Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - John Cleese

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Actor and comedian John Cleese feels it is morally imperative to be Conan O’Brien’s friend. John sits down with Conan to talk about his new book Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide, writing essays on the subject of time, and favorite philosophical definitions of humor. Plus, Conan finds kinship in a photograph of a mailbox that bears his likeness.  Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone].For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.

Hi, my name is John Cleese and I feel it is morally imperative to be Conan O'Brien's friend. Hello, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. This is a labor of love. I'm so thrilled to get to do this show. It's funny because it's a different kind of conversation I get to have with people and the kinds of conversations that I've been wanting to have for so long. Not always possible on the show when people are distracted by my razor sharp cheekbones, thick luxuriant hair, chiseled chin. It's a distraction but here when my beauty cannot be seen, conversation tends to blossom in a way that it can't. They can see you. It doesn't seem to faze them at all. You walk around with me all the time, Sona. You see me walk down the street and people are like, fuck that guy's hot. And then

they go, oh, it's Conan, right? Never once. Never once happened. Never once did anything even kind of like that happen. That's strange because I've paid so many people to do that and they've taken the money and then not done it. Joined as always by Sonam of Sessian. Hello. And our good friend and, of course, expert producer, Matt Gurley. How are you, Matt? I'm good. How are you guys? Well, I'm good. I'm a little angry today. Yeah, you're riled. I am riled and you can tell I've got my Irish up. Although genetically, I guess my Irish is always up. I am a little irritated by something which is that the guest today is an absolute legend. Unbelievable. Unbelievable legend in comedy and of course we're talking about Mr. John Cleese and this is a big deal and we always have the same

engineer, right? Colin. Yes, who is British. And Colin's this lovely guy and he is here in the trenches. No matter who I'm talking to, if it's in early in the morning or late at night, there could be an earthquake and Colin's here and he's always rubbing things down with disinfectant to make sure there's no COVID and he's always in the corner scrubbing out out some piece of equipment and he's just, I don't know, he's like a Bob Cratchit, you know, he's always there. He wears fingerless gloves and he's working really hard and working his fingers to the bone. He tells me where the twix is. You can find those like a truffle, you know, like you can just dig down with your paws and get the twix no matter where we bury it. Come on. Where's my paws? What? Well paws

slash hands. Anyway. Do you remember also that Colin came when Jesse Eisenberg was locked out and came out of the blue and saved the day? Yes. He also sweeps the chimneys at Airwolf too. Yeah. But anyway, but Eisenberg shows up and there's nobody here but of course Colin's in his little cot in the back and he scurries out. He scurries out and he's like, oh, sir, oh, Mr. Eisenberg, sir, help please, help. I'll open for you. And he let him in and he said, can I make you some kippers? Can I make you a Neil Poy? And they, you know, of course Eisenberg was like, I don't know why this Dukensian 19th century British guy is here, but okay. It's because you reduce everybody to their command. Yes, exactly. That's not true. Anywho, this is the point. The point is Colin's

always here. Now I tell him the other day, hey, John Cleese is on. And he's like, oh my God, John Cleese, oh, I love John Cleese. I grew up watching him on the telly and I'm going to be the one that connects him into the phone call with you. Me talking to the great John Cleese. And then I said to Colin, I said, hey, how much is that, that goose, that Christmas goose in the window? How much is that? And he went to, and I said, what day is it today, Colin? He went today, Christmas day. And I said, is that goose still in the window? Yes, it is. Hey, that's a shitting. Go get that goose. So anyway, all that's going on. And I'm so happy for Colin. And I come in this morning. Colin's not here. No, suddenly there's this other guy here, Devin. Now it turns out,

Devin, Devin, what's your last name? Bryant. Oh, Devin Bryant. Now Devin, you outrank Colin. Is that right? I run the entire company. Yes, you run the whole. No, no, but you do outrank Colin. I do not outrank Colin. Well, wait a minute. All I know is that you, you are here. And I'm like, wait a minute, why is Devin here? Right. And then I remembered something. There was in one other time when you kicked Colin out and you took over the controls. And that was when? Eric Idle. Eric Idle was here. And now it occurs to me that whenever there's a Python guy on, you tell Colin who idolizes them, they're on his currency. It's true. People, if you buy, if you want to buy like some ale in a pub, you give someone five gram Chapmans and you can buy the ale. I find out that you

tell him, hey, Colin, run out and get some cigarettes. I'm handling it today. Is that what you do? Yeah, send them out for liquor and smoke. Absolutely. Yeah. But I think that's, I don't know, it feels somehow wrong to me that you're denying this guy who's here all the time, the chance to talk to John Cleese so that you can be here and go, no, hello, Mr. Cleese. I'm Devin. Now I run things here. I don't think I even interacted with him. Oh, trust me. Trust me, I came here and I saw you trying to get him sign something over Zoom. Yeah, he was trying to get an autograph over Zoom and he was trying to get him to feed it into an old fax machine from the 80s. And when Cleese couldn't do it, you were like, what's wrong with you? So what did you do? How

did you get rid of Colin? I'm curious. Colin just asked if I wanted to come in and do it today. That is not true. That is not true. First of all, that is not, no. That makes me think that Colin doesn't want to be here in the first place. I was just going to say, it sounds like Colin just didn't want to be here. Oh yeah, didn't want to be here when a national treasure of the English people is here on the show. Well, can I have? Of course he wanted to be here, but creepy Devin said, oh, you know what, I've been pretty much taking it easy during COVID. Checks are rolling in anyway. Oh boy. As long as Conan keeps talking, I get paid. I've had a good time. I've rewatched all of Gossip Girl. Now I get to, oh yeah, Cleese, that would be a fun one. Hey,

