Hello Caractacus — in Python

What is a start? In programming, it’s often “Hello World” — a sterile handshake with the machine. But what if the start is theatrical, recursive, and absurdly lyrical? What if we begin not with a greeting, but with a procession?

This sketch is a Python rendition of The Court of King Caractacus, a song famous for its escalating, looping structure. The code doesn’t just print — it performs. Each verse builds on the last, layering fragments of absurdity until the whole thing collapses into a punchline: “well it’s too late! coz they’ve just passed by!”

The structure is modular, expressive, and deliberately inefficient — a celebration of recursion, repetition, and the joy of watching logic spiral into nonsense. The jot and jotln functions act like stage directions, controlling the rhythm of the output. The lyrics array is a stack of motifs, each one stitched into the next like a poetic daisy chain. And the COMMANDS list? A nod to audience participation — because recursion is better when shouted.

This isn’t just code — it’s a ritual. A way to say: I’ve moved on from Hello World. I now greet the world with witches, britches, and powdered noses. I now start with Caractacus.

TITLE = "the court of king caracticus by rolf harris"

lyrics = [
    "the ladies of the harem of the court of king caractacus ",
    "the noses on the faces of ",
    "the boys who put the powder on ",
    "the fascinating witches who put the scintillating stiches in the britches of ",
]
BEGINNINGS = [
    "now ",
    "if you want to take a picture of "
]
ENDINGS = [
    "were just passing by.",
    "well it's too late! coz they've just passed by!"
]
COMMANDS = [
    "[all together]"
]

def jot(s):
    print(s, end='')

def jotln(s):
    print(s)

def main():
    jotln(TITLE)
    # for each verse
    for i in range(4):
        # repeat four times
        for j in range(4):
            if j == 1:
                jotln(COMMANDS[0])
            jot(BEGINNINGS[0])  # "now "
            # join the appropriate bits together
            for k in range(i, -1, -1):
                jot(lyrics[k])
            jotln(ENDINGS[0])  # "were just passing by."
        jotln("")  # blank line
    # photo opportunity
    for i in range(2):
        jot(BEGINNINGS[i])
    # the longest line
    for k in range(3, -1, -1):
        jot(lyrics[k])
    jotln(ENDINGS[1])  # "well it's too late! coz they've just passed by!"

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Harry Handelbar

Harry is a recovering satirist, part-time philosopher, and metadata tinkerer. His archive spans two decades of metaphysical mischief, theological punchlines, and poetic nonsense. He believes in satire’s transformative power, the elegance of expressive metadata, and recursion—once writing a poem that never ended and a script that crashed browsers.