I LOVE this man! I am sorry if there already exists a part one, but I really don’t care! I know him from Python and Fawlty Towers and other works from there on out, but I would like to know what he has done prior to those.
John Cleese was involved with the following television programmes in the UK prior to Monty Python’s Flying Circus:
The Frost Report (1966-67), in which he appeared in a series of sketches with Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett and others.
At Last The 1948 Show (1967), another comedy sketch programme produced by David Frost. Marty Feldman, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor were his co-conspirators.
Marty (1968-69), for which he wrote some of the sketches.
Doubtless someone will add to this CV.
Cleese was involved in That was the weel that was in the early 60s and was involved in one of the most famous sketches of the 60s with Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett as 3 men of different classes.Sample quote "
Upper class man…I look down on them
Middle class man…I look up to him but I look down on him
Working class man …I know my place .
Really you had to be there!!
Cleese went on to work with Graham Chapman and the pair wrote some sketches for some situation Comedies including Doctor in the House .
They met the other (soon to be Pythons) on a programme called Do not adjust Your Set which was a vehicle for The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band (which included Neil Innes and Viv Stanshall
The rest is ,as they say , history.
I saw an interview with him in which he explained that watching someone behaving crazily is not necessarily funny. Watching someone who is watching someone behave crazily IS funny.
They showed several examples from Fawlty Towers and Monty Python demonstrating this comedic principle. Cleese understands his craft, and has the tools to do it well.
Unlike some one-tick pony guys, his post-Python stuff is great too. I have a books on tape version of The Screwtape Letters read by John Cleese–he makes a most excellent bureaucratic demon. And he was great in A Fish Called Wanda too. Speak Russian to me baby!