WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 961 - John Cleese

Episode Date: October 22, 2018

John Cleese says there's one constant throughout his life, from Monty Python through today. He still has a very strong childish side and it has done him well. John talks to Marc about putting that childish side to work when he was doing sketch comedy at Cambridge and why the success of Monty Python had a lot to do with five guys who all liked pushing boundaries. Also, John and Marc try to find the line between affectionate and inappropriate comedy by telling each other a string of off-color jokes. This episode is sponsored by Amy Schumer Presents: 3 Girls, 1 Keith on Spotify and Stamps.com. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18-plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Lock the gate! Welcome to it. How's it going? Are you okay? I'm a little out of it. I couldn't sleep last night because, well, I'm recording this the day after I hosted and performed at that benefit for the Blues Foundation and the Americana Music Association. You know the one I'm talking about. If you've been listening to the show, you know where I'm at, but I'll get to that in a second. So I guess what I wanted to tell you, first of all, is that John Cleese is on the show today. Now this John Cleese, the Python, so the of Monty Python. And I recorded this quite a while ago because some of you have been asking

me like, didn't you mention this? We recorded this before i set up the new garage i got the house but i i didn't have the sound right in here and it was actually at that studio where we recorded it where i met the guy who uh who uh who who made my uh my sound panels but anyways i'm saying that goes back a bit and it was sort of in support of something that cleese was doing a podcast that I don't think is happening anymore. But this is a it's not dated, but I'm just telling you, if it sounds different, that's why. So that's happening. That's happening in as soon as you get through this. I also wanted to mention, I don't know if you know, maybe you do, Paul Myers. He's a musician and a journalist and an author, and he's been a longtime fan of this show. So I wanted to tell you he's got a new book out. This one isn't a rock biography like his last few books, but it's close. It's The Kids in the Hall, One Dumb Guy, the authorized biography of Canada's legendary sketch troupe.

It's the actual story of how they were formed. It's got new interviews with all five of the kids, plus other comedy luminaries who were influenced by them. So you can go get that. Go pick up the book wherever you get books. It's called The Kids in the Hall, One Dumb Guy. And while you're at it, why not pick up a copy of the WTF book, Waiting for the Punch, now in paperback. Okay, so let me get you up to speed on what's happening. I'm getting ready to go to New York. I'm going to be in New York working on the

Joker movie, which is very exciting. I'm very excited about that. It's going to be nice to be in New York. It's going to be a nice time of year, I believe, unless the rain. For some reason, when I travel a lot of times, it just seems to rain. But how can it rain for the whole time I'm there? And then as we, I'll be there for a while, and then I'm going to go, I got to do the movie. And then on the November 10th, I will be at the New York Comedy Festival at the Beacon. There are a few tickets left at the Beacon if you want to go. I think you can go to nycomedyfest.something.

Maybe I should know this stuff. How about just go to wtfpod.com slash tour to the link on the site if you still want to get tickets to my Beacon show on November 10th. I guess right now it's a celebration of me. Is that what I'm telling you about? Because what happened the other night

and what I've been talking about happening happened. I hosted that event at the Ace Theater. Jimmy Vivino was the musical director for the benefit for the Blues Foundation and the Americana Music Association. Across the Great Divide was the name of the show a lot of people were there lucinda williams leanne womack shamika copeland uh bob weir was there doyle bramhall a lot of people larkin mark and poe i know i'm missing people a lot of other musicians but i was to host it and as i told many of you jimmy asked me to sit in on this old John Mayall tune, stepping out from the Blues Breakers record, the Beano record with Clapton. And I was going to sit in with the band, and then he told me that Slash was going to sit in.

So it was me and Slash and Jimmy playing this tune, and I'd been freaking out about it previous to when I did it. Freaking out to the point where my hands hurt. My fingers and my hands hurt because I don't practice as much. I play. I'll sit here and play, but I don't practice guitar. And I can no longer call it practicing because what I did over the last week was practice. And I'll tell you, it gave me an appreciation. I always had an appreciation for musicians, obviously. And one thing I noticed that always fascinates me about it, and I don't know why it should be shocking or surprising to me, is that when I have musicians in here and they play a song,

they almost always nail it. It always amazes me that they don't stumble. They hit every chord. They hit every note. But that's what they do. That's their craft. That's their art. That's their form of expression.

That's what they've worked all these years to do. But I still find it amazing and surprising because I can't do it. You know, I can show up and I can play, but I'm going to clunk up something because I'm not a professional musician. That is not my craft. It is not my art. It is not my form. I do have to realize that because there's some part of me in the back of my brain that's sort of like, well, maybe this is where I'm shifting gears. Maybe it's time for me to finally become the blues man that I've always been inside. But you spend one night with real musicians and you see how they work and what's involved and the sort of comfort zone and the skill set needed.

It's sort of like I'm nowhere near any of this. That's my goddamn narcissism. It's like, yeah, I mean, I think with a little work, this could be my life. So keep it as a hobby. No reason to ruin it by trying to make a living with it. It was interesting because I don't usually do this. The whole nature or the part of the message of the evening was across the great divide, not just between blues and Americana music, but it was

about how music transcends the problems that people have, that music is something that brings us all together. So I wanted to stay away from politics to honor the evening, to actually feel the power of the music and not have me get out there and do some of my darker, more recent jokes. So I went out there and I welcomed everybody. And I said something. I can't imagine it hasn't been said before. So I don't know if I should take credit for it. I'd like to because I thought it was pretty clever.

But it's too tight and it's too obvious for it not to have been said before that there are two political parties, us and them. And obviously that can go either way. So I don't know if I wrote that, but it seems too simple for me to have written that. But I told my Jerry Garcia story, which some of you know, maybe you don't know. And the message of that uh, was I thought at par with the evening, given that Bob Weir was going to be there. So it was a great crowd, a lot of deadheads, a lot of middle-aged people, but some young people, but the music was so, it was just so, it was just, it was, it was actually transcendent

the way that everything worked. And Jimmy did a great job putting everyone together. So I introduced people and then I came out and, and out and I was ready to do my bit, man. I was ready to play with Slash and Jimmy and we laid into it. And I did all right. I'm proud of how I did. I wasn't nervous. It was an amazing experience.

That's what I'm trying to say. And for those of you who are wondering if I was going to choke or whether I was going to follow through or whatever, I followed through and I feel pretty confident with how I perform. But the one thing I realized is that I am a guitar player. I'm not a professional musician. I do not have the range or the chops to be a professional musician but i can uh i can i can lay down some pretty good blues riffs and i can rock out a bit but these guys these these these men and women on the front lines of performing music for a living that is some that is some fucking skill man and i and i and i love it and i envy it and uh i'm in awe of it it was an honor and and a very exciting thing for a lifelong guitar

guy like myself to trade licks with uh jimmy vivino and slashash. It was exciting. It was like a goddamn ride that you didn't want to end, really. You know, you get up there and you're doing it, and it goes by so fast. And then I was sort of like, well, now that I'm relaxed, can we do a couple more numbers? That's in my head. Can we do a couple more numbers? That's in my head. But that was my moment. That was my time. And it was definitely a high point, a high point in my life in a lot of ways.

I never thought I'd get to do that. It was great. As I said earlier, John Cleese and I talked a long time ago. I don't even remember exactly what we talked about, but you're going to hear it right now. I just wanted you to know that we did this a while back, and it was when I was in between studios. It was at an external studio, which is a rare thing, because I was going to record John Cleese's podcast. And, you know, so we did mine and we did his. And we were going to release these episodes at the same time. But unfortunately, the podcast company he was working with went under and those

episodes he recorded may be part of the wreckage. So I'm not sure you'll ever hear that, but at least we have this talk. And I, and I want to thank Ryan Dilley for helping us set it up at a studio in LA where both John and I could record our separate talks. But so that's sort of the backstory. So this is me and John Cleese. And on Thursday, I'm going to be talking to Eric. It's a Python week, but this is me and John. Enjoy.

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That's why you need insurance. Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. I've done eight shows in eight days in six different cities, which is, if I seem particularly dim this morning, I'm going to give that as the reason. Do you enjoy the work?

Yeah, I enjoy getting out in front of the audiences because the Python fans are very nice people. Yes, they are. You know, they're lovely people and they're kind of, they're not pompous and they're not mean and they've got a sense of humor and they're kind. They're not rowdy? Not too rowdy. How old are they? Oh, they're old.