Colin, I got an idea. Why don't you drive over to Encino, pick up a package from me and don't come back. Are you just upset you couldn't make fun of Colin in your British accent while John Cleese was on? No, not at all. I would never do that. I would never mock someone's British accent in front of John Cleese. I would do it when I'm not on the phone with John Cleese. This way, you'll find out I get to have my cake, eat it too, and shit it out. That's three. But right now, Colin is somewhere with a tear that's mostly made of ham gravy because the British are very unhealthy people. A tear climbing its way down his face, and he's thinking, oh wish I had talked to Mr. Cleese, but Devin wanted to. Oh well, maybe when Michael Palin's on the show, then I'll get to talk

to him. Sorry Devin, I'm just noticing that you're a bit of a, I'm just curious, am I going to see your push again when another big name rolls in through here? Possibly. Possibly. Yeah. Well, Devin. Yeah, Devin. I've decided you're a bad guy. Yeah, fuck you, Devin. I'll take it. Hey, take it easy, Sona. That was a little much. Sona, come on, Jesus. I'm sorry, Devin. I'm sorry on behalf of Sona. That was out of line. You were just shitting on him for like 15 minutes. No, no, mine came from a place of truth. Yours was just sort of, yeah, yours was just... Oh, yours came from a place of truth. Well, yes, I'm here. I'm the one that gets here earlier, often earlier than you, and I'm the one that has to wake up, Colin, and it's such a small cot he has here

at the podcast studio. I know. And he has that little hot plate, and he always makes some tea, and he says, would you like a little tea? Only got one tea bag, only had one for about two years now. Well, just catering, you say. And then he goes, it's the posh, posh, traveling knife, the traveling knife for me. And I go, don't sing this now. And he goes, first cabin captain's court is real company. And I go, please don't do this song from shitty, shitty bang bang. And he goes, throw it out, starboard out, poach with a cow, it'll pay out, S-H posh. And I go, well, that's very nice, Colin. Anyway, you know, let's get into it because, and I'm sorry, hey, this one, I dedicate to Colin. Colin, wherever you are right now in whatever pub, squeezing the oil out of the

newspaper that wraps your fish. This one's for you, old chum. And yes, in honor of you, I'll call it football and not soccer. Okay, we have a very, oh, it's on the bottom. Oh, it's the bottom one that's really small. Thanks a lot. Colin would have fixed that. That's okay, Devin. I can read it. I can make it out. I brought, no, I brought opera glasses. I'm fine. Lucky me, son of a bitch. Jesus Christ. No, it's good. I can just make it out. I can just see, I brought these binoculars that I use when I'm out at sea to spot birds on the horizon. That's handy. No, no, it's fine. I'm glad. We're going, we're keeping this all in. Trust me, this is all going in. Oh, you're awful. I'm an awful slash greatest man that ever lived. Those two words are often confused, although one

of them is not just a word, it's a phrase. He's insane, way too much coffee, way too early. Wow. I want to mention something. Our guest today, our guest today, Devin, I was on a roll. I know you were. You just jumped in. Yep. And so now you're really on my shit list. Yeah, fuck you, Devin. Yeah, Colin Hader. Come on. And that one was deserved from so long. Oh, that was from A Place of Truth. My guest today, I want to point out first that he is not in studio because of COVID. And not only is he not in studio, he's on the island of Mustique. And he's talking to us, I think, on a 1920s telephone. But that will not matter because this man is one of my heroes. He's an absolute genius. He's, of course, a comedic legend, one of the founding members

of the iconic comedy troupe, Monty Python. His new book, Creativity, a Short and Cheerful Guide, is available now. And good Lord, do I love this book because it really concisely captures so much valuable thinking about creativity. And I really mean that. I'm honored this gentleman's with us today. Please welcome from the island of Mustique on a really crappy phone. John Cleese, welcome. We're here with John Cleese. I'm not a fan of his work. Never have been. I'm not sure why he's on the podcast. John, how are you? I'm fine, you bastard. Now we're on the right track, you know. Yes, I am.

