misspelling of the Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo

Woolloomooloo, New South Wales

Woolloomooloo is a harbourside, inner-city eastern suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Woolloomooloo is located 1.5 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Sydney. The suburb is located in a low-lying, former...

, this is how the suburb is actually pronounced with an Australian accent), and all named Bruce, with a common fondness for beer and a hatred of "poofters." Terry Jones

Terry Jones

Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....

 plays a "pommie" professor, Michael Baldwin, joining the department and meeting his colleagues for the first time. Since his name is different from that of everyone else, Baldwin is given the moniker "Bruce" to avoid confusion.

John Cleese

John Cleese

John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...

's character (who in a later sketch is called Bruce Beer) recites the seven faculty rules at the University of Woolamaloo:

1. No poofters.
2. No member of the faculty is to maltreat the "Abos
   Indigenous Australians
   Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
   
   " in any way whatsoever—if there's anyone watching.
3. No poofters.
4. I don't want to catch anyone not drinking in their room after lights out.
5. No poofters.
6. There is no... rule six.
7. No poofters.

The sketch is also featured on the Matching Tie and Handkerchief

The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief

Free Record Given Away with the Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief, later shortened to simply The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief, is the fourth album by the comedy group Monty Python, released in 1973.-Cover and Packaging:...

album and in many of the team's stage shows, where it would be capped with a performance of The Philosophers' Song. The song does not feature in the original TV version, which instead ends with the first Bruces saying "Sidney Nolan

Sidney Nolan

Sir Sidney Robert Nolan OM, AC was one of Australia's best-known painters and printmakers.-Early life:Nolan was born in Carlton, a suburb of Melbourne, on 22 April 1917. He was the eldest of four children. His family later moved to St Kilda. Nolan attended the Brighton Road State School and...

! What's that?" pointing to the ear of fourth Bruce returning to that episode's running joke, "how to recognise different parts of the body," with the voice over saying, "Number nine. The ear."

Monty Python Live at Drury Lane

A slightly different version of the sketch is recorded on this album.