My audience is old now. Are they? Oh, I'd say most of them are well over 40. Because they all grew up with Python. They all say, somebody said this to me two days ago, you got me through my exams. Oh, really? And I think that's lovely because it's not just that laughter is pleasant and good for our body chemistry and helps us to

relax. It's actually very good for getting us through things. Oh, it's necessary. You know, just from doing the podcast and doing comedy at this particular point in history, there are people that I get a lot of emails from like, I was in a dark place.

And now because people are so isolated so they may not come out to the theater, but with the podcast, you know, they can sit there and have a relationship with you and not feel like they're alone in their dark hole.

And a relationship they wouldn't have if we were on television. No, no, it can't. I just love radio. I started in radio. My first job was in radio and I've always felt

there's a kind of intimacy. You and I, we're talking now and it's easy because it's eyeball to eyeball. We're picking up each other's nonverbal signals, which is what keeps the conversation flowing. Television, we'd be sitting next to each other looking out at an audience. Doing lines. Doing lines.

That's right. And in television, everything's prepared, and people come in and move lint from your jacket. And there's a guy that comes out and goes, let's get some clapping. How's that? Is everyone having a good time? It's a completely inauthentic experience. You know, the only thing that is completely inauthentic now is the reality shows. Of course.

Right? Yeah. Which are planned down to the last detail. Yeah, I can't. I don't watch them. I don't know what they are. I don't have any real experience with Kardashians, or I don't know what's happening. I don't have time to do it.

But I remember one time at a TV taping, I remember the first time where somebody actually recorded fake laughter, where the stage manager came out and go, all right, let me hear a big laugh. All right, now let's bring it down. Give me a little laugh. And they faked many levels of laughter, and I thought that was a sign of the end. I think so. Yeah, I think it is.

They always used to say that if you wanted to get good audience figures, you needed a laugh track. And I was always dubious about that, and I came to the conclusion that if the show wasn't any good, you needed a laugh track. Did you guys use a laugh track on Python at all? No, we recorded it in front of a live audience. Yeah.

We filmed stuff beforehand. Yeah. We'd go out and film for about a week or ten days. The field pieces. That film would get cut into the shows that we then do. We do six shows in a row. But we used to get there, the audience would start watching at eight, and we had to be finished by ten.

And if we went on to five past ten, they weren't recording. Right. So it was always looking at our watches, trying to get it all done in time. A union problem? No, probably the BBC money. Some bureaucrat saying,

oh, we can't go to five past ten. Who's that? Well, the place is run by those, some bureaucrats saying, oh, we can't, we can't go to five past ten. That was that. Well, the place is run by those kind of bureaucrats, you know. Sure. And bureaucrats always run things for their own convenience. Sure. And they have no understanding whatsoever of any kind of creativity. They just don't understand what makes people creative.

And so they constantly set things up in such a way that people's creativity is stifled. And these are the people in charge, right? They're just detached. And they're not even paying attention to what's going on. They're just hearing things and looking at their watch, and they're not connecting at all. No, I have a very simple phrase, which is that the problem is not that they don't know what they're doing, but that they have no idea that they don't know what they're doing, you see. And that gives them confidence. They do know that the lights are out at 10. That's right.

Lights out at 10. And we finished five seconds early, so it was a good show. Yeah. Well, the audience didn't like it. The audience said, no, no, no, but we finished on time. Right on time. We were within budget. Yeah.

So you started in radio, but when you wrote this book, was the experience, did you find yourself reflecting on things that you hadn't even thought of in a long time? Did you find yourself emotional moving through your life? No, I found myself strangely unemotional. There was a moment once early on when I was talking about my first time I fell in love. Yeah. When I just felt completely pathetic and inadequate like one does. Yeah, sure. I think every teenager has had that experience.

And during those two days, I thought to myself, I'm being affected by this. And it never happened again. And I think it's because I've had so much therapy. I've been through all this stuff. What's never happened again? And I think it's because I've had so much therapy. I've been through all this stuff. What's never happened again? You've never fallen in love? You've never felt out of? It seems by your track record, you see.

You bastard. You keep giving it a try. Something's happening. I think I'm basically a romantic. But what I mean is at that particular moment where I was probably 21 or something like that, when I recalled that, it pulled me down. And never again did anything I recall pull me down because from my great age of 78 and all my therapy, I kind of worked through it all. And so when I remembered, oh, God, yes, I was unhappy at that time.

Oh, God, I was so upset when she dumped me. I was able to look at it with a sort of amused detachment, not unkind, but just think, well, that's what happens in life. That's life. There's no point sitting here feeling sorry for yourself because it happens to everything. And I just thoroughly enjoyed recalling it. And the reason I did it is that I had lunch some years ago with Michael Caine and he was in a terrific mood and I said

why are you so cheerful he said I'm writing my autobiography and I said well and he said it's wonderful you recapture bits of your life that have completely disappeared from your memory and that's what happens you remember one thing and then oh you suddenly remember something else.

And then you remember the guy you used to sit next to in school. And then you remember another teacher. And it's lovely because you're reclaiming all this stuff. And it's quite fresh in the memory again. And it's nice to know that it's still in there somewhere. Yeah. Of course, it's much clearer if it's 60 years ago than if it's two weeks ago. So the first episode of the book, the autobiography, is much easier to write, I think.

If anybody asks me what I'm doing last week, I have no idea. It's weird that that happens. Why does that happen? Well, I think that what imprints itself on our memory is something that's new. Right. And therefore, when I try and think of the Python recordings, which were always in the same studio, it was always exactly the same routine. We'd get together.

We'd have a read-through. We'd start doing it. It was always the same week after week. And I have very, very few memories of that. Of any sort of differing things. Yeah. It just happened then. If we went filming and we would go to Scotland or Yorkshire or Torquay, I would remember those stuff because it was all so different from everything else.

And that's why on holiday, I think the first three days always goes more slowly because you're taking in new stuff. And then as you get used to it, you don't pay so much attention and time goes faster. Yeah, I don't know. Like my memory, I'm 54 and things are starting to go away. I think they're still in there, but things are starting. I find that I remember embarrassing things. You're talking about that feeling of being in love that first time.

It's horrendous. It's just like an idiot. And I remember those. And sometimes I want to do over. I'd like to go back and try it again. Yeah. There's some things I'd like to try again. Well, I think that's what I've been doing with my marriages.

And I seem to to try again. Well, I think that's what I've been doing with my marriages and I seem to have found something. I used to refer to Jenny as my current wife, but she didn't like that very much, so I call her my fourth and last wife. Oh, that's nice. And she's quite, quite wonderful. Well, that's... I respect your

persistence. Yes. Whereas Eric Idle been married for 40 years Eric Idle, been married for 40 years. Michael Palin, been married for 50 years. And everybody claps when you mention this. I always say, well, this is just a failure of imagination. I'd be married for 42 years if you add the bits together. That's right.

Well, fancy waking up, Mark. You married? I've been married twice. I'm not married now. I have no children. Oh, you're so lucky. Children are just awful. I feel that. I don't feel any regret about it.

I didn't think it was the right thing for me because I never thought about doing it. It seems that people who want children are like, they don't even think twice about it. I think it's because once they get married and you have that sort of golden haze for a bit and everything is wonderful and then the golden haze fades and you look around and think, well, what should we do next? Shall we go to the cinema or shall we get married? And people say, oh, well, let's get married.

All right. So having spent all this time thinking how wonderful it's going to be to be together, young people go and have kids and then spend the next 30 years looking after them. Yeah. For what? For one. I don't know. Somebody once said it's to make us less selfish. And I think that's the best thing.

That's good. You do it for selfish reasons. Yeah. You do it for selfish reasons. It makes you less selfish. Yeah. I don't know. Basically, they're a pain in the ass because they cost a fortune.

Yeah, and you don't know how they're going to turn out. You have no control over them. No control over that, and they're never grateful. Actually, I got one very nice one. Out of how many? Out of only two. One good one, one okay? Well, one's okay, and the other one is absolutely marvelous.

She comes on stage with me and moderates and is very rude to me. Much, much ruder than any ordinary interviewer would be. Which makes it much more entertaining. So she's processing some emotional baggage herself. She's able to do a hands-on therapy session. That's right. We've got 2,000 people watching our family therapy.