If you're going to take that tone, I don't think we're going to get anywhere. What? This is not some assignment you've been given. This is a joyous occasion for you. It's been your lifelong dream to do a podcast with Conan O'Brien. Today is the realization of that dream, sir. And I've read today this little blurb about the show that I'm now a leading thinker. Yeah, I was thrilled because I knew I was a comedy icon and a legend, but I'd never known I was a leading thinker, so I'm feeling very sort of puffed up. Well, you should feel puffed up. You've written this wonderful book, John Cleese. It's called Creativity, a Short and Cheerful Guide. I'm just reminding you in case you forgot. It is a spectacular book and I want to tell everyone

listening. It's a very short book, but one of the most insightful books I've read about creativity. It's really quite lovely. You touch on a number of things I've given a lot of thought to because I've been in the business of trying to be, this will sound like nothing to you, but for over 30 years I've spent chunks of every day trying to think of something funny and I have a thousand theories about how that process works and I'm stunned that in such a short book you were able to hit the nail on the head so many times. It's really lovely. I could not be more happy because I tell you why I wanted to put everything into the book that you needed to know in order to become more creative and you know that phrase. I think it's attributed to Mark Twain and lots of people

about, I'm sorry this is such a long letter, but I didn't have time to write a shorter one, you know? I always love that. Well, I had time to write a shorter book. Yes, you had. I've been thinking about this stuff for so long. I was able to put it together quite simply, but it does correspond pretty much to what the book says to your own experience coming up with funny stuff. Yes, assuming that what I come up with is funny, that's very kind of you. I will say this, one of the points you make in the book is that the human brain often operates on a subconscious level and you talk about this in the book that when you say that people tend to think, oh Freud and sleeping with your mother and all the things I'm obsessed with.

But what you're talking about is quite different and I've noticed this many, many times. I hit my head against a wall for hours at a time with a legal pat in front of me or pen and paper. I don't think I'm getting anywhere. Then I go to sleep and when I wake up, I see things more clearly and I have ideas that didn't exist before. Yes. That's sort of the point of the book. Yes. I couldn't agree with you more. It's almost embarrassing because we seem to have the same mind. You know what I mean? What I realize now is the moment you feel under real pressure, you always go for what's derivative, what you've done before. That's what stereotypical thinking is for. It's to give you a quick result that doesn't require any creativity.

Yes. I think of it as muscle memory. There's a great anecdote that I think will ring true for you because it's so much of what you're talking about in your book. I believe it was Jack Warner, some stereotypical studio head of the 1940s. He was walking through the studio and he was walking past the writer's bungalows and he didn't hear any typewriters. He got angry and he said, you know, I want to fire all these people because they're not working. Every time I walk past those bungalows, I want to hear typewriters going because that is an uncreative person's concept of what thinking is, is, you know, constant movement. You have to hear, they liken having an idea to its work and it should be like, I better hear those shovels moving that coal,

as opposed to so much of writing is agonizing and wandering around and procrastinating and looking out the window and carving an apple and making an excuse to go buy a new desk because the one you have isn't right. There's thinking that's going on then and it's sort of denigrated, but it shouldn't be. You're absolutely right. I could never figure out why it was in the morning that I couldn't just sit down and write, but I couldn't. It was like two poles of a magnet. I just couldn't just sit and write. So what I would do is I'd sort of sharpen pencils or I tidy my desk or I'd make another cup of coffee or I'd go and sort my socks or something like that. I thought, why can't I get straight down to writing? I realized that all that sharpening of

pencils was just beginning to get from one frame of mind into another. From the everyday frame of mind when you're just taking care of everything and making sure everything gets done and there's nothing creative about that that doesn't need to be, but it's a different part of the brain that you use from the one that you do when you're creating and it takes a little time to get from one to the other. There was a period of time in my 30s when if I didn't have an idea, I would go out and randomly murder people. People like anonymous people, people that could never be traced back to me and this was mostly in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle, Tacoma, and I would kill people while killing, while strangling, ideas would come to me. I found that to be, and I didn't know why I was

doing it and I later realized that this was all part of the process. For me it was torturing small animals. But you're having fun and then all of a sudden you think I know how I'm going to end that sketch. But you know, going back to your Jack Warner story, I've heard that before and I think it's a wonderful example, but what I also heard, which amused me enormously, was that when the writers discovered what Warner was up to, they hired someone who sat in that block, writer's block, where they used to work and when they saw, when he saw Warner coming, he set off an alarm and they'd all pull the sheets out of their typewriter that they were trying to write, put a blank sheet and just type like crazy for two minutes. Just clack away, just clack away for no reason.

