An evening with John Cleese
John Cleese: I get not very nervous but just a little withdrawn. It's almost as though my body knows it's going to have to put an awful lot of energy out. But I find once get in the theatre, it's so familiar this, I have been doing this for so many years, that it's rather as a slightly different personality takes over which is totally at ease with this place.
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, Mr John Cleese.
John Cleese: I kind of have a licence to say naughty things. I'm drawn to the kind of humour when there is a bit of me that wants to say what everyone is thinking.
ROSS COULTHART: First off, happy birthday.
John Cleese: Ah, thank you.
ROSS COULTHART: 72 years young.
John Cleese: 72.
John Cleese: Big hands. I've got tiny little hands.
ROSS COULTHART: You've got enormous hands.
John Cleese: No, look at that.
ROSS COULTHART: Actually, I have. At least I've got something over you.
John Cleese: I am here my friends, frankly because I need the money.
ROSS COULTHART: John Cleese, what on earth are you doing at this venerable age, treading the stage?
John Cleese: Well, it is the best way to earn money.
John Cleese on stage: I have fallen on hard times, partly ladies and gentlemen because I am now on the far side of...romantic leading roles but also because I've just been through a costly and...acrimonious divorce.
John Cleese: I call it the 'Alimony Tour' year II' or 'Feeding the Beast'. I paid $17 million so far and I have another $4 million to pay.
John Cleese on stage: So I have to pay Alyce Faye Eichelberger, the most recent holder of the title Mrs John Cleese, $20 million. That's right. And here is a recent photograph of my ex-wife.....at a London ATM helping herself to some of my money. Look at the...
ROSS COULTHART: You at times in those years, I think it was 18 years of marriage, you described your marriage as a beautiful one and you said how happy you were.
John Cleese: Well of course I did. You think I'm going to sit on camera
and bitch about my wife. There's certain amount of PR stuff going on, always.
John Cleese on stage: My lawyer points out how much more I would have had to pay my ex-wife had she contributed anything to the relationship.
For example if we had children or even a two-way conversation.
ROSS COULTHART: Aren't you worried, though, about coming across as a bitter old bastard?
John Cleese: Well, I don't feel bitter so I don't think so. When I start telling the audience that I have to pay $20 million, I find myself breaking up because it's absurd. It's absolutely absurd. And incidentally, it's Californian legislation and I want to say it's not sexist because I have two women friends who've been taken to the cleaners
by their husbands. But it's legislation that favours the one who doesn't do the work, in other words, sort of passenger's charter. And the breadwinner, whether it's a he or a she, that's the one who suffers
under this kind of legislation.
John Cleese on stage: And this represents my life since the divorce. Such as the result of the scorched earth tactics of my ex-wife's attorney, one Jacqueline Misho, a woman, interestingly, was turned down for the role of an Orc.....because her skin was too bad. No, other way around.
ROSS COULTHART: You came dangerously close to the line at times in your show. Are you ever worried?
John Cleese: I kind of have licence to say naughty things. I have been around so long. An enormous amount of what I've done has at one stage or another offended people. People have got used to the fact that if they watch my stuff, it goes a little bit closer to the line than most people.
Except sexually. I don't do an enormous amount of sexual humour.
ROSS COULTHART: What I want you to cast your mind to a particular sketch
in 'Fawlty Towers' where there's a beautiful Australian girl who you are showing through the hotel as Basil Fawlty and you get yourself into the most ridiculous pickle.
ROSS COULTHART: And Sybil finally catches you out.
Actress: Do you really imagine even in your wildest dreams that a girl like this could possibly be interested in...
ROSS COULTHART: And calls you an ageing brilliantine stick insect.
John Cleese: That's right.
Actress: An ageing brilliantine stick insect like you?
ROSS COULTHART: "Basil, do you really think a girl like this is interested in you?"
John Cleese: That's right. That gets a huge laugh.
John Cleese acting: A girl like who, dear?
ROSS COULTHART: Well you are now involved with a woman 31 years younger than you.
John Cleese: Right.
ROSS COULTHART: What does she see in you?
John Cleese: Apparently she likes me. Actually I think it's based in the fact that there's some kind of very deep understanding of a kind that I haven't experienced before. I am very lucky to experience it at 72. But it's also very much based on the humour, the sense of humour which as I said was missing from the last marriage. That's an enormous bond.
John Cleese on stage: Here is my tale, I born in England to poor but honest parents and that is the worse of all possible combinations. I was a mistake, as my mother occasionally reminded me. I think she was worried
that it might slip my mind.
ROSS COULTHART: Let's talk about the woman who has probably had the most influence in your life, your mum.
John Cleese: Yes.
ROSS COULTHART: Did you have a tough relationship with your mum?
