John Cleese

Ancestors

Problems/Questions Profile managers: Scott Fulkerson [send private message], Ros Haywood [send private message], Notables Project WikiTree [send private message], and England Project WikiTree [send private message]

John Cleese is managed by the England Project. Join: England Project Discuss: england

John Cleese is notable. Join: Notables Project Discuss: notables

British comedian, actor, writer and producer. Member of the comedy group Monty Python. Star of Fawlty Towers.

Biography

John Marwood Cleese was born on 27 October 1939 to Reginald Francis Cleese and his wife Muriel Evelyn Cross in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England. John's father, Reginald, changed the surname from Cheese to Cleese by deed poll in 1923 (he thought to be called 'Cheese' was embarrassing).

John was six feet tall by the age of 13. He attended Clifton College, a public school in Bristol, having received an exhibition (scholarship) to go there. While he was there, he listened to The Goon Show, one of his earliest comic influences:

"The biggest influence was The Goon Show. Kids were devoted to it. It was written by Spike Milligan. It also had Peter Sellers in it, who of course is the greatest voice man of all time. In the morning, we'd be at school and we'd discuss the whole thing and rehash the jokes and talk about it. We were obsessed with it." John Cleese, 2018 ^[1]

Cleese read Law at Downing College, Cambridge University, where he joined the Footlights Theatrical Club and met Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, and Graham Chapman. Cleese graduated in 1963 with an upper second. He moved to America, where he performed both on and off Broadway, and met his future wife Connie Booth, as well as Terry Gilliam.

Cleese returned to England, where he wrote for BBC Radio, including The Dick Emery Show, and a series called I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again (a phrase used by newsreaders when they made an error by fumbling their words).

The Frost Report

In 1965, Cleese and Chapman began writing for The Frost Report. ^[2] There, they met future members of the Monty Python's Flying Circus Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Cleese also became close friends with Peter Cook, an English comedian. It was during Cleese's time at The Frost Report that he performed the famous Class sketch with Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett ("I look down on him, because I am upper class") with differences in height and dress showing upper, middle, and working classes. ^[3] Another classic sketch was The Four Yorkshiremen, where four Yorkshiremen try to outdo each other about how hard their childhoods had been.

Monty Python's Flying Circus

The Pythons

1969 saw the beginning of the series Monty Python's Flying Circus, drawing together Cleese, Chapman, Palin, Gilliam, Jones, and Idle. Although it only ran for four seasons, it has entered worlwide comedy history, with many of the sketches copied and phrases repeated both on and off stage, by performers and public alike. Cleese is remembered best as the official from the Ministry of Silly Walks, and the man with the dead Norwegian Blue parrot, although of course he also played a 'Gumby', announcers ("And now for something completely different"), TV show hosts, police sergeants, Nazi officers, and Roman centurions. He frequently worked with Michael Palin in sketches such as the 'Cheese Shop' and the 'Argument Clinic'.

The Monty Python Films

Cleese wrote and appeared in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (a comic take on the Arthurian legend; 'The Black Knight' is another much-loved and much-quoted scene - "Tis but a scratch!"), Monty Python's Life of Brian (a man mistaken for the Messiah; "'E's not the Messiah, 'e's a very naughty boy!"), which was banned in Britain as blasphemous, and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (a series of sketches similar to their TV series).

Fawlty Towers

The first series was broadcast in 1975, but the second did not appear until four years later. The series has since frequently been re-broadcasted, mainly due to polls in which it has been voted for as a favourite. John Cleese plays the main character - Basil Fawlty - who has been described as neurotic and paranoid (all in a comic way, of course). 'Basil' manages a Torquay boarding house, together with his wife, 'Sybil' (played by Prunella Scales), 'Polly' the waitress (played by Connie Booth) and a seemingly dim waiter, 'Manuel' (played by Andrew Sachs), whose main line seems to be the Spanish word "Que?" (what?)

1980s and 1990s

John Cleese, 1989

Although he did perform in BBC TV's Television Shakespeare, Cleese mainly wrote and performed in films, such as A Fish Called Wanda, and Clockwise. Both of these films were successes, and Cleese won an Academy Award for his writing. He then appeared in the 1994 version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with Kenneth Branagh and Robert de Niro, and in the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough. Cleese became "Q" in the the Bond film Die Another Day.

In 1996, Cleese was offered a CBE (Commander of the British Empire), but turned it down, calling it "too silly". In 1999, Cleese was offered a life peerage, but turned that down as well. ^[4]

21st century

In 2001, Cleese played more unusual roles. He played an eccentric hotel owner in Rat Race named Donald Sinclair. This was in fact the name of the real-life hotel owner upon whom 'Basil Fawlty' was based. He also appeared as 'Nearly Headless Nick', a ghost who died from being not-quite beheaded. In 2002 Cleese played 'James', a computerised chauffeur. He co-wrote a graphic novel, Superman: True Brit, which explores what would have happened if Superman had landed in Britain rather than America.

John Cleese, Australia

In 2005, Cleese toured New Zealand with his one-man stage show, followed in 2006 by a tour of universities in California and Arizona. There followed a tour of Scandinavia, the US, and then his first UK tour in 2011. He toured South Africa later that same year, then Australia in 2012 and Canada in 2013.

Cleese joined with the other members of Monty Python in a reunion in July 2014, then in 2015 and 2016 partnered with Eric Idle for a tour of North America, Canada, and the ANZUS nations (Australia, New Zealand, and the US).

In 2018, Cleese moved to the island of Nevis in the Caribbean, where he described life as 'safe and beautiful'. ^[5]

John Cleese's voice can be downloaded for GPS, and features in the BioWare video game Jade Empire, where he 'plays' 'Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom' (a stereotype British colonialist). He has also worked with Steve Martin in The Pink Panther 2 as 'Inspector Dreyfuss'.

John Cleese has homes in London and Bath (Somerset). As well as his university Law degree from Cambridge, he has honorary doctorates from the University of St Andrews, Pomona College (California, USA), the University of Bath, and the Open University.

Bibliography

• The Rectorial Address of John Cleese, Epam, 1971, 8 pages
• Cleese Encounters: The Unauthorized Biography of Monty Python Veteran John Cleese, Jonathan Margolis, St. Martin's Press, 1992, ISBN 0-312-08162-6
• The Human Face (with Brian Bates) (DK Publishing Inc., 2001, ISBN 978-0-7894-7836-8)
• Foreword for Time and the Soul, Jacob Needleman, 2003, ISBN 1-57675-251-8 (paperback)
• Superman: True Brit, DC Comics, 2004, ISBN 9781845760120
• So, Anyway..., 2014, Crown Archetype, ISBN 038534824X
• Professor at Large: The Cornell Years, 2018, Cornell University Press, ISBN 978-1-5017-1657-7
• Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide, 2020, Crown, ISBN 978-0385348270

Sources

1. ↑ John Cleese on The Goon Show, Erik Abriss on Vulture.com, 2018
2. ↑ The Frost Report, BBC Comedy, 2014
3. ↑ The 'Class' sketch, Frost Report, The, Anthony Clark, screenonline.org
4. ↑ "Lord Cleese of Fawlty Towers: Why John Cleese declined a peerage", Roya Nikkhah, The Telegraph
5. ↑ "Now living in the Caribbean", Nicola Anderson, Independent.ie, 2019

See Also:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cleese
• https://www.johncleese.com
• http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000092/bio