Is there a small Python runtime environment installer?

[Tex Riddell]

I have some useful scripts that I'd like to share with someone that
doesn't have Python.  He doesn't want to install all of Python right
now (like examples, utilities, source, IDE's and tk - yuck), he'd
rather just have an executable or install a simple runtime library and
run my script.

I only know of two main distributions of python and each are made for
people developing with python.  Is there a simple, compact, binary
distribution available anywhere?

Ideally, I'd like to see a binary shared library, compiled for the
target platform, with a minimum of external dependencies.  Hopefully,
with support scripts (for standard features) compiled to byte code and
compressed or at least clumped together in a single file (or a few
files, one for each larger feature area).

More specifically I'm looking for something for the windows
environment, but one should be able to make something like this
multi-platform, right?

How can we expect python to become more mainstream if only developers
can understand the environment that must be set up for scripts to run?

I really don't have time to learn distutils (re-inventing the wheel
that I'm sure so many have done) in order to install a runtime
environment on someone's machine so they can run a simple 8k script.

-Tex