After an introduction by local radio presenter David Bevan, John Cleese walked out to rapturous applause. Tall as he has always appeared he seemed delighted at the welcome he received. He began by saying thank you to everyone and for them contributing towards his alimony payments! He said he had four more years to go until he paid it all off.
Beginning the show it was explained the format would be split in two with the first half featuring Bevan interviewing Cleese on his early career and child-hood. This proved most interesting as he revealed familial facts such as his father’s surname actually being ‘Cheese’ which was later changed to ‘Cleese’ after his father joined the army. It seems a spelling error replaced the H with an L and the name stuck. Although he did say his father’s sister was called Dorothy Cheese and they all used to call her ‘Dotty Cheese’!
He appeared to hold deep affection for his parents with particular time given to talk about his mother. Apparently she shared his black sense of humour. An example was he would phone her weekly and being the worrier she was, she would endlessly complain about the latest ailments afflicting her. Cleese would then say to her ‘well would you like me to send a hitman around to kill you?’ – she would reply – ‘oh yes please and I hope they’re nicely dressed!’ Another example was when she said she was afraid of dying and Cleese said to her ‘well you will never die as I will get a Taxidermist to have you stuffed!’ Apparently she then told all of her friends that ‘my lovely son has told me after I die I will be getting stuffed!’. According to him she lived to a grand old age having gone through two World Wars, the Great Depression, man on the Moon and the fall of Communism and seemed oblivious to it all! She never travelled outside of her local area and seemed content to stay where she was.
Cleese, his mother Muriel Cleese - then 96 - and Alyce
While he was talking various photographs were displayed on-screen with pictures of his parents and the neighbourhood he lived in. Initially he wanted to teach and went to University to study teaching. Apparently one day he literally stumbled into a performing arts class by mistake and fell in love with acting. There he met Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie (later to be famous for The Goodies) and other people who all formed their own comedy team. They were successful for a time and even tried their luck in America. This wasn’t as successful and they eventually broke up. For Cleese this would be a silver lining as he would then receive a call from David Frost to appear in ‘The Frost Report’ – which he did alongside Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett – latterly the Two Ronnies. From this he would then go onto the influential British comedy series ‘That Was the Week That Was’ where he met Marty Feldman – who was initially a writer and only became a performer due to Cleese’s insistence. Around this time he met the others who would form the rest of Monty Python – Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.
Michael Palin, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam
It was interesting hearing his tales of this time as many of his co-stars from these various shows became huge stars. He said ‘The Goon Show’ was a big influence on his style of comedy and said meeting Spike Milligan, Harry Seacombe and Peter Sellers was fantastic. He said Sellers was like a few comedians he knew who, although they had the gift of mimicry, they found it difficult to have a personality of their own. Mike Yarwood is another British comedian he mentioned who built a career impersonating others but never really displayed his true persona to his friends. Comments like these gave an interesting insight to some well-known names.
He didn’t talk as much about Python as one would have expected – which is fair enough as he would have been there all night if he had – and told some behind the scenes anecdotes. He said they used to have huge arguments over writing sketches than actually with each other. One sketch involved an animal changing a light bulb. Apparently Cleese and two others favoured a sheep to do this while the other three wanted it to be a goat! Supposedly this argument went on for awhile until Cleese shouted ‘he couldn’t believe they were arguing over something like this!’ He mentioned the silliest sketch – and the one he had the most fondness for – was the fish slapping sketch. He duly presented this and a few other clips from his early career on-screen. It was interesting hearing the reaction of the audiences to these as it proved that well written sequences can last forever.
After a break of twenty minutes, he came out on stage alone and proceeded with the show’s second half. Here he talked about his love for black humour and how he loved to shock people. He mentioned his upper-crust education and background gave him a healthy dis-respect for authority and his determination to lampoon them. Clips were then shown from ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ to illustrate his point. The scene involved was the infamous ‘Black Knight’ sequence with the use of cartoonish violence adding to the macabre proceedings. Cleese chatted briefly about ‘Life of Brian’ saying the film was an attack on how people use religion instead of religion itself. He mentioned he and the rest of the Monty Python team staged mock protests outside the movie theatres of New York in order to further drum up publicity – which worked!
He then went on to chat about Fawlty Towers and the writing process involved in it. Typically a BBC comedy script was 68 pages long while a script for Fawlty Towers – which was so reliant on action and words – usually came in at 148 pages. He mentioned that an average episode had 4 days rehearsal with over 20 hours footage usually shot for each one. He and his then wife Connie Booth would stay for hours in the editing booth perfecting the episode to their satisfaction. He then showed a scene from the series to illustrate this point with the ‘fire drill’ episode. He said the added innovation of the burglar alarm allowed more comedic situations to occur with the editing capturing the timing of these scenes effectively.
The origins to how he and Connie Booth came to write Fawlty Towers were just as hilarious as the show. In 1970 he, Connie Booth and the Monty Python crew were staying in a hotel in Torquay which was run by a rather strange gentleman. Apparently whenever everyone ate in the dining area, this man would walk around observing their progress. Terry Gilliam had the mis-fortunate of ordering a steak and – being American – started cutting it in a way British people didn’t. This owner saw this and yelled at Gilliam for ‘not cutting it the British way!’. Cleese and Booth were so fascinated by this person they stayed a few days longer to check him out. Whenever a customer would ask him a question at the front desk, he would feign disgust and yell that ‘he was far too busy to do anything’. Another time Cleese was looking for his suitcase which he had left by the foyer front door. He asked the owner if he had seen it. The guy replied ‘yeah I put it outside over there’ and pointed in the direction of the pool and a wall – which was nearly a mile away! Cleese asked why he did that and he said ‘because I thought there was a bomb in it!’ All of this became the basis for the show several years later.
He then talked about A Fish Called Wanda and showed everyone a test screening card which mentioned a list of the most complained about sequences in that film – such as the dogs being killed and one of the main characters being flattened by a steam roller. He then said another question on the card was ‘what were your favourite moments in the film ‘ – and all of them were the same ones that were listed in the ‘most complained about’ column! Various scenes from the film were shown – along with Michael Palin’s stuttering character – which Cleese said not one single person complained about!
The evening then finished with Cleese talking about Graham Chapman’s death in 1989 and the memorial service. He said Chapman was a great guy but always very casual with his time keeping. Often they would wait for hours for him to turn up anywhere. Cleese spoke with great affection for him and the rest of the team and seemed to enjoy reminiscing. In some ways it was frustrating he ended things there as I would have loved to have heard his tales about appearing in the James Bond films – but again had he done so the night would have gone on much longer.
Overall it was a great night and I enjoyed seeing a very gifted comedian peel back some of the layers audiences don’t usually see of laugh makers such as him.
Review by Patrick Moore
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