And then they look at it and say he's gone. They could put the paper back in and go and think it. You know, it's funny too, you discussed this in the book and I think that when you're early in your career, you need to start with people who inspire you and you almost write in their style. But for me, I wrote sketches when I was in my late teens and I looked at them later on and they're Monty Python sketches. And I even have a clipped British accent when I would perform them for people. And it's embarrassing to me now because I thought, well, no, I was just writing in the style of what I wanted. This was the most creative comedy that I had encountered. So I wanted to write in that style. I wonder what it is. A lot of people, Americans, have said to me,

people I've met after the show afterwards, and it's very touching. They sort of shake your hand. They say, thank you for making me laugh for 40 years. And there's literally a tear in their eye. And you can see that it's touched something with them. And I think, oh, yeah, some people have a sense of the ridiculous. And I think American comedy is not very strong on the ridiculous. I know exactly what you're talking about. I've always knelt at the altar of silly. I've never, I've never wanted to be trenchant. I've never wanted to be particularly political. I've never wanted anyone to watch anything that I've done and come away from it and say, I really learned something or you've changed my point of view. I just wanted to always to be silly. And I've

actually had people from the UK over the years who've seen my sillier stuff say, yeah, you don't really belong in America. Look, I want you to come off this interview stupider than you were before. Yeah, I'll do my best, Mr. Colvin. But I have a question to ask you. Yes, if you go back in the history of American comedy, who is silly? I think you can't get sillier than the Marx Brothers. The Marx Brothers in their purest form, whether it's night at the opera or duck soup, it is. And there's a very famous story about this. They do duck soup. And of course, it comes out just around the time that Hitler is seizing power. And duck soup is a lot about people seizing power and taking control of a nation.

And someone said to Groucho, this is a very wonderful scathing of Nazi Germany and Hitler. And Groucho said, what are you talking about? We're just four Jews trying to get a laugh. You've got to correct me on this, but I think one of the funniest lines ever was, Wagner's music is much better than it sounds. Let me say this, Mr. Colvin. Mr. Colvin, the funny thing about... I think you just called me Mr. Cognant. I think you just... Which means that by just speaking to me, I have made you stupider. That's right. That's really working. It's working, Mr. Colvin. It's really working. If you're joining us just now, I'm turning John Cleese into a blithering moron.

Well, I had a question for you, which is, in your book, you talk about this surprise at encountering the footlights and starting to work with people like Graham Chapman and starting to realize that this is something you could do. But the one thing that you don't talk about in the book that I think needs to be brought up is that you're one of my favorite physical comedians of all time. There was no way you could have discovered that at 19 or 20. You had to know that growing up. No, I didn't. That's a strange thing. But you're right. I do do some physical comedy very well. But I remember when I was 22, I looked at some of the people around me and I thought they were really much more talented than I was because I had no musical

talent. And my attempts to dance made me look like an Oxford philosophy professor, you know. It was just embarrassing. But I could play sports. And I think there's something about the sense timing. You know how when you hit a forehand and a ball just dings away because you hit it in the sweet spot. And I had something like that when I was doing comedy. I could time. I could time a line. And I thought that that's, I honestly thought when I was about 22, I thought that's all I can do. I've got good timing. So the whole business of learning to move finally just sort of drifted towards me partly because Chapman was a wonderful mind. And when we were on the floor rehearsing, he would do all sorts of things. He would do very funny impersonations of animals.

And then he and I would be giraffes. Do you see what I mean? And then we'd be ice skaters, taught me how to slide my foot so that it looks. So I think being around him got me interested. And I had a certain sort of rhythm, nothing to do with being able to dance, but a rhythm that enabled me to make the movements in a sort of very correct style. I could learn how to drive a golf ball or how to play an off drive or how to play a backhand. And I think those two types of timing seem to kind of come together and help each other. Some of my strongest favorite images next to Mark's brothers up there with Mark's brothers, W.C. Fields, you know, early comedy and the comedy of Peter Sellers is that your performance in Ministry of Silly Walks or when the famous German

episode of Don't Mention the War episode of Faulty Towers, your physical comedy is absolutely stunning and completely absurd and wild. And it's in my head right now. I think I think about it, it pops into my head once every two or three weeks. And it's very erotic when it does. I used to love people who could do what they called eccentric dancing. You know what I mean? There were three people called Wilson, Kaepel and Betty and they used to be in our music hall in our vaudeville and they would come on stage and they had this sort of pits and a sand pit and they were dressed as Egyptians and they would just get into the pit and just start making funny movements, sort of slightly like hieroglyphs. And I've seen people get completely

hysterical watching them and they're not saying anything at all. It's just a sheer absurdity of it. But I was always drawn to people who could move in that wonderful eccentric way, like Groucho Marx is a wonderful example. And when you think how skillful W.C. Fields is, I mean, the sketch that he does at the pool table, which he shot several times, but I mean, it's charmingly skillful and terribly creative. You couldn't think of that really. You'd only have to stumble across it when you're fooling around. So anybody who could do things that were physically clever attracted me and I suppose I slowly learned how to do some of them. You're very tall and I'm tall as well. And I always knew that because I was tall and lean,

there was certain things that I could do that really popped in comedy. My physicality was kind of silly. I am very long. I have a very long legs like a crane. And then I have a short, I have the torso of about a three year old girl, a very short torso. And because of that, if I pull my pants up a little bit and use my long legs, and I realize this is just, I could really make people laugh. And it was just because of the body I was given. And I think there is a kind of tall person physical comedy that I'm sure I've borrowed a lot from you, which I just watching you move very rapidly, very manically, or maniacally, just was something that if you had a smaller body, it would not have been as funny.