So explain to me something about England because I don't know things. So when you grew up, what's the school situation? You went to prep school? So explain to me something about England because I don't know things. Yeah. So when you grew up, what's the school situation? You went to prep school? How does it work? My parents, my mother had a little bit of money left over. My dad didn't have any. But they were determined to spend.

Her dad was an auctioneer. And my dad had sold insurance all his life. And his dad actually was a lawyer's clerk. My dad had sold insurance all his life, and his dad actually was a lawyer's clerk. And they spent what little money they had on getting me a private education, for which I'm very grateful, because I think it was better because the classes were smaller. And I think I was very lucky with my teachers. You were the only child? Yeah, I was the only one.

I always assume that an only child is a lot of pressure, but no one ever agrees with me. I've talked to many only children and I project this idea that all they've got, that's got a way on you. Yeah, I think you're right. Oh, it did with you? Oh no, I think so. Yeah. Because you have to carry the responsibility for them. You've got three other

brothers and sisters to help look after the old fools when they get doddery. But otherwise, I was looking after my mother basically until she died at the age of 101. When she was about 80, I was kind of thinking, well, I'll have that one off my hands. She used to say to me, you'll miss me when I'm gone. You'll miss me when I'm gone. And'll miss me when I'm gone. And I always say, well, one day she may be proved right. But it hasn't happened yet.

A hundred and one. A hundred and one. That's a good run. Yeah. So you went to a private school and then you went to Cambridge? Yes, I went to what's called a prep school, which is eight to 13. And then what's called a public school, which is a private school, from 13 to 18. Were you performing early?

When did you start doing the performance? I started doing one about 15 or 16. We used to do a little entertainment. But it never occurred to me that I'd be in show business because people from my lower middle class didn't do that kind of thing. We became sometimes lawyers, sometimes accountants, sometimes shopkeepers. It wasn't practical. Yeah, well, it just wasn't on the radar. But there were entertainers that you enjoyed. Oh, yeah, we loved them. And we'd go to the theater every night. Who were the ones when you were a kid?

I won't know any of them. Well, you won't actually know. I mean, our greatest entertainer was a fellow at a wonderful TV show called Tony Hancock. That was in the 50s. People organized their evenings around which night Tony, what was it called? Hancock's Half Hour. But nobody's heard it. It was a sitcom, basically? Yeah, it was a sitcom. But what would surprise you is that in the 50s, I was watching a lot of television with my parents sure and apart from the the football and the cricket the only thing we seem to watch

was comedy and the comedy was nearly all-american oh yeah yeah well Jack Benny mm-hmm George Burns Phil Silvers say what about our show a show Sid Caesar no no we didn't get Sid he came over and did a small number of shows but we didn't get that we never got The Honeymooners

we got Joan Davis we got Lucille Ball sure and oh and Amos and Andy which we're not supposed to talk about sure

so I grew up on that the big comedy show in the summer was Daddy K you see so a lot of it was very American. And the BBC ran it.

The BBC used to run those shows. And there was Hancock and there were a few British comedies, but mostly it was in American form. Mostly American. There were one or two very funny people. And then what started to happen as I got a bit older, as I just got to Cambridge and there was a show one afternoon. And a friend of mine had got a couple of tickets for the matinee. And I went out, and I saw this show in the little Cambridge theater, and it's still the funniest show I've ever seen. What show?

And it was Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, and Alan Bennett, who's now, I think, almost our best playwright. And I've never laughed like that in my life. And that changed England because up to that time, we'd been very, very respectful and very sort of polite, very proper. If somebody went to interview the prime minister, it was like the head boy interviewing the headmaster. You see what I mean? And suddenly, they tore everything down. They made jokes about nuclear warfare, you know. Irreverence. Well, yes. I remember one joke was, because Roger Bannister

just ran the four-minute mile the first time anyone ever did. And they were always talking in nuclear that if there was a nuclear war, we would have four minutes. And I remember Peter Cook saying, some people in this great country of ours could run a mile in four minutes.

And they tore it up. They had a sketch about someone in a condemned cell about to be executed. They made fun of racial prejudice. I've never seen anything so funny as that. And it was just a review? It was just a sketch show? Yeah, it was a series of sketches, and they were all absolutely brilliant. And Cook and Moore were together for years, right?

Oh, yeah. But that changed England, because suddenly— What year are we talking, 50s? We're talking 62. Okay. And then that autumn, the BBC put satire. Before that, if you did an impersonation of the prime minister, it was considered disrespectful. We don't do that.

Really? Yeah. It was as stuffy as that, and suddenly it was considered disrespectful. We don't do that. Really? Yeah. It was just stuffy as that. And suddenly it was all thrown off. And that was when the 60s started. The early 60s. Yeah, I think that's when everyone said. And you're at Cambridge still. Yeah, I was at Cambridge to begin with. And then people said to me, well, what do you remember about the 60s? I said, well, I just remember I was working quite hard. I didn't really notice them. Because that was when I was doing all my early stuff.

Frosty put me in a show with a live audience of 14 million. It was the most frightening thing I've ever done. Then I did a series with Marty Feldman. But like when you were at Cambridge, what were you studying? I was doing law. I'd got in on science and I suddenly realized I couldn't compete with the other scientists because they seemed to be interested in it. And I thought that gave them an unfair advantage. So I said, well, what else could they do? They said not much. Economics. Or law.

So I said, all right, I'll do law because my granddad had been a solicitor. Sure, you got it in your genetics. Yeah, and I can use words quite accurately. And suddenly somebody came in the last two weeks I was at Cambridge and saw this little review I was in. How does Cambridge work, though? It's very strange. It's organized through the colleges. There's about 22 different colleges. And you have to gain admittance to a college. So you get interviewed by one of the colleges. I suppose you could go for two or three if you will. And then they either say they take you or they won't. And if this college says you

take you, then you're at Cambridge University. You go to all the lectures and shit. And you study like the basic liberal arts stuff? No, no, it's awful. All I did the whole time I was at Cambridge was law. Yeah. Roman law, constitutional law, international law, divorce. Yeah. You know, family law, real property, trusted settlements, criminal law, contract, tort. There's all I ever, I was completely ignorant. And then just, and this is really because the English educational system was so narrow. Right.

And I'm delighted that both my daughters went through the American system because it gives you a chance to get a taste for things before you actually decide what to specialize in. Sure. And maybe not specialize at all and just, you know, waste all four years of it. Yeah. Which is what a university education used to be about. It used to be about educating people. Now it's about getting a job. Now, at Cambridge, because I talked to Sacha Baron Cohen.

You know him? Yeah. Yeah. I think he was there. I don't remember if he was Oxford or Cambridge, but there's always a sort of troupe, a comedy troupe at these colleges. Well, that's right. There were always funny people. Going way, way back to when I was a boy, a number of the best comedians had been to Cambridge in this club called The Footlights. So I think that's the one that Sasha was talking about.

Yeah, Sasha was in that. A lot of people like Rowan Atkinson, you know, and Griff Rees-Jones is very good, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie. Good, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie. But the funny thing was that my year was the first year that the show was so successful that we all finished up in show business. None of us were planning to. 62? 63.

63. And we did a show, and this guy turned up at the end of the first week and said, I want to put you guys on in the West End. And we were completely flabbergasted. Were you just all college kids? Yeah, we were student reviewabbergasted. You were just all college kids? Yeah, we were student review. Who was in it?

Well, Timbrook Taylor, Graham Chapman. Graham Chapman. Is that where you met Graham? That's where I met him, yeah. And this guy said, I'm going to put you on the West End, and we were just astounded. Four weeks later, we opened in the West End. We got very good reviews, and we played for five months. And at the end of that, this bunch of lawyers and teachers and

accountants and advertising people all went into show business. And after that, people started going to Cambridge to get into the Footlights to get into show business. And that was your year was the first year? First time that had ever really happened. Do you think it was because of the way culture was changing and that you felt more able to take chances? Yes, I think so. Satirically? Yes. I mean, the ideal job, you know, when you were about 17 or 18, your parents really wanted you to be the head of the personnel department of British Steel. And, of course, about seven years later, British Steel had disappeared.

