It was the moment everyone at John Cleese’s secret 60th-anniversary-in-showbusiness gala had been secretly praying for, and it happened at exactly 9:47 p.m. last night.

The Mandarin Oriental’s Loggia Suite was already at fever pitch: Michael Palin mid-anecdote, Terry Gilliam trying to set fire to a napkin with a magician he’d hired “for authenticity,” Stephen Fry two glasses deep into a speech comparing Cleese to Aristophanes, when the lights suddenly dimmed without warning.

A single spotlight hit the double doors.

Silence fell like a guillotine.

Then, in walked Rowan Atkinson. Not as himself. As Mr. Bean.

Full costume: tweed jacket two sizes too small, skinny brown tie already askew, teddy tucked under one arm, and that unmistakable face frozen in tragicomic innocence. He stopped dead center, stared at the 200 guests staring back at him, and slowly raised one finger to his lips.

Shhhhh.

The room lost its mind.

Cleese, who had been happily holding court at the front table, turned around, saw Bean standing there like a haunted department-store mannequin, and actually dropped his champagne flute. It shattered on the marble floor in perfect slow-motion comedy timing.

Atkinson didn’t speak. He never does when he’s in character. Instead, he produced a single bent fork from his inside pocket (exactly like the one from the iconic restaurant sketch), marched straight to Cleese, and solemnly handed it over. Then he tilted his head, gave the tiniest tragic eyebrow twitch, and pointed at the fork as if to say, “Your move, old man.”

Cleese, now the color of a ripe tomato, tried to form words. What came out was pure Basil Fawlty gibberish: “You… you absolute… I will have you flogged…”

The room erupted. Jennifer Wade, the evil genius behind the entire evening, was doubled over in tears of triumph. Eric Idle started clapping in perfect 6/8 spam-song rhythm. Someone in the back shouted, “He’s got the fork AND the moral high ground!”

Atkinson held the silence for another excruciating five seconds, then broke character just long enough to deliver the only audible line of the entire performance, in the softest, most perfectly timed deadpan imaginable:

“Happy sixtieth, Minister.”

He bowed, teddy and all, and the place detonated again.

Later, once Atkinson had changed into a tuxedo and become human again, he and Cleese stood side-by-side for photos recreating the Ministry of Silly Walks, two titans of British comedy proving that sixty years in, the only thing sharper than their timing is their affection for each other.

“Rowan is the only man alive who can reduce me to a blithering idiot without saying a word,” Cleese told guests afterward, still clutching the bent fork like a sacred relic. “And Jennifer knew exactly what she was doing when she invited him. I may never forgive either of them.”

Somewhere in the corner, Mr. Bean’s teddy sat propped on a chair wearing a tiny party hat, quietly judging everyone.

British comedy doesn’t get more perfect than this.