Well, what I love about that kind of stuff is that it's funny, as you were saying earlier, but it's hard to say exactly why some of the funniest things that Python done like the fish slapping dance. I always make a joke that in future, some poor student of media studies will have to write an essay on what it means. Yeah, I think it's when my least favorite conversation is when people want to dissect why something's funny, because I think what's that famous line, the only way to dissect something is to kill it. But you know, that's the problem in comedy is that I don't want someone to explain to me why I have. And it's the same thing with music. There's just certain obviously songs that really move me. When something's really funny, I don't want it discussed

too much. There's a certain amount of analysis that's kind of fun and helpful. And then you just got to stop and say, my God, that was that gave me a lot of joy, and I'm not going to think about it anymore. I think that's right. I think once it's fun to talk about it, provided you don't take it too seriously, and if you start trying to figure out principles which you then use when you are actually trying to write funny stuff, it just doesn't work. It has to come really from inside. And anything original, as it says in the book, comes from the unconscious. So it's by playing around without any particular aim that you hit on something. It was very silly. I mean, when Graham and I wrote the sketch about the man who had three buttocks. It doesn't mean anything.

But it's just so silly. I remember you were talking about people who want to try and find meanings in things. I remember coming off stage after a show one time, and Michael and I had just done the dead parrot sketch. And this very intense young man said, can I ask you something? And I said, yes, he said, the parrot sketch. It is about the Vietnam Wars. By the way, always my assumption. You got that. Did you? Yes, I did. Yes. Some people thought it was about the charge of the library, but it just shows you. No, I always got it. It's that reference at the end of the Tet offensive that made me realize, oh, OK, it's the Vietnam War. Incidentally, did you see President Trump was saying that the

flu epidemic of 1918 had been instrumental in causing the end of the Second World War? Did you notice that? I don't know what it's like for you on your island, but here in America, the only way to survive is to tune some of this stuff out. So no. It's up there with Wagner's music is much better than it sounds. Yeah. He might be our best comedian right now, working. When he when he's talking, I do get hysterical with my laughter because it's so wonderful. Well, that must be nice not to be a citizen here. Must be really fun. I have daughters in America, so I don't say I don't have my moments of terror. You know, one of the things that I think your your targets, you chose things that people hadn't really thought of as fertile comedy

ground before, say, I don't know, the crucifixion of Christ. And not other people were saying, now here we go. We did think when we thought of doing life of Brian, we do think this is relatively uncharted. There's so much beautiful comedy moments in it. And I one of my favorites is when you as the as the Roman centurion find Brian writing, you know, basically anti Roman graffiti on a wall. And then you think, OK, I would never have seen this turn coming in a million years. And I still think it's one of my one of the most brilliant turns in comedy. You're the heavy. You've caught him. He's now he's screwed. And you are very stern with him. And you tell him that his Latin is wrong. Then you spend 36 hours making or all night making

him get it right, which means covering all of Rome with horrible graffiti. And that's had to have come from your education, which is, oh, my God, Latin declensions. Oh, my God, this is the worst. I like Latin, you see, because I think I was quite a scared little kid party because my mother was fairly psychotic. And I think what happened was that when I realized that you've got more marks from maths and Latin than anything else, I just figured out that I'd try and become good at those. And they're very simple logical subjects. You just have to learn rules and apply them. Do you see what I mean? And most of the other subjects just need to be out of control. And I was kind of almost scared of them. And that's why I got into Cambridge, I think, because

I went down the science route without anyone ever saying to me that I had any creative ability at all. For example, when I was 15, I was told to write an essay on the subject of time. And I wrote a good full length essay on the fact that I'd not had time to write the essay. Do you see what I mean? When I handed it into the master, he just said to me, please, this isn't a proper essay. And I think that's exactly how the playfulness is quite kindly extracted from us while we're at school. Well, I think you've found this too. I found it from thousands and thousands of hours of being in front of audiences, talking to people. And I found that the mistakes are golden. There's a part of the brain that's like a schoolmaster that's saying that shooting down

ideas way too quickly just before they have a chance to grow. That's very rigid. And I know myself, that's a weakness of mine, is that I am very judgmental with myself and with others. And sometimes I can kill an idea way too quickly because I have, well, there's no better word than judgmental, very judgmental, like, nope, that's no good. And I want to kill it rather than, no, no, no, stop, play with this idea for a minute. Let's see where it goes. If it's nothing, it's nothing, but let go. Yeah, if it's nothing, it's nothing, and it doesn't matter. And that's why I keep saying, when you're being creative, before you bring your critical faculty in later, to decide whether what you've come up with is any good. That's the later stage.