So all the jobs, you know, that we had an old-fashioned economy and all the ships, for example, are now being made around the world and not in Scotland and Ireland as they always had been. Right. So all of a sudden, some of the old jobs that seemed to be the really stable ones disappeared. And all ratbags like us who'd gone into show business, everyone said, what are you doing? You're never going to live here.

We were doing just fine, thank you. So you toured that show? Well, we did it for five months in the West End, and then it stopped. And we all went off and did jobs. I got a job in radio, which is why I love radio. Oh, you didn't tour the States or anything? We did later. About six months later, the guy who put us on the

West End said, do you want to go to New Zealand? And we said, where is it? Show us on the map. You know. It looks interesting. We said, well, why not? We toured New Zealand for six weeks, which was one of the funniest and more silly things happened at that time. I can't imagine what was it like then. Well, they were just hopelessly

old-fashioned. I mean, Bill Hardy went into an ice cream parlor and asked for a banana split, and the guy went and got a banana, peeled it, sliced it down the middle and gave it to him. The whole thing in New Zealand was that nothing was what you expected.

And everything was third rate, but they didn't know it was third rate. They thought it was first rate because they'd never seen anything better. And how did your shows go over? They went over very well, actually. They liked us very much. My favorite story, a friend of mine called Johnny Lynn went into a department store because we'd been invited somewhere a bit posh. He wanted to buy a pair of cufflinks. He said to the New Zealand Information person, where do I get cufflinks?

And the man said, try the tobacco counter. And he said, no, no, you know cufflinks? So he says, yes, yeah, cufflinks. He said, try the tobacco counter? He said, yes, yes, try the tobacco counter. So Donnie goes over to the tobacco counter and says to the guy, do you have any cufflinks? And he says, this is the tobacco counter. And this kind of seemed normal after you'd been in New Zealand a few weeks.

And then we heard they wanted to put us on Broadway. It sounds like a Python sketch. It is. It was. That's a good way of putting it. New Zealand was an a Python sketch. It is. It was. That's a good way of putting it. New Zealand was an extended Python sketch. And then we went on to Broadway and got very good reviews except for one in the New York Times.

And we closed after three weeks, but we were able to put on a little supper club. So that was the first time I was in America. And then I got into a musical despite the fact I can't sing. In America? Yeah. Half of six months with Tommy Steele. We ran for six months. Did you do any television? No.

No. One or two of my friends were doing television. But I was just doing a part, 20-line part, you know. And nobody noticed me or anything like that. Then I got this phone call from David Frost, who'd known me at Cambridge, and I'd written stuff for him at Cambridge. Oh, you guys were contemporaries? We just overlapped. His last year was my first.

Before we get to David Frost, so the radio thing that you did in between these tours, that was really the beginning of you doing your broadcast kind of stuff? Yes, I was writing sketches for an English comedian called Dick Emery. Was he a big guy? No, he was a little fellow.

No, but like a big popular? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was very popular. So I was writing for him and sitting in the audience marking up what lines got laughs. They recorded at the BBC? At the BBC. And that old studio is all over London. Yeah, yeah.

And it was a nice atmosphere. I loved it. And I like the low pressure of writing. I found performing stressful because I was terrified of failing. I'm absolutely terrified. And then Frosty calls me when I'm in New York, says, do you want to come over in the beginning of next year and be in a show with me? And I said, really? You know, and he said, yes, it's Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett well of course I never heard of him and I said I'd love to do it and

then I find myself doing live television to 14 million people now David Frost started out as a variety host is that he started out more in sketches and then he did he sort of shopped around and did a few jobs he was very clever in the way he organized his career and when the decided, as a result of this wonderful show I saw with Peter Curtin and Dudley Moore, to put satire, political satire, on the television for the first time, he was chosen to be the head of that. And he was a funny guy? He was not a great comedian. His timing wasn't that good.

But he was very perceptive about what material was good and also who had talent. And it also seems like the roster of writers for that show that years you were there was like an incubator for community talent. Well, it wasn't quite in the same class as the Sid Caesar team. Right. It's a different type of show. Yes, with Simon and Woody Allen and all those wonderful, wonderful writers.

But there were an awful lot of good writers there. Tony Jay was one who finished up writing an enormously popular series about a cabinet minister who becomes prime minister. It was called Yes Minister. He was one of them. And I suppose if you got the room now, there were five Pythons writing for it. And Marty Feldman was there too? Marty was there. Marty was a script writer. His script writer. And he wasn't a performer at that time? He wasn't a performer

at all. And I was the guy who got him into performing. Because after a time, and that show was successful, Frost, who was also a producer, said he wanted to give me my own show. Yeah. And he said, who do you want to be in it? I said, well, obviously Graham Chapman and Timbrook Taylor. Yeah. And he said, anyone else?

And I said, yeah, I'd like Marty Feldman. And I remember he said, well, Marty Feldman? He said, he's a writer. He's not a performer. I said, he is David. You just haven't seen him perform. He's wonderful. And then David looked very worried and said, but what about the way he looks?

He really thought it was going to put people off because he could look extraordinary at times, sort of like a slightly hippie devil. But he had those eyes. Yeah, he had the… It was a real issue, right? Yeah. Oh, yes, the thyroid eyes. Yeah, yeah. But it wasn't, you know, he could close them. It was a real issue, right? Yeah. Oh, yes, the thyroid eyes.

Yeah, yeah. But it wasn't, you know, he could close them. Well, yes, they worked all right. They just didn't look very good. And so we did shows with Marty for a long time. I'm assuming Marty Feldman is a British Jew. Yes. Yeah.

I like knowing that there are British Jews. Oh, there's lots of Jews. They're very, well, you know, I understand how often they feel persecuted. There's so many of them in important positions because they're nearly always intelligent. I once worked with a stupid Jew, and it was a terrible shock. You couldn't quite. Maybe he's only pretending to be Jewish. When I was a kid, when I was in college, I assumed the same thing, that being brought up Jewish, that there was this Jewish exceptionalism, and then I got a job at a deli, and I thought, like, the fuck was I thinking?

Working at a restaurant. We're not all mathematicians and geniuses. That guy's a fucking plumber, and He's a Jew. But is one allowed to say that they are particularly talented? Or is that racism? What? Oh, you mean, is it okay to say... You can say Jewish people are particularly talented. I think it's a generalization, but we'll take it.

Yeah, it's true. It's true, but I'm always worried about what's racist and what isn't racist. So when I tell my racist jokes in my show, I always tell a couple of English racist jokes. Like the first time I ever went to Australia, the Australian said to me, where do you put a key so that an Englishman won't find it? And the answer was, under the soap. So it's quite surprising to be on the end of jokes like that. I think it's racist.

You know, like, some things are racist. It's the tone. Like, you know, if you have to preface it by going like, well, you know the Jews. Yes, that's right.

Then it's not coming from the right place. That's right. I told it, I made such a mistake with a racist Irish joke. It was actually with an Irish film director. And for some reason, the way I heard the joke, to me, it was like this testament of Irish perseverance and just spirit.

And I just told this long joke, and he looked at me after I'd finished waiting for the laugh with this just hate. And then it wasn't until afterwards that I realized, like, oh, that's jokes about the stupidity of Irish people, not about the— Well, everybody loves stupid jokes. When I got to Chicago, people told me for the first time stupid jokes about the Poles. I was completely incomprehensible. We love the Poles. They had their own squadron in the RAF in the war, and the English pilots thought they were wonderful because they were so crazy. They had their own squadron in the RAF in the war and the English pilots thought they were

wonderful because they were so crazy. They were? They just took every risk in the world and they were much admired and liked. So to suddenly get to Chicago and have people doing the Polish jokes, how many poles does it take to put in a lightbulb? Classic.

It was quite a shock because I want to say, no, that's an Irish joke. I love, you know, those kind of jokes because they're not supposed to be mean. Yeah. They're just teasing. When a teasing can be nasty, then it's horrible. Yeah. And teasing can be affectionate, and then it's lovely.

Yeah, and I think the issue with the jokes became the stereotyping became the problem. Yeah, but if the stereotyping is not there in some form, the joke isn't funny. Look, let me tell you an Irish joke, all right? Yeah, sure. A guy walks into a bar. He says to the bartender, have you heard the latest Irish joke? And the bartender says, I should warn you, I'm Irish. And the guy says,

all right, I'll tell it slowly. Yeah, right. Now try this. A man comes into the bar. He says to the bartender, have you heard the latest stupid joke? And the bartender says, I should warn you, I'm stupid.

