Which episode was the first Flying Circus to feature a full-length story?

The Cycling Tour was the first Monty Python’s Flying Circus episode to feature a full-length story.

It is Episode 34, from Series 3, broadcast during the 1972–73 run. Rather than presenting a loose collection of mostly separate sketches, the episode follows Mr. Pither on a cycling journey and maintains a continuous narrative across its running time.

The format was unusual for Flying Circus. The episode begins with the title “The Cycling Tour” instead of the programme’s usual formal opening sequence, and the story moves through a series of encounters and mistaken identities. Michael Palin plays Mr. Pither, while Terry Jones’s character experiences amnesia and imagines himself as several other figures, including Leon Trotsky, Eartha Kitt and Edward Heath.

The later episode “The Golden Age of Colonic Irrigation” is not the first full-length story. “Michael Ellis” is another major story-led episode, but it came later. “Mr. Neutron” also contains a continuing narrative, yet it is identified in episode listings as a later full-length story.