In the stage when you're just having fun, there's no such thing as a mistake. Any more than you would say to some children that were playing together, no, there you got that wrong. That was a mistake. Well, it's true in writers' rooms, as you know, people can go off on wild tangents. And one of my favorite places to be is in a writer's room. And I'll go on a wild, very inappropriate tangent. We're all having a wonderful time and laughing. And then I think, well, we can't do that. And sometimes someone in the room says, well, wait a minute, yes, some of it you can't do on television. But, you know, and I was just playing, I'm just playing, or the other writers were just playing, that that's the strange thing is that it's learning to be

less rigid about letting that part of you go. Yeah, less, less conventional. And you were reminded me then of something that I'd forgotten for many years. When we were writing, you see the Python team, Fivus, used to write, excuse me, for David Froscher. And we would often come up with Python ideas before Python even existed. And the producer director was a lovely guy called Jimmy Gilbert, would say, very funny boys, but they won't get it in Bradford, meaning industrial town. And this became, they would never get that in Bradford. And in fact, what we did was we, when we started to play, we kind of took the attitude, well, maybe there'll be somebody in Bradford. That's right. Well, in America, it's it'll never play in Peoria.

That's right. That's right. Our, our Bradford is Peoria. And there is something about divorcing yourself from making you and your group of people that you're doing the comedy with delightfully happy and not worrying too much. How are people going to feel about it? And, and that is another thing is you need to anesthetize the part of your brain that's so worried about what's everyone going to think. You need to almost put that part to sleep and say, this, we love this. We absolutely love this. And maybe we'll put this out there. And it's not our business what people think of it. Yes, I think that's right. Providing some people enough people think it's funny. I mean, it's hard for anybody now to believe this. But when we started body parts in 1969,

we had no idea what the viewing figure was. There was a thing called the appreciation index, and they'd asked a few people. And if that was high, it usually meant it was a good quality program. But all we ever wanted to do was to try to be funny. And we always hope there'd be enough people out there to justify them giving us the money for the next series. But it was as simple as that. We never thought it was going to catch up. We knew it was quite strange. And the head of the comedy department thought it was absolutely awful. He cornered the director in an elevator after about four shows and says, what is this Monty Python thing? Is it supposed to be funny? I think he's absolutely terrible. That was the guy in charge of the department.

But we found the whole way through. And what I find now is with TV executives that the poor, deluded creatures think they know what they're doing. And they have no idea what they're doing. But the trouble is they think they do. And that's what gives them confidence. Whereas they never seem to go to anybody who's actually done something and made audiences laugh and say to them, do you think this will work? And of course, we are far better qualified to judge on those things than they are. It's part of the system that a lot of people are paid to have opinions. And so they need to have they need to have them. Yes, that's right. I've got a big desk. I remember I had an experience with Disney. I had co-written a film with a lovely guy called Kurt D'Amico. And it was

based on a wrong Dahl story called The Twits. So we were very happy with the first draft. And the woman I think her name was Nina Jacobson and said to us, you're 75% of the way here. We don't get first drafts like this. And we got six notes. And we went to where we wrote it. And when we got back, they were looking for new writers. I went in and see, she said, well, you ignore some notes, we said as well. We did ignore the notes, but I didn't know they'd come from her. I thought they'd come from the producers who had no idea what they were talking about. So we ignore them completely. And she said, well, I want this done and this done and this done and this done. And I said to her, absolutely honestly, I said, I don't think I can do that. And she said, well, why not? And I said,

well, I don't think I know how to make it worse. I'd be sitting there making it better. That's not what you want. Well, I'm sure that meeting ended very nicely. And they brought some more writers in and it's now somewhere in the vaults of work entirely. It wasn't cause never made. And it's probably the funniest thing that Kirk and I ever wrote together. You know, it's, it's fantastic that you talk about whenever you have a meeting in Los Angeles, where someone says, we love it, this is fantastic. I can't imagine this being any better. You know, you're screwed. Absolutely screwed. The best thing they can say, what's the most encouraging thing they can say? Probably, and it's something that rings of truth would be, would be fantastic. You know, if you,

if I heard a little bit of, and also, you know, encouragement mixed with some kind of, because I've always trust, I really listen to people when, when they have a nuanced view. I think I, you know, whenever someone's just like, this is baffo, I love it. I think that's a great line. I think Nathaniel West, it might be, I hope I'm not misquoting, but it might be Nathaniel West in Day of the Locust, but he said LA is, I think he said LA is the only town where you can die of encouragement. Everybody's clapping you on the back and telling you you're the best and then you realize your career's over. I know who told you. You know, I did want to ask you, we're going to wrap this up because I, but you had a wonderful definition of humor that you came

across and it's by the philosopher Henri Bergson. I can read it to you, because I know after talking to me for 45 minutes, you probably have very little gray matter left. Well, I've reduced him to a puddle of pudding. He's done. He's done. My dream is John Cleese calling me Cognon for the rest of my life. Here we go. He said, define humor as a social sanction against inflexible behavior. And I love that. I absolutely love that. And I think your career and your work, I mean, you've followed through on that quest very nicely. I want to make sure I tell people this book, John Cleese, Creativity, A Short and Cheerful Guide is the best, concise, I would say, discussion