And the guy says, all right, I'll tell it slowly. It isn't very funny, is it? No. No? The joke I told was it was a couple of Irish guys that come over from Ireland. It was in the 1800s. They come to the States or in New York, and they're looking for work.

And they go into a bar, and a bartender says, you should go out west. They're paying a dollar for every Indian scalp you can get. So these two Irish guys, this is wrong on a few levels. So these two Irish guys, they go out west, and they get horses, and they're riding, and they're going to look for Indians to scalp for a dollar a scalp. And they find themselves in a ravine, and they look up on the ridge, and they're just surrounded by hundreds of Indians. And they look up, and they look at each other,

and one of them says, we're going to be rich. And I thought that was such a testament to the Irish spirit of like, we can do it. Of course, of course. But no. Well, there's a Mexican joke I love to tell, all right? I say I'm going to tell a Mexican joke, and all the audiences in California go, I think, why?

I tell jokes about Germans and Swedes and Australians and Canadians. Nobody minds. Are these Mexican people so pathetic they can't have a joke made about them? Do you see what I mean? Sure. No, I'm not going to make a nasty joke. I'm going to make an affectionate joke. So there's this naval vessel in the Gulf of Mexico,

and they see something on the horizon. They go over to take a look. It's two little Mexicans rowing like mad towards America. They say, hey, guys, guys, what are you doing? And the Mexicans say, oh, we're invading America. And the guy says, what, just doing? And the Mexicans say, oh, we're invading America. And the guy says, what, just the two of you? He said, oh, no, no, the others are already there. We're the last ones. Now, I think that's sort of a triumph. You know what I mean? They're triumphing over the system.

And it's sort of, you know, it's a positive joke. That's not a mean joke. I would agree with you. What's your favorite Jewish joke? Oh, that's a good question. Oh, actually, my favorite Jewish joke is about the one I tend to like that I think is the most. Well, it's Murray. Let's say Murray is walking on the beach with his grandson, his little grandson. You know the joke?

And they're walking and they're talking. They're having a nice day. with his grandson, his little grandson. You know the joke? And they're walking and they're talking. They're having a nice day. And then out of nowhere, a wave comes and just sweeps Murray's grandson away. And he drops to his knees. He says, God, I haven't been a good Jew and I rarely pray, but please, please, if you could do one thing, please deliver my grandson back to me, God. And just like that, another wave just drops the kid right back on the beach. And Murray looks down at his grandson he looks up at the sky and he goes when he went in he had a hat

my favorite i was told a couple of weeks ago is the maitre d who comes up at lunchtime to a table of jewish ladies who just finished lunch and he says, was anything all right? That's a good one. That's a good one. So, okay, so you're writing for Frost. Writing for Frosty. And you got all them pythons there and you guys didn't all know each other until that show. Until the Frost show.

You knew Chapman. Well, I'd only just come out of Cambridge, been in London for six, nine months, then gone to New Zealand. But you and Graham are friends. Oh, yeah. We met my second year at Cambridge and we wrote together. And so I already knew him and he'd gone off to be a doctor. He was training at St. Bart's Hospital. Oh, really?

So when we, Gray and I then wrote, after I worked with Marty, Gray and I wrote for a time. He was doing his studying for his medical exam. And I was just married to Connie Booth. And Connie didn't know London, so I didn't want to be out of the house all day until she got to know London a bit. So I didn't do any performing. I didn't miss it.

Where was she from? She was, well, let me think. She was born in Indianapolis, and she lived near Rochelle. American. Yeah. Where'd you meet her? She was waiting on me in a restaurant. In the States?

There was a restaurant on 3rd Avenue called The Living Room, and one or two very famous people started there, and it was staffed entirely by out-of-work actresses. And what were you doing in the States when you met her? What year was that? Oh, that's when we were doing – I was doing the – Oh, the review? Sorry. I was doing the Cambridge Circus Show.

Oh, so you met her then. Okay. And you took her back to England? And, yeah, we had a sort of transatlantic relationship for a couple of years. And then we got married in New York and we went back to England. And I thought she didn't know London. Yeah. So I didn't want to be out of the way all the time.

So I said, I'll just write for a bit. Yeah. Until she got to know what the city was like. And Grey and I used to write for Peter Sellers. Oh, really? Yeah. I don't think younger people know him so well now. He's so wonderful.

But he was so out of his mind genius. Oh, he was superb. I mean, I think one of the greatest movies ever made was Doctor Stranger. Unbelievable. And he plays three parts. Dimitri. Dimitri. Yes.

God, that's a wonderful movie. But the thing about Peter. What were you writing for him? We wrote three film scripts, and one of them got made. Which one? It was called The Magic Christian based on a Terry Southern story. Oh, yeah, it's great. That's great, yeah. You were part of that?

Who directed that? A fellow called Joe McGrath. Oh, okay. And it wasn't very good. No, I know it was a weird 60s movie, right? He wasn't... The trouble with Peter was that he was an extraordinary comic actor. I think possibly the best ever because he could play anything. You know, in Strangelove, he plays the U.S. president, Dr. Strangelove himself, and an RAF officer.

All of them brilliant. He should have got three Oscars. The best. Comedies never do. Well, Magic Christian, was that the one with Ringo Starr, too? Yeah. Ringo played his son. He played Sir Guy Grand.

And this is the guy who goes and gives people money, right? Yes. He is very rich, but he's trying to point out to people that greed is not a very good thing. So he plays practical jokes on people. Right. And some of it was great. And we wrote for Ringo, which is lovely, because, I mean, Ringo's only got to say,

good morning, and you're laughing. You know, for that wonderful, flat Liverpool accent. And he's got that mug. There's something about his face. Oh, he's adorable. And he's just been made a knight, which is great. Yeah. Are you guys friends?

Well, I don't know him very well, but we remember working together in whatever it was, 1967 or 8. So you and Graham are writing for, you wrote for Sellers. Then we used to watch a kid's program. I'm not kidding. We used to watch a kid's program Thursday afternoon, which had all these guys I knew from the Frost. That's Palin, Idol, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam. And I said to Gray one day, shouldn't we join up with them?

They were writing for a kid's show? And they were acting on a kid's show? Yeah, they couldn't get on adult television. We didn't tease them about that. But that's so funny because there is a sensibility to child's programming that I think does come with you guys. Yeah. Doesn't it? Well, I think so.

Because there's something. You see, children know how to play. Most adults forget how to play after a time. I mean, they might play a game to win. Sure. But creativity always comes from being able to play. It's fluid, and you don't need segues. You lose a sense of time.

It doesn't matter. And you don't know whether if something happens, it's not good or bad, it just happened. And in that particular frame of mind, you become much more creative. And that's what I try to teach. I talk about it. And there's something, I think one of the reasons that at 78 I'm still not completely an old fool is that there's a very strong childish side to me.

I mean, my wife and I hide and try to surprise each other. You know, I got back to the flat a few months ago and I walked in and I thought she was in. Maybe she's going around the corner for a coffee. So I go to look in the bathroom in case she's in there. And as I go to the bathroom, a hand grasps my ankle. She is hidden under the bed so that when I go to the bathroom, she's able to reach out and grab me and frighten the shit out of me. Now, some of us are how childish.

No, it's wonderful. You laugh. It's just a step away from devious. Yes, but devious in a non-harmful way. Good. So we play all sorts of games. She rang me up this morning, of course, and told me Margaret Thatcher had been killed in a car crash. She said, go on the computer.

I forgot it was April 1st. Oh, it's right. It's April Fool's Day. Well, that's interesting to me about the children's thing because I think that what Python did for future generations, one of the things is sort of just, you know, untethered the format. Yes. We were bored, Mark. We were bored with the conventions that you had to set the sketch up.

So when you met with all of them, what was the pitch when you met with Terry and Eric? Well, the extraordinary thing is, and I think this is very interesting in retrospect, when you think about creativity. This was how the pitch meeting went. We went in to see this guy, Michael Mills, head of light entertainment, BBC. Yeah. The god of comedy, of TV comedy in England. And he said, I gather you guys want to do a series. And we said, we'd love to, Mr. Mills.