John Cleese: Yes, it was difficult, emotionally. She was very competent in terms of making sure I was turned out and she would provide meals
and she ran the house well. But emotionally, she was a tyrant. She was almost completely obsessed with her own self.
John Cleese on stage: Our telephone conversations over the decades would go like this, I always made the call so I would ring her up and say, "Hello, Mother, it's John." She's say, "Hello, John, how are you?" "I'm fine, Mother, how are you?" She would say, always with a hint of surprise, "Well, I have been just a little bit down this week." And I don't know why she was surprised because she's just a little bit down this week for 50-(BLEEP) years. Until one day, inspire struck. She was carefully listing all the reasons why she didn't want to go on living
and I heard myself say, "I have an idea, mother." She said, "Oh, really? What's that?" "I know a little man who lives in Fulham "and if you're still feeling this way next week, "I could give him a call if you like, but only if you like, "and he could come down to Weston-super-Mare and kill you." And suddenly she cackled with laughter and it was a major breakthrough...
ROSS COULTHART: You've started developing comedy as a way of dealing with a bit of bullying you were copping at school.
John Cleese: Well, I make a lot of that in the show. I had a sense of humour anyway. I always loved comedy even when I was five and six. So of course as a school kid, we are all insecure and there was little bit
of bullying, not a lot. You make people laugh, you feel better, they like you better.
ROSS COULTHART: A large part of what made you terribly funny as Basil Fawlty character and a lot of the Monty Python skits was that barely suppressed rage, that anger.
John Cleese: I always thought that anger's funny, because it's so seldom - particularly in England - so seldom effectual.
ROSS COULTHART: Are you still angry, though?
John Cleese: You seem a much calmer happier chap these days? I like to point out to people that there was an element of acting. Nobody ever said to me, "Are you exactly like Archie in 'Fish Called Wanda'? The answer is, that we all have within us, all these parts of human nature. You could describe yourself - we all have anger, envy, depression, we have joy, rage, kindness. We have brutality, we have all got those. If you are in contact with them all, when you are given a part, you simply emphasise those three and pull those three back. That's how you create different characters.
ROSS COULTHART: What do you think of the modern comedians for example, Charlie Sheen?
John Cleese: Charlie Sheen is the worst comic actor I've ever seen. It offends me that that man - I'm delighted he's gone - it offends me that anyone in America thought that was good comic acting. I feel like a surgeon watching another surgeon doing a bad operation, you know?
ROSS COULTHART: So, John, I understand you can't do the silly walk any more - you've got a gammy knee.
John Cleese: Well, not only did I have a hip replacement in 1999, I now have a total knee replacement.
ROSS COULTHART: Oh, dear.
John Cleese: So I can do a sort of geriatric version, if you like, which would be like this. That's about the best I can do.
John Cleese: That's about the best you can do, well, I can understand that, I'll forgive you for that.
ROSS COULTHART: Some of your best writing of course came with Monty Python and in 1969, you pitched, along with your colleagues, to the BBC, this as-yet-unnamed new show.
John Cleese: Yes.
ROSS COULTHART: Why did the BBC take that risk?
John Cleese: I think it was because we were working in television at the best possible time and some of the executives in those days knew what they were doing - only a portion of them, but some - they operated more on their gut.
ROSS COULTHART: Do you think today's BBC or, for that matter, today's Hollywood, would commission something like 'Monty Python' or 'Life of Brian'?
John Cleese: I think it's very doubtful because I think that they would not trust the artist.
John Cleese on stage: Let me tell you how this weird group of people worked together. Somebody wrote a sketch once that was set in a dormitory
but it was a rather run-down, dusty old place and somebody said "Yes, but it should be illuminated "by a magnificent Louis XIV chandelier" and someone else said "Not a chandelier - "a dead, stuffed farm animal with
light bulbs screwed into its feet" and somebody said "Oh, that's funny.
Obviously, a sheep" and somebody said "What do you mean, a sheep? "That wouldn't be funny. It needs to be a goat." Somebody else said "A goat?
That would kill the joke. "A sheep! Sheep are funny, stupid, and stupid is funny, you see" and someone else said "Yes, but goats have horns, you see - "it's a better sight gag" and somebody else said "No, no - because sheep has wool "and that's funnier visually" and somebody else said "No, no. A sheep ruins the joke, "it's too predictable" and it got really nasty. People were questioning each other's parentage and bringing up embarrassing things about each other's private lives, slurs about
people's sexual preferences. And I remember thinking to myself "This is insane!" "We've been arguing about this for 20 minutes. "It's got to be a (BLEEP) goat! It's obvious to anyone! "Of course, it's a goat."