of what creativity is, how it works, and how it can be applied. This is not a book for comedy writing. That's the other thing I love about it. It's just about being creative. And the one thing I wanted to mention that's been important to me all my life and that you brought up in this book and it blew me away, you say, fear and anxiety at the outset, getting nervous is, sadly, an important ingredient. And I have always found that to be true. I've had struggles with anxiety, but when I need to write a speech or I need to write a sketch or I need to write something important, there's a nervousness that I feel. And it actually turns into fuel that helps me sit down and get to work. It's a form of energy, isn't it? That if you don't let that overcome

you. And if you think that this is, you know, this is because I don't know if I can do it today. Somebody told me what was the Claude Monet, sorry, Monet, Claude Monet, the French imprint. Claude Monet. When he was about 80, he'd go out to paint and his hand would shake because he wasn't sure if he could do it today. And when you're doing anything creative, you don't know if it's going to happen today. Do you see what I mean? If you're an actor, you fall back on technique, even though you're not feeling much, your technique is good enough, the audience doesn't notice. But if you're trying to come up with something in the writing realm, it may not happen. You may have the blank sheet of paper at the end of the day. The important thing is to know that's part of the routine.

Some days it comes, some days it doesn't. Just sit there. But don't take anxiety too seriously because it's because you cannot guarantee that you can do it on any one given day. There's also something neurological. We don't understand it, but Hemingway used to say, I've got about two good hours in me a day. And you have to, this isn't fun for people to hear, but you have to give this creative process that you describe in the book time. So if you leave it to the very last minute, the chances that you're going to just come up with everything you need is probably nil. The only trouble is some people get confused about this because they say if it wasn't for deadlines, they'd never write anything. And what I want to say, yes, but you're writing

it in your head before you ever sit down at the desk with your pencil. That's how Noel Coward wrote one of his best plays in two days because he'd been thinking about it for a year. So the creative process is going on and on. Just sometimes you've got to say to a writer, now you have to put it down because he simply has to get it done by a certain day. You see what I mean? At that point, he's putting stuff down there, which is the best stuff that is unconscious as accumulation over the previous few months or weeks. But it's not the deadline that's causing the creativity. It's the deadline is causing the creativity to actually put down on the paper. That was rather good, I thought that. That was very good. I found that when I was murdering,

sometimes, sometimes I would be murdering and realizing I haven't given this any thought. And then I realized, no, I stalked this person for a while. I thought about it. I thought about where to trap them. Yeah, you remember stalking. Yes. Yeah. And it was a little subconscious, but I was driving around in my van and looking for the people. And then when the murder happened, it was the culmination of all that thought. Yes, but what I don't get is when these ideas would pop in your head when you were murdering people, it wasn't while you were actually stabbing them, surely? No, no, no, no. No. While I was stalking, ideas were accumulating about how, and then, yes, we all, I think people are too obsessed with the part of murder where it's the stabbing. And

I've always found that to be, myself, the boring part. It's, that's just, you stab them and then the blood comes out and then they're inanimate and you run away. But for me, it was the thinking of it. Yeah. It was the stalking and the thinking and all the time I put into it. Yeah, I think that's it. It's the stalking. And when I was torturing the small animals, I would think that's sweet, reminds me of a song. Yeah. Oh my God. Well, the book, John Cleese Creativity, Assurance Shuffle Guide, and the subtitle is How to Murder, is out there. And just get this book and John Cleese, I will say this, if someone had told me at any point in my life that I would be talking to you about comedy, I'd have said, you're an idiot and then shot myself. And irrational

reaction, but this is a dream come true. And I'm really delighted and I can't wait to join you on your island and spend time with you. Well, you just come out here, Kurt, and then you can tell me all about those wonderful Sherlock Holmes stories of yours. Okay, again, there's some confusion. All right, John Cleese, thank you so much, sir. That was a joy. Yeah, it was fun, wasn't it? Normally, we don't try to refer to things visually necessarily on here. But I think that this one is a good reason to sometimes people send in pictures of people that look like you, you know, Conan, like whether it's Tilda Swinton or the, is it the Norwegian president? Finnish. Finland. Whenever people find someone I look like, it tends to be either a woman. It's

really weird because it's all over the map, but it's either a very attractive woman or the character from the movie Mask or Chucky. Oh, come on. No, you do not look like Rocky Dennis. Of course, you would know the name. Sorry, Matt, that was so mean. Hey, look, I'm proud. I know you should be. Well, my hair grew really long during COVID and someone wrote in online, you look like the kid from Mask. Oh, man. You do not. At least the women that they're comparing you to are beautiful women. I think as a woman, I'm striking. Yeah. I think as a man, I'm okay. I think as a woman, I'm a stunner. Well, how would you feel about being compared to a mailbox? I'm gonna be okay with that. This is one of the most striking resemblances I've ever seen and we'll put a picture of this up on

the Instagram. It is a dilapidated envelope stuck in the red flag of a mailbox that looks like you. I'm gonna share my screen. Let's take a look. Wait, what? Oh my God. Yeah, I see it. Wait, what? I see it. That's the, see, it's the flag is down. There's an envelope in there that's sort of moldered so you can see the curl on the front of the hair and then you can see that and then there's a sharp chin. Sharp chin. I mean, that's the jaw line down there. Yeah, he's facing towards the curl, the round part. Sona's not seeing it. You're not seeing it. This is like Jesus in toast. I feel like this is super clear and kind of divine. Okay. This is from a Twitter user named Eric Locke. I saw it right away, but Sona's not seeing it. That's your profile. Oh, come on. What? Don't