And he said, well, what do you propose doing? And we hadn't discussed it. Can you believe that? All six of you were in there? All six of us in there. And he said, well, are you going to have guest stars? And we looked at each other. We said, are we going to have guest stars?

He said, well, are you going to have music? We said, we gonna have guests on he said what are you gonna have music we said will we have it's extraordinary when you look about he looked at us in despair and said oh go away make 13 programs now it's never happened before and will never happen again but that was 1968 69 all right so that like did you feel that that the BBC was, because this is when culture is changing, right? And the hippie movement is happening. Youth culture is shifting. The older culture, the paradigm is shifting.

Do you think there was some of that? Oh, yes. Yes, it was a time when everyone was experimenting. I mean, some of the best music, rock music ever written was that period. And the comedy was very good at that period. But I think the story that I take away from that meeting with Michael Mills was that it was very freeing to us not to know what we were going to do. Because the bureaucrats always want to know. They always want to have everything clear.

And he was a bureaucrat. He was a bureaucrat, he'd actually made tv programs too so he knew what he was talking about and he also knew the pedigree of all you guys that's right primarily writers right he knew that the material was going to be good because we'd all written for frost but what happens with bureaucrats is they want everything uh sort of settled and written down and they got very worried when we couldn't decide what to call the show. We said, we're going to call it Owl Stretching Time. You know, we don't really think that's good.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. But they always want everything clear because they're anxious types, which is why they become bureaucrats, and they want to put everything in place and know it's going to happen. Yeah, and then they want to- And that is poison to creativity. Right. And they also want to know who to blame when this goes wrong. Well, that's right.

But also, that's why they all go around in herds and vote together. Sure. So, what I've discovered is that when you work with a company, whether it's a company wanting one of my motivational speeches or something about creativity or why you've got to have the right attitude, mistakes, you can, two phone calls and you know, are they acting out of fear or acting out of confidence? If they're acting out of confidence, you know immediately who's taking the decisions. Yeah.

And if they're acting out of fear, you can't figure out who takes the decisions because nobody wants to be picked out as the one who made them. I've got to be with my people on this. Yes. And we'll get back to you. Yeah, that's right. I've got to talk to the other guy. That's right. Yeah.

And they all go off and they talk. And most of the things you see, if they ask for a film script, they give you some money. And then after six weeks, they want an outline. And I want to say to them, you just don't understand. If you want something genuinely original, it's going to take six weeks to come up with the idea, and then another six or eight weeks to write it. But they're anxious, because they're just giving you money, and they want something back. So they want an outline immediately in a way that kills your creativity because you have to quickly get something done.

And if you work under time pressure, you always go to the stereotypical. The only way you escape from the stereotypical is to be able to sit back and kind of luxuriate and take your time. Sure, and that is if you use that time well.

I think another concern of the bureaucrat is like, how long are these fucking kids going to take? I mean, it's just costing us more money. They're just sitting there luxuriating. Well, they mistake activity for achievement. I mean, Sam Goldwyn, when he ran MGM, there was a writer's block, and the writers all sat there. And that's where they'd sit and think what the point of the scene was and how you could make that, you know, in a really dramatic way. They had a person sitting on the end of the balcony waiting to see Sam Goldwyn. And when they saw Sam Goldwyn, they'd say, quick, and they'd run back in, put paper in the typewriter, and make a lot of noise typing complete nonsense.

And Sam Goldwyn would hear them and say, oh, they're working hard. And he'd go away and they'd take the paper out and go back to thinking. Yeah, the writer's sweatshop. That's right. That wasn't even real. But it's a perfect example of how the people in charge don't know how to get the best out of creation. But it seems like, you know, your experience, whether it be a fluke or not, with this guy Mills, was the opposite of what you're talking about.

Well, he was wonderful. But I mean, nobody's ever done that before. Nobody's ever said. Was he with you throughout four seasons? Yeah. OK. He knows no one's ever said what? He was head of the department throughout.

And most of the BBC hated it. I mean, his head thought the show was awful. He said he bumped in an elevator into the director and said, what are you doing? This is absolutely awful, the show of yours. It's not funny at all. And there was a meeting of departmental heads, you know, people in charge of outside broadcast and politics and news and children's programs.

And six out of eight of them said, this program's no good. We shouldn't go on doing it. What did the other two say? One of them stood up and said, it's really funny, and you mustn't take the dark humor too so seriously. Yeah. Well, one guy. Yeah. And there was another one who sat on the fence, and six who said, it isn't any good.

They've got a kind of death wish. They're trying to offend us so that we'll take it off. Right. Oh, really? Yeah. And what we were trying to do was make each other laugh. Right. There was no death wish there?

No. No, but we like to push was make each other laugh. Right. There was no death wish there? No. No, but we like to push the boundaries a bit for two reasons. One, we were young and a bit naughty and disrespectful. Sure. The other thing is, if you make jokes in slightly forbidden areas, you get more laughter. Yeah. Because if you start embarking on a joke that's about sex, which is why there's so many sex jokes, or about politics, or about something controversial, there's a little bit of anxiety. If you make a good joke, you get the biggest laugh ever because the anxiety is released

by the laughter. So you get the ordinary laughter and then a bit of extra laughter that comes from the anxiety being released. So that's why so many of the faulty towers, for example, the show you show, I do set in a hotel, they have things like rats in the kitchen when the health inspector's there. Right. Or a dead body, so a guest who dies overnight. Because if you get into those areas, bigger laughs.

So it's not just being naughty, it's sheer mercenary comedy. Yeah. Comedy. Yeah. Sheer mercenary comedy. Yeah. Comedy. Yeah. Sheer mercenary comedy. Yeah. But also, no one had ever seen anything like Monty Python before, really. Oh, they hadn't.

Right? A lot of people didn't get it at all. The mixture of animation and weird comedy and bits and then, you know, out in the world. And not starting the program properly. I mean, we started one program with a lot of pirates carrying chests of goodies onto the rocks and then after about 90 seconds they walked past me sitting at the desk in my black tie saying, and now for something completely different. And one friend of mine, I adore this, he had only been on about six or seven

weeks and he went up north to England and he switched on Python at 10.30 on Sunday night. And it was a spoof documentary on Hadrian's Wall, which is a wall that Romans built to separate England from Scotland. And he thought it was hilarious. It had just the perfect send-up of a Hadrian documentary wall, a British documentary.

You know, it was pompous. There were too many words. It was banal. The presenter was a sort of caricature. And as it went on, he began to wonder, and he realized, Dr. Trump, it wasn't Monty Python. It really was a documentary on hatreds. But they weren't putting Python out all over the country. But I love the fact that the guy could be watching this documentary and falling about, and then he discovers it's not Python.

Because you changed the perception. Yes. We changed the perception of how to end. We ran the closing credits in the middle of the program once. It was completely confusing. I remember watching it in the States when I was in high school on repeats, obviously, on PBS. It was like buried on public television in the States, and you had to know when it was on. And the first time I saw it, I was like, what is going on? That's right.

Yeah, and it was a completely different – but there is no experience like it. There's nothing like it. Well, the funny thing is, I mean, the first thing that normally happens anywhere, but especially in America, is if you have a successful show, everybody copies it. Right. The strange thing about Python is that nobody really copied it. I mean, it's not Saturday Night Live. It's much more political satire. We didn't do political satire.

I think Mr. Show was like, did you ever watch that Mr. Show with Bob and Dave? No. It was a sketch show and I think it was on HBO. I know the guys were in it, but structurally, I could see, like the two of them would start in a studio live and then

they'd move into sketches that were sort of strung together externals like i could say the i could see that structurally they took a lot but the thing that was amazing about python one of the things was just how you know intrinsic the animation and the music was and just like you know everyone seemed to have a voice there like that's right including democracy gone mad right yeahiam, right? Yeah. Terry didn't write anything as far as I remember. But the animation, right?

Yeah, he did the animation. So we would write, put the script together and a very funny thing happened. We sometimes discover some weeks we all seem to have been writing about the same theme. It was quite sort of spooky. But you spread out, you break into- Oh, yeah. I wrote with Graham. And who wrote with who? Michael wrote with Terry, but they lived in North and South London

so sometimes they got together and sometimes they wrote in their own houses and talked a lot over the phone. Eric always wrote on his own. Oh really? And then we get together once a week, read the stuff out and it was very simple. If we laughed it was in the show and if we didn't, it wasn't. There was hardly any exception to that. And Terry did what we laughed, it was in the show. And if we didn't, it wasn't. There was hardly any exception to that.

