Comedy legend John Cleese's funniest ever interview | 60 Minutes Australia

the loveliest thing anyone ever said they said to me once when i have watched monty python i cannot then go on and watch the evening news i cannot take it seriously that's wonderful and uh get the machine that goes after more than 50 years in the business john cleese still isn't sure why some things just are funny you don't need to follow anybody even his favorite skit of all time [Applause] you're all different yes and one of them says i'm not and they all go shh and the joke i've tried to understand that joke it makes no sense but this is great it's hilarious and it makes no sense at all so i think it's lovely when you can do things that haven't that have no meaning that are still funny now sex it's a brand of humor that has propelled john cleese to international stardom the outrageous anarchy of monty python crucifixion last hours it's a slow horrible death well at least it gets you out in the open air to the hapless hotelier basil faulty wonderful this basil's wife this basil this smack on head he's played everything from 007 sidekick you know you're cleverer than you look hmm still better than looking cleverer than you are follow me disease really sorry i'm really really sorry to a bumbling barrister in a fish called wandering back i do i offer a complete and utter retraction my hovercraft is full of eels he's been a writer actor and comedian but right from the start john cleese has used humor to make a point sending up the very world he lived in i look down on him because i am upper class i look up to him because he is upperclass but there's nothing he loved more than ridiculing the british class system i am middle class i know my place your dad said to you you must never look started that's right because he'd been in india mixing with the upper middle classes and he noticed how they behaved it's really baboon behavior if you want to see how to behave as an upper-class person go and watch the baboons they're not startled they move very very slowly all the time the number one rule is not to be embarrassing or to be embarrassed yes so if you look at the royals what they do is they keep these cheek muscles completely rigid all the time and then that enables them to sort of um move their mouths around like this normal sort of a humorous way and all the uh emotion is completely uh you know subtractions and unnecessary you know and it's a very it's a straight jacket that's upper class behaviour john marwood cleese was born in western super mare in somerset england the only child to what he described as overprotective parents reginald and muriel he was academically smart good evening here is the news but while studying to become a lawyer at cambridge university something happened to clies on the way to the courthouse somebody stood on the news now i have the newest back please i'm so sorry about this suddenly there were people saying come and work at bbc brady and uh i suddenly thought well why not why not why not and the great thing a great thing was that it was um it was for the bbc so that i could sell it to my parents a bit like joining the civil service you know because you know i was able to say well there's a pension scheme then they would say oh well that fine then going to show business you know hell is a purely voluntary organization [Music] but there's no state aid no insurance scheme no grant even from unicef cleese had been a scriptwriter and cast member of the stage comedy cambridge circus what can you do to help well so successful it was taken to the west end in london and then cleese was 24 on a tour of new zealand would you help us please you said you left in july 1964. that's right and arrived in in new zealand where it was 1922. that's right that was absolutely right um they were clueless except at rugby and quickly you also lost your virginity in new zealand that's right we're extremely late and i was so ineffectual and in at ease with women that it was it was quite extraordinary when i look back at it this parrot is no more it has ceased to be it's expired and gone to meet its maker luckily for cleese his career got out of the blocks much faster than his sex life it's so stiff he was only 30 when he became a founding member of the comedy phenomenon monty python it's probably pining for the fields painting for the fjords what kind of talk is that yes we were very silly but we weren't very satirical we made a lot of fun of the class system and education and things like that and you could tell that the younger people just loved it because we were saying something like don't take it too seriously and it looks as though we're in for a splendid afternoon sport on this the 127th upper class twitter of the year show vivian smith my smith what is the silliest thing you've done given silliness was a oh my silliest thing was the there's the uh the fish slapping [Music] i always say that i think sometime in the future some poor student of media studies is going to have to write an essay about what that means because it is almost meaningless and yet it's extraordinarily funny and i love that very well i shall release module sir we don't have a roderick either new watcher no one's a week for cleese the python's success would only be the beginning basil that's all irritating when he and his then-wife connie booth wrote faulty towers it cemented cleese's place in comedic history will you stop talking about the war me you started it we did not start it yes you did you invaded poland but people always assume that that means that i'm like basil and it isn't like that at all because when you act a character you take certain facets of your own personality and you emphasize them i don't believe it neither do i practice a dream no it's not a dream we're stuck with it right so what little bit of you is basically all of it his anger's always bases on fear you know duck just not an angry man he's frightened something like being found out he gets more frustrated i'm kenya if the good lord i've mentioned once more i shall move you closer to him now please faulty taos is still seen around the world and was voted the uk's greatest television show and it was all based on a real hotel and its owner where the pythons once stayed the pythons all moved out of the hotel and they were so appalled by this man and the way he treated his guests who were these people who came in and sort of spoiled his life and i was the one who stayed behind along with connie and thank god i did because of the material it gave me it seems the only thing cleese hasn't been successful at is marriage after his third nuptials to american psychotherapist elise faye eichelberger ended [Music] he was forced to embark on what he called his alimony tour i called it the anime toy you're three or feeding the beast and here is a recent photograph of my ex-wife at a london atm helping herself to some of my money if you went after me really quite brutally by hiring the nastiest i don't mean the second nastiest or the third nastiest lawyer in santa barbara but the nastiest and my wife went and hired this really nasty woman and i've had to pay her 20 million dollars it's not fair but apparently i got off lightly because my lawyer points out how much more i would have had to pay my ex-wife had she contributed anything to the relationship you know if it had children or even a two-way conversation did that ex-wife react at all to your alimony tools i have no idea because she always said from the very beginning that if we broke up we would never speak again and from the day that we broke up we have never spoken and i've decided it's an extremely good arrangement and you could be forgiven for never walking down the aisle again that you have oh yes because i think deep down i'm a romantic as i say god put me on the planet to understand women better so how am i going to do that i'm going to find another one and so he has wife number four is jennifer wade an american 32 years his junior and this time he's certain so i'm now very much in love with jen or fish as they call it who she swims like a fish and we laugh immoderately and are wonderfully rude to each other people think we're having a round we're just falling about with laughter where were we you say and now that's what i call a dead parrot now that's what i call a dead turret at 75 clice is still going strong i don't know but his legendary role with monty python is now done no no i say it's stunned stunned yes stunned [Music] the reunion this year he says made him realize that yes i had a moment when they pushed us out on these deuces and i could see 16 000 people he goes back a long way liz and i remember thinking how extraordinary that i don't feel excited that was my emotional reaction and it wasn't a choice and that's why i think i realize i have the talents of an actor but not the temperament and i'm much happier writing we the fluency more fresh fruit comedy and cleanse unlike champagne and caviar a combination that's hard to beat extraordinary given it started out more like cheese and crackers and how are we today better better better get a bucket from a throw up i guess though a bucket it's on your right in fact the family name was originally cheese according to cleese his dad reg fed up with being teased that he was fermented curd decided to change it do you wish you were cheese or please oh i think cheese i would like to be in cheese and jet cheese you say jack cheese too because jack is more fun than john as i say you know dear john letters you don't hear about dear jack letters do you check cheese [Laughter] thank you very much pleasure charlie it's been lovely thank you hello i'm liz hayes thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes australia make sure you subscribe to our channel you can also download the nine now app for full episodes another exclusive 60 minutes content

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 1,340,699

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Charles Wooley, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Allison Langdon, Tom Steinfort, Sarah Abo, john cleese, cleese, comedy, fawlty towers, faulty towers, john cleese films, john cleese interview, john cleese comedy, monty python, life of brian, holy grail, flying circus, john cleese comedy troupe, most famous comedians of all time, net worth, autobiography, so anyway

Id: Dnfg3ORQDg4

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2020