you see it? Is this a bit? Are you guys doing a bit? No, that, look, see the, that's the curl in the front. The front is your hair curl? Your pomp? Yeah. Okay. And then below that, you sort of see, I mean, yes, it's a mangled mess underneath. This is like the white dress, blue dress thing. Maybe you use it. I know. This is crazy. You know what? I think, yeah, I think you'll either see it or you won't. I do think that's interesting. I think this is going to be one of those things where you see it or you don't. I saw it. I see it immediately. You see it. When Gorley sees it immediately, Sona still doesn't see it. Are we looking at that mangled part on top or the actual bottom part? No, no, no. The hair is the top. Okay. It's like a three-quarter profile. Sona's

freaking out. She doesn't see it. Are these your eyes? I guess that's an eye. Well, that's where it's a little messed up. Yeah. The face is kind of impressionistic. There's maybe a nose in the middle there, but the hair and the profile and the silhouette. We'll put this on Team Cocoa podcast Instagram. This is a sideburn. Yeah. You've got to tune out the face. It's as if I was in a terrible accident and then Picasso painted me. Yeah. That's what I think. You've got to let the face go. It's more just what it suggests, and I think it suggests. Right here. Or it's like if you were in the show Max Headroom. Maybe. I don't think anyone listening is going to get that reference. Take it easy. Okay. I'm beginning to see it now. I would be

nice if it had a mouth, but I get it. It's the top with the sideburn eyes, nose. I get it. You know what? I get it, but I'm not sure it's divine. Divine is also usually attributed to like deities. Yeah. I was being ironic. Yeah. Like a Jesus or a Virgin Mary crying or something. You know? I was a virgin for a very long time. It made me cry. So you're saying you and the Virgin Mary here are the same. No, there are similarities. That's all. Oh, God. I don't know. I mean, I think we're going to have to wait and see what people online say. Yeah. You know, do you see it? Do you not see it? Maybe we could do a Twitter poll too, or like a team cook up Instagram poll. It's not flattering. I will say that. No, but it's not meant to be.

It's not. It's just your, you know, it's a resemblance. It's an essence. Yes. Someone saw that. Right. If that were recovered millions of years from now by an archaeologist, it would suggest the figure that was Conan. Do you know what I mean? Oh, you're saying that archaeologists, a million years from now, you said? Whatever. They'll know who I was. They'll know. Okay. The clips will play forever. Uh-huh. And I'll probably be on coinage. So. Oh, my God. First, you compare yourself to the Virgin Mary. Now you're saying you're going to be on coins. I had a friend. I had a friend that was so nerdy that I remembered being at someone's backyard party once. And this is in high school. And he took out a handful of coins and he was just dropping

them randomly on the lawn at this high school outdoor party. And he said, what are you doing? He said, I'm dropping these coins. It will confuse future archaeologists who will think this was a place of business. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You're playing a prank that depends on archaeologists excavating this place 800,000 years from now and finding these coins and then saying this was a place of business when they just excavated a 7-Eleven down the street and. This is your friend? Very good friend. Oh. Still a friend? Still a friend. Huh. Yeah. Yeah. It's. You know what it is? It's. It's the. No. He's not. I mean, he was hanging out with me in high school, so he was different. I always ran with a different crowd.

We were very imaginative and we like to confuse. We like to play pranks where the aha moment, the I got you moment played out, you know, forwarded 50,000 years in the future. Oh, okay. Everyone loves it a bit where you never see the pay off. Sometimes I write letters and because I, you know how I still write letters and I type them out and send them to people. Yeah. Sometimes I backday them a few years just to confuse biographers. Okay. Wow. I hope when that, when your head's on a coin that they use this image for the coin. Yeah. Maybe that'll be the image they use. I don't know. We'll see. You know, we'll see, Gourley. Hey, as long as they're talking about me, it's good publicity. Trump taught me that. Oh. You don't look like

this thing literally. No, I know. I understand. I always went for a certain easily to depict look. You know, the sharp cheekbones, the iconic Roman nose, the palm lumen eyes. Wow. Wait, I'm not describing me. I'm describing this guy. I think it's cool that someone sees a mailbox and sees you. That means that you're really in people's minds a lot. Yeah, sure. Think about you. Okay. I don't know. I'm trying. Conan O'Brien needs a friend with Sonamov Sessian and Conan O'Brien as himself. Produced by me, Matt Gourley, executive produced by Adam Sacks, Joanna Solotarov and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Colin Anderson and Chris Bannon at Earwolf. Theme song by the White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and our associate

talent producer is Jennifer Samples. The show is engineered by Will Bekton. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts and you might find your review featured on a future episode. Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco Hotline at 323-451-2821 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.