And Terry did what? Well, when we assembled the show, we would say to Terry, we want to start with this man falling out of the window. And we want to finish up in a pet shop. And he would have 90 seconds to get from the man falling in. But that was all his stuff. And we never saw Terry's stuff till the afternoon of the show. It was never ready till then, because the process was so. So, whereas the rest of us were working together, making suggestions to each other all the time during rehearsal, why don't you try

that, or what about that line, lose that bit, it's not very funny. We were working together, Terry was beavering away, usually at three o'clock in the morning in the attic of his house. And there was no feedback to him at all. So his stuff came completely separate from ours, but it fitted in because we told him how it had to begin and how it had to end. It's wild. And you did that for all four seasons? We did that for all four seasons. And then you kind of burnt out on it? Well, I left after the third season because I thought we were beginning to repeat ourselves, and I'm quite sure we were. At the beginning, we were coming up

with really original stuff, some of which I'm very proud of. And by the end of the third series, we were doing sketches that were combinations of sketch A and sketch B that we'd already done. Why, were people getting busy with other things, or you just kind of burned out? No, I think it's just the fact that when you first, I said it was like going into a field with all these beautiful wildflowers there, and you just walk around picking them because no one else had been in the field.

You see what I mean? Yeah. And then as you pick more and more, there's less and less completely original wildflowers there. So you become less original, and you start combining and permutating stuff you've already done. And that's why I left. Also, I left because Gray, by that time, was a copper-bottomed alcoholic. Graham was? Yeah.

And it was not easy to write with him. He couldn't remember in the afternoon what we'd written in the morning. And no one else was prepared to share the responsibility of working with him. And I just got a bit fed up with it. Also, you know, he used to get so drunk he couldn't get his lines right in the studio. So you'd write a beautiful sketch, and then he'd basically screw it up a bit. Or was there no help for him? Well, I don't think we knew about that stuff.

I mean, I think Graham was the first alcoholic I'd ever met, which is extraordinary. But in the time where I grew up, I mean, you never talked about alcoholism. It was like, oh, someone who tends to drink a bit much, but not more than that. And he was, but he lived a long time. So outside of, you know. Well, he didn't live very long. You know, he lived, he died in 89. But I mean, he did the movies. I mean, it didn't live very long. He died in 89. But, I mean, he did the movies.

I mean, it didn't stop him from working. Well, he was an alcoholic when we did Life of Brian. Sorry, when we did Holy Grail. He was an alcoholic. Then he did Cold Turkey, which very few people could do. Yeah, it's tough. And it was very annoying. A year later, he was fitter than any of us.

It was frightfully annoying. So he just went through it on his own? He went through it. He had a little bit of help. He had a little bit of help. So like for Brian, he's sober. He was sober and a wonderful performance. I mean, he's so good.

He was a very, very good actor. And the trouble was when you become a drunk, you go get the lines right, you hit the wrong marks, you can't be very good. But he was potentially a wonderful actor, probably the best of any of us. Yeah. Well, you all seem to find your groove and your realm of characters, right? Yeah. And it was all kind of new to you when you started, right?

What was the word? Well, I mean like when you started working together, you weren't all actors. Oh, no. Yeah. No, no. So you had working together, you weren't all actors. Oh, no. Yeah. No, no. So you had to learn that. We were writers who happened to act. People don't believe that, but I can prove it, because all the fights, and there were

lots of them, were always about the material. Was it funny enough? Was it good enough? And where does Neil Innes come into it? Well, Neil was a pal of Eric's, and he came in quite a lot at the beginning. He wrote a little bit of the music and one or two of the songs for Holy Grail. And then he was in Life of Brian. He was the gladiator who was chased around by the guy who had the heart attack.

And then he came on stage shows with us. And when did you, like, after Python, you did Fawlty Towers, which was a huge show. Yeah. Right? In England. Yeah. For how many seasons? Well, it was odd. did you like after python you did faulty towers which was a huge show yeah right in england yeah for how many seasons well it was odd connie booth and i wrote the first six in 75 and then we got divorced and wrote the next six four years later so it's really only 12 episodes that's all but there's so much in them you see because what i used to do is I used to do a commercial, get lots of money, and then spend a lot of time writing, which most writers couldn't afford to do.

So Connie and I used to take six weeks to write a half hour. Nobody takes six weeks to write a half hour. Ten days. Some people write it in four days, which is why a lot of them are not terribly good. Right. And you're still friends with her? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've got a sweet story about her

because she was an actress when I first met her. And I went to see her in Somerset in Pennsylvania and she was on stage in a farce with Burt Lahr, who was the farce actor at the time. The cowardly Lahr, right? The Wizard of Oz. Yeah. And she is now married to his son.

No kidding. The writer. Yeah, John Love, who's a very, very good critic and writer. He was a theater critic for New York for a very long time. Yeah, he was a formidable pen, that guy. Yeah, that's right. And then you, like, when did

you get married a couple other times? Yeah, I think so. I vaguely remember them. There were several. The planet is littered with my ex-wives. You got married a couple other times. Yeah, I think so. I vaguely remember them. There were several. Yeah. The planet is littered with my ex-wives. When did you move to the States, though? When did you take Hollywood on? I mean, you don't live here now.

No, I came out here in, oh, in England, we never expected to get into movies. Sure. When we made the Python movies, they were never thought of part of the British film industry. They were sort of the Python movies. But I thought of part of the British film industry. They were sort of the Python movies. But I was never embraced by the British film industry. I got offered very, very few parts. I was much more likely to get offered a part in America, where they seemed to have a wider view of what I could do.

Yeah. Yeah. So that was just your agents knew that, or you kind of knew that? I can't remember. But did you? But I know I didn't get many. I got one wonderful film script written by one of our very best playwrights called Michael Frayne. Yeah.

Michael wrote Noises Off, which was a wonderful farce, and he also wrote a fantastic straight play called Copenhagen. He wrote me the only other script that I've ever done in which I played a lead that were not written or co-written myself. But those Python movies made a lot of money, no? Well, they made a bit. But don't forget, they were made for tiny budgets. Right.

And they didn't get huge audiences because they were always a sort of PBS audience. Sure. The TV show was always on PBS. Right. And that's what, 2% of the viewing? I guess that's just a cult thing in a way. Yeah. So if I go to the big cities, then I find there are people there who know Fawlty Towers and know Python.

If I go to smaller cities, there's a few people there who like Python, but a lot of them don't know Fawlty Towers. There are some Americans that are complete anglophiles when it comes to comedy. And I know when I interview you that those people are going to be like, I can't believe you didn't ask him about I don't know what. But there are people that are just crazy for British comedy. Yeah, they love it. We did have, I think we had a period, but from about 1945, really quite late, till the 90s, when I think we had an extraordinary number of good comics of different kinds. But you always seemed to me to produce wonderful individual comics. Right.

I wasn't so crazy about a lot of your sitcoms because in the 50s and 60s, so much of it was bland. Yeah. And the other thing was that if a character was rude to another character or something like that, he'd have to say to the camera, you know, we're really, really good pals. Yeah, sure. Just joking. Well, that's right. All in the Family is actually a British sitcom, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It was called Till Death Drove Us Apart. Yeah.

And what I like about comedy, and the first time I ever saw it was in Taxi with Danny DeVito. That was the first time I saw people being mean to each other and people being mean to each other is okay if it's a comedy, not if it's real life. You see what I mean? And you always knew that. Oh I always knew that. The British knew it. I always knew that and I always knew that W.C. Fields was wonderful. I mean this is a man who said anyone who hates children and dogs can't be all bad. Now, that's not... That's your guy. Uncle William.

Yeah, well, you did a lot of movies, and Fish Called Wanda you wrote, and that got nominated for an Oscar of some kind, didn't it? Yeah, well, I hadn't done a movie, and the others had, so I settled down to write that, and I spent a very long time. I wrote 13 drafts. Can you believe that? Well, you seem to like to write that, and I spent a very long time. I wrote 13 drafts. Yeah.

Can you believe that? Well, you seem to like to do that. Well, I do, because I like to get it right. And that was a popular movie. It was very, that made a lot of money. Yeah. It was very useful, but the trouble is the follow-up wasn't anything like as good. Although a lot of people like it.

