One of the stock gags for Sacha Baron Cohen’s Kazakhstani journalist character Borat Sagdiyev is the claim that his country’s most popular hobbies are disco dancing, archery, rape, and table tennis — presumably in that order.

Kazakhstan’s official rebuttal provided unintentional humor in its own right, with an embassy diplomat characterizing archery as being “not prominent” in the former Soviet republic — while more or less glossing over the rape citation.

It reminded me of the old “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” episode, “The All-England Summarise Proust Competition”. During the original airing, a similar enumeration of hobbies caused a stir:

‘Proust’ of course features one of the most famous pieces of Python censorship. Asked by quizmaster Terry Jones what his hobbies are, Graham Chapman’s keen contestant says “golf, strangling animals and masturbating”. This features in the original script and was recorded, but censored for its original broadcast on 16/11/72 – with the words “and masturbating” mixed off, leaving a second of silence and, for the TV audience a massive audience laugh seemingly directed at nothing.

Years later, one of the Pythons pointed out the absurdity of UK censors objecting to masturbation, but feeling that the “strangling animals” part was acceptable for broadcast.