Grab your briefcase and bowler and celebrate The International Day of Silly Walks 2024 in Prague.

On: January 6, 2024, By: Bill Young

John Cleese heading to the Ministry of Silly Walks. Photo: Monty Python

A recent study by the BMJ found that a walking style made famous in a sketch by the Monty Python comedy troupe is actually vigorous exercise. Studies published in the annual holiday edition of the British Medical Journal, which traditionally highlights legitimate but offbeat research, indicate that a brief but brisk ‘silly walk’, similar to that made popular by Mr Teabag (John Cleese) in the Python’s iconic Silly Walks sketch, could improve your health dramatically.

Employing the combination of high-tech science and a tittering adolescent’s sensibility, the study set out to determine the physiological effects of ambling around a track in the manner of the actor John Cleese, playing the apparently boneless Mr. Teabag, the head of the Ministry of Silly Walks, or Michael Palin’s Mr. Putey, a wannabe silly walker whose screwball stroll needs work.

Given the clear cardio-vascular benefits of any type of ‘silly walk’, one may want grab your bowler hat and briefcase and to head to Prague this weekend as Monty Python‘s Silly Walk makes a triumphant return to the streets of Prague, marking the first time in a decade that the Czech capital has witnessed this annual display of bowler hats and sideways strides. The last known large silly walk gathering in Prague was in 2012.

The International Day of Silly Walks is now observed around the world, from Budapest to Reykjavik, on Jan. 7 every year. In the Czech Republic, the annual event has a particularly strong following in Brno, where hundreds of people participated in last year’s Silly Walk, now in its 11th year.

One of the walk’s organizers, Tashi Erml, a 29-year-old Czech communication consultant, notes the strong connection between the John Cleese sketch and the Czech Republic, “The Silly Walk is strongly connected with the Czech Republic. Since 2012, when the first marches took place in Prague and Brno, the event has spread to other Czech cities and even abroad. The organizers from Brno have been very active in this, and the International Silly Walk Day came into being thanks to them. So, it is great that this fun event is spreading further to the world.”

Should you be making your way to showcase your talents and get a bit of cardio in as an added benefit, Sundays event will take place at 2 p.m. when Day of Silly Walks returns to Prague after a decade. Taking place on International Day of Silly Walks, this short procession through Prague will gather fans of Monty Python at Náměstí Republiky in front of the Palladium entrance to pay tribute to the British comedy troupe’s Ministry of Silly Walks sketch.

If you go, take pictures and send our way!