John Cleese: I'm drawn to the kind of humour when there's a bit of me
who wants to say what everyone is thinking but nobody says it. And I once had two very nice secretaries or assistants working for me and within a period of two weeks, both of their boyfriends got killed in accidents -
one - the both, motor accidents. Now, I have to tell you, they were at the very beginning of the relationship - these were not established relationships - but I came in the next morning and looked at them and said "Anyone dead today I should know about?" One of them howled with laughter and the other one burst into tears so there's always a bit of me, particularly on formal occasions, that wants to say something
that everyone's thinking but nobody wants to say.
ROSS COULTHART: Was it true that 'Fawlty Towers' was inspired from a real-life character?
John Cleese: Yes, a place we stayed - we were filming for 'Monty Python'
and we stayed there and the guy who ran it, his name was Donald Sinclair.
John Cleese: He was the most gloriously rude man. He hated guests.
He is one of these people who say "We could run this hotel properly
if it wasn't for the guests."
ROSS COULTHART: What do Germans think of 'Fawlty Towers'?
John Cleese: They like it.
ROSS COULTHART: They're not offended?
John Cleese: No, because that's not them.
ROSS COULTHART: Did the Spaniards ever complain about your treatment of Manuel?
John Cleese: No, I can tell you something rather funny - when 'Fawlty Towers' was actually transmitted for the first time in Spain, it actually went out in Barcelona.
ROSS COULTHART: Oh, really?
John Cleese: After two weeks, it was mysteriously disappeared. And when it was reintroduced to Barcelona television, Manuel had become a Portuguese.
ROSS COULTHART: Is that right?
John Cleese: Yeah.
ROSS COULTHART: Is there ever a moment where you've thought to yourself, "Oh, crikey, we've gone too far?"
John Cleese: Well, you see, the trouble is when you make jokes sometimes, there are always people who are going to misunderstand them. If you put a bigot up and he expresses bigoted views, there are some people who will say, "These bigoted views are being discredited "because the man is an idiot" and there will also be some idiots out there, saying "Thank God, someone's finally telling the truth" so it's very hard with comedy to guarantee that the audience will understand what the joke was.
ROSS COULTHART: What do you think was Monty Python's best-ever sketch?
John Cleese: Fish-slapping is the silliest.
John Cleese on stage: I feel sorry for some student of media studies who is one day going told to write to write an essay saying what that means.
John Cleese: Oh, that's nice.
MAN (SINGS)
Happy birthday to you #
ROSS COULTHART: Happy birthday, John.
ALL (SING)
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday!
# Happy birthday to you
# Happy birthday to you #
John Cleese: Do they have any idea how old I am?
ROSS COULTHART: You famously said you want to live to be 100, like your mother.
John Cleese: For heaven's sake...Did I say that?
ROSS COULTHART: Yes.
ROSS COULTHART: Well, I would like to live to be 100 because I find life gets better and more interesting all the time. You're obviously taking this tour all around the world, so what are we going to see in Australia?
John Cleese: Well, I'm going to try something new and this is something I've been getting from audiences. At the end of some of my shows, I go out and do Q and A and the audience ask nice, rude questions and we tease each other and we just have a lot of fun.
John Cleese on stage: The noisy guy. Can we give him a microphone - not that he needs one.
ROSS COULTHART: So the Australian audience is going to get a chance to have a ding-dong with the great John Cleese?
John Cleese on stage: Absolutely, and the ruder the questions, the better. I hate it in California - it's "Oh, Mr Cleese, I just have to, oh, you're just so wonderful "and I want to know, I would like to be a little bit as wonderful as you. "Just a little bit. " What are... How are you? How is it possible for you..?"
John Cleese: That was only one thing wrong with Australia - it's too far away, I did a joke at the Sydney Opera House a month ago, I said "What people don't understand in Australia "is that there are planets closer to London than Sydney is."
ROSS COULTHART: It is a long way.
John Cleese: It IS a long way. I could live in Australia and I've always felt extraordinary comfortable there.
John Cleese on stage: Alright, this is to tell me that the matron of the home says I've got to be back by 10 o'clock. God bless, hope you've enjoyed it. Bye!
ROSS COULTHART: As we have already discussed, you've got this beautiful woman in your life.
John Cleese: Yes.
ROSS COULTHART: Is there a fourth marriage imminent?
John Cleese: Well, who knows? My favourite joke, quite seriously,
is "How do you make God laugh?" and the answer is "Tell him your plans."
I don't know. I am happier with Jenny than I've ever been with anyone,
knowing how unpredictable human life is, one hates to predict what might actually happen.
ROSS COULTHART: Well, John Cleese, it's clear for many years yet you're going to keep on being creative.
John Cleese: I hope so.
ROSS COULTHART: Thank you very much for your time.
John Cleese:Pleasure. It was Fiona, wasn't it?
