UNLIKELY literary and painful popular culture references were flying across the council chamber at last week’s full city council meeting.

Celebrating the abolition of a plot to revamp the A40 at Barton into a swanky boulevard, Lib Dem councillor David Rundle, pictured top, called on the services of Monty Python to aid him in his speech.

Reciting the infamous parrot sketch (it has passed on, it has gone to meet it’s maker, it is an ex-boulevard), he ripped into the failed policy in his usual inimitable way.

But Labour councillor Colin Cook, pictured right, responded in an equally unusual fashion, referring to his counterpart as “Mr Toad”, before seeming to correct himself to say “Mr Rundle”, which sparked jibes about Mr Cook’s apparent likeness to the popular children’s character.

As The Insider has shown before, life is never dull at the Town Hall, but this is the first time we’ve ever heard Monty Python and Wind in the Willows references in one meeting.

TWO city councillors relied on the Oxford Mail to tell them when an important meeting was starting.Labour’s Antonia Bance and Liberal Democrat Tony Brett both arrived late to full council last week, which had a prompt 5.30pm start.

Both politicians claimed they thought the start time was 6pm, and only discovered their mistake after our reporter started tweeting from the meeting.

But at least the pair owned up to their mistake, both using the social networking site to come clean to followers.

Councillor Bance tweeted: “You know that moment when your local journo tweeting from the council meeting you’re supposed to be at but you’re still on the bus? Yeah.”

And Mr Brett added: “I made the 6pm mistake too.”

TAUNTING fans at a football game have forced city council deputy leader Ed Turner to trim his beard.

The part-time footie official was working at a game at Cirencester Town’s ground in neighbouring Gloucestershire.

But when fans in the stands started to call the Labour councillor “David Bellamy” , he started having second thoughts about his facial hair.