It was set in a zoo. Yeah, I kind of remember it. Yeah, it wasn't, it actually was better than people said because they measured it against Fish Called Wonder. Right. And if I hadn't made such a good film

the first time, people would have thought, it's an okay comedy, it's not special, but it's fine. But you'd always show up, you know, it's like,

I'm always excited to see you. You show up in other movies doing a thing. Yeah, but not much. I did a very funny routine in The Outer Towers with Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn. That was

very good, and I loved the part in Rat Race. But on the whole, the comedy in cinemas has gone a little simpler and a little more simple-minded over the years for the simple reasons the only people who are going to the cinemas, actually buying tickets and sitting in a cinema, are

young people. Apparently, statistics show that it's the young males who tend to choose which movie they're going to see. And young American males are not, by and large, very sophisticated. That's true. Hangover's the ultimate. You see what it's all about? Sex, drugs, gambling.

You see what I mean? It's all about that stuff. You made a joke about the French Revolution. There'd be silence. So does that concern you in general about the use of the world? Yes. Lack of curiosity. Lack of curiosity, lack of a sense of history, lack of context. Well, when I grew up, the idea was, lack of curiosity. Lack of curiosity, lack of a sense of history, lack of context. When I grew up the idea was, yes exactly, when you said sense of history, when I grew up the idea was you should have good general knowledge. You should know where Australia is and roughly what the population is and you should know what

the religion is in Pakistan and you see what I mean? You should know who's president. Yeah, well yes preferably And where Bolivia is. Yeah. And we say that to young people. And historically, you know, you know what happened when. Yeah. And that led to that, led to that, led to this. But we talk to young people now. They say, well, why should I need to know that?

Yeah. I suppose the answer is you don't need to do anything except breathe and eat. Right. You know, but if you don't, if you're not, if you go into malls in California and you say, can you tell me where the shoe shop is or a coffee shop? Sure. The answer you'll normally get is I don't know. Because they don't bother to go out and look around and see where everything is just so they can know where everything is. They're not interested. In the end, it's on.

They will say, it's on my computer. I can get it off my computer. But ideas are not words. Ideas affect you. And if you have an idea and you understand an idea, that has effect on your thinking. That doesn't happen if you just look the idea up and forget it immediately.

Yeah, and also because it's not, like you said, that there's no continuity to what you get on the computer. Everything just floats. It's a point of reference. You do a search, it comes there. It's not going to give you the sense of history. No. It's just going to give you a trivia. It's going to give you an answer to it.

And everything goes down market. Rupert Murdoch has made a fortune by realizing the way to make money is to go down market. Yeah. You know? And it's destroying the world. Yeah. It is destroying our culture.

He has done more to destroy British culture than anyone since the Luftwaffe. And what do we do about it? Well, nobody does because our Prime Minister, Theresa May, she's in his pocket. She's done a deal with him not to clean up British newspapers, which are probably the worst in Europe. There was a poll recently, and we came 33rd out of 33 countries in Europe for trusting our printed press.

But nobody read it because the newspaper censored it. And it's like that the whole time. I mean, the guy came out of the woodwork three weeks ago and said he carried out criminal activities like hacking and blagging for the Sunday Times. And the guy who edits the Sunday Times is now editing the Times. And the newspapers are hushing it up. So what is British culture like right now? It's a bit chaotic. But just as these kind of podcasts have become very popular with people, there are some very interesting lectures happening all over the place.

But I remember 30 years ago having lunch earlier on a Sunday and going back and seeing a philosophy program with a philosopher called Brian McGee. I mean, the idea that you would sell that now, even on the BBC, which doesn't have commercials, is ridiculous. Everything's gone downmarket. Everything is more banal. And there's not much intelligence around because everyone's scared. Everyone's operating out of fear.

And I've just been doing a series in England, which is very successful, but just trying to get a decision out of these people is hopeless. Yeah, fear, and then the audience is like very ADD. They underestimate people's interest, and then they feed the sort of lowest common denominator, and then people get very shallow over time. Yeah, and they want immediate results. They want something like… Child mind. Yes, friends, which was extraordinary from the very beginning. Yeah, and they want immediate results. They wanted something like... Child minds. Yes.

Friends. Yeah. Which was extraordinary from the very beginning. But all the things I do aren't very popular at the start because people don't quite get it for a time. Yeah. And they never build that in. They're immediately anxious that the second show didn't go particularly well. I want to tell them about Cheers,

which had terrible viewing figures for the first year. And it finished up making more money than any other sitcom except for Seinfeld. And what are you working on now? What is it? I've written a sort of speech kind of presentation

called Why There Is No Hope. Oh, that's great. Yeah, it's very good. I'm really pleased with it. It's got lovely stuff in it, like the fact that 20 years ago during the New York doctor's strike, the death rate went down. You see, I find that kind of stuff very funny.

And you like performing, and you're living in England, and you're married again, and everything's great. Married again, and I're living in England, and you're married again, and everything's great. Married again. And the secret to happiness, because I'm now happier than I've ever been, is not to need much. You know?

Good food, good wine. Yeah. Why your wife a present now and again. Yeah. Cats cost a fortune, because we've got three Maine Coons. They weigh all together. They're all weighing 10 kilos. Yeah. I mean, they're absolutely huge.

And that's pretty much all I need except for books. That's great. So if you reduce your needs, then everything becomes much more possible. Yeah, and also if you get old enough to have some of the resentment and bitterness fade. I still have moments where people who cheated me in particular annoy me. Do you get along with the other guys, though, now?

Oh, yeah. I mean, we're like a bunch of brothers. You know, we fight, and anyone attacks us, we all go for them. Oh, really? Yeah. And Terry Jones, how's he? Terry is not good. Terry is definitely not going to get better

according to every doctor. He can walk and take exercise and eat and enjoy his red wines, but he can't follow a conversation. He can watch tapes, but if there's a slight digression in a conversation, it's as though he gets lost.

So that's very sad. Gray hasn't been there for a long time. Eric is great fun. He's writing the musical for Fox, I think, of Spamalot. Oh, for the movie? Yeah. That's great. Writing the movie.

And Michael is always doing things. He's just doing a program at the moment on shipwrecks. He's so funny. It's so weird to see him so serious, like doing regular. Well, I think he was in a film once with Meg Ryan, I think it was. And he completely got cut out of the film, which is extraordinary because he's a wonderful actor. You know, he got a British Oscar for The Stutterer in Fish Go Wanderer,

Best Supporting Act. Oh, God, he's so funny. He's a wonderful actor and he's very funny to be with. But he decided, I think, the trouble is everyone loves him to bits.

Yeah. And I think sometimes he relies on the fact that everybody loves him so he can do those fucking boring travel programs and everybody enjoys them because they want to be with Michael.

But he's one of those guys you look at and you're like, it's going to be funny soon, right? Yeah. Because he had such a level of commitment. Yes, that's right. To the funny. And he's a happy chap, too, which is lovely. That comes over very well. Well, that's great.

I think there was another Python, but I've forgotten who. Oh, Gilliam. Gilliam does big movies. Yeah, he is, right? Leading driven. Yeah, still, huh? But he's made his, he's finally made his Don Quixote movie.

Is it going to come out? He's actually made it and finished it. I know people who have been working on it. Was it Johnny Depp? Who's in it? I don't know. Everybody was in it and everybody dropped out.

It's not Johnny Depp anymore. But it's been going on for a long time. 25 years. And it's going to happen. Yes. That's very typical, Gilliam. Yeah, but you're in touch with him? Yeah. Yeah, we insult each other regularly. It was great talking to you. Good.

Pleasure. So there you go. That was me and John Cleese and you can't hear, not yet or maybe ever, the podcast that I recorded with him. You understand? Did I make that clear? I'm a little loopy. I'm tired. I couldn't sweep last night because I was so buzzed out from my performance.

But the other podcast that we recorded was him interviewing me. And we were going to release them jointly or at the same time that was the plan that's how that's why we did it that's okay got it good so i've got nothing to say now and i'm not going to play guitar because to be honest with you my fingers hurt they've been through a lot. Okay? Okay. Boomer lives! We'll be right back. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Gold tenders, no. But chicken tenders, yes. Because those are groceries, and we deliver those too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials.

Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category.

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