These are very bad chairs. Do you agree there? I could fall asleep, right? Exactly.
They're too comfortable. You shouldn't have chairs
this low for interviews. They should put you in, sort of. You see what I mean?
I usually use barstools. So when it gets really boring and
you all fall asleep, it's not our fault. We could ask for
pieces of wood to put in here, something that we should just stand on. Oh, that's good. That's very good. Very good. I hear they're going to see this as a better. Right. If I really like someone, they can come up here. Oh, better. That's much better. I feel perky, perky, perky. How is this book tour treating you? You've been to hell and gone
for the whole week. Brutal. We came to New York two days,
New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, and here. I can't believe you can remember
all those. Well, it was. I think I did those in in
just under two weeks. So you just get pretty tired. You really do. Yeah. Mainly because on those planes, not
the seats are so small. I mean, they're all right.
You're a decent size. You're not huge, but you're not tiny. Right. It's true. They show you why
they fit you. I'm miserable. Oh, I always think of those bamboo cages that North Korea put the water up to here. Yeah, that's right.
So you couldn't get comfortable. Right. We used to keep our pilots and them
and they caught them. COFCO called it something like Kafka
talked about it in the penal colony. It was this box that you couldn't
get comfortable in. Yeah. Yeah. Just like that. It's just like that. So I have to sit there for two hours
being uncomfortable and then get in a car and they always get me a small cars
that I can't sit up straight. So by the time I get to the hotel,
you know, how did you and I'm 75 anyway, for God's sake. You look damn good for seventy five. I don't want to make you feel old with this comment
because you are old, but no, no, I'm very old. I'm very old. Well, seventy five is nearly dead for most of human history. It's way past Bill. Way past way past it,
Methuselah. Absolutely. I want to tell you, it's not such a bad thing
because most of the best people are dead. It's true, most of the people you and I would like to meet
most like Plato, right? Who would find them? Richard. John, who is dead
that you'd really like to meet? Richard Feynman. Da Vinci. Feynman? Yeah. Yes. Wonderful man. Did you ever meet him? No. But I do see he's got this incredibly
positive attitude when things went wrong. Whereas most of us think, oh, fuck,
you know what we do. And firemen would say now,
that's interesting. Yeah. And I think that's the most wonderful. My favorite last words, an 18th century woman. She was vaguely upper class. And I don't know her name
because she wasn't famous. But just before she died, she announced to the people in the room
who were waiting for her to die. It's all been most interesting. Isn't that wonderful? What a great thing to be able to say. Great thing to be able to save. That's awesome. I wanted to tell you
that I'm sure you've been peppered with all sorts of memories people have
of the first time they saw you. The memory that I have
is that watching Monty Python was the first time
I was laughing with my parents. Oh, that's so touching. It made me feel so grown up. And I've been searching
for that ever since. You know, I find it very touching
because a lot, particularly in America, a lot of men have said that
it was the only thing that they really connected with their dads,
which is sad in a way. But at least they had that. Yeah. And well, you see what I'm saying? Yeah. And I love that. In fact, that one of the one of my failures, which was fierce
creatures, was an attempt to make a movie specifically for children
to watch with their parents. Well, that was what I was trying to do. And everyone thought
I was trying to make fiscal wonder again. But I think that's lovely. I think when people laugh
together. Exactly. And it made me feel like
I was having a connection with them. I just remember being unhinged
and not being able. And we're trying not to laugh
so we can hear the next line. Yeah, we're choking. That's why I can't remember many things,
is the only the only real connection I had with my mum
was that we laughed at the same things. And it was very odd because on the whole, let me tell you a story which amuses me
about professional comedians. W.C. Fields is one of the greatest comedians ever,
and I don't think young people know him a well as they should.
He was absolutely wonderful. And somebody said to him
once they asked him about a professional comedian
sense of humor and and W.C. Fields said, well, for most people,
if an actor dresses up as a very, very, very old woman and walks
along the street, you know, like this and falls down a manhole, they'll laugh. But to make a professional comedian laugh, it really has to be an old woman. You have it you have an anecdote in the book about making your mom laugh
with a really dark joke. Yes, well, she was a very anxious and neurotic woman. And when I when I would telephone and she she lived
until one hundred and one. So I saw quite a lot
of her over the years. I would bring up always made the call. I said, hello, mom. And she said, oh,
hello, John, how are you? And I would say, I'm fine, how are you? And she would always say with a
with a hint of surprise, she would say, well, I've I've been
just a little bit down this week. And, you know, I don't know why
she was surprised because she was a little bit down
this week for 50 fucking years. One one year. I said one one day. I just spontaneously
it just came because you don't like it when your mother's unhappy.
You want it to be happy, you know. And, you know, if you with a depressive,
it's very difficult. It's hard to cheer them up. But on this occasion,
I had a moment of utter creative inspiration because I said to her
mother, I have an idea. And she said, what is that? And I said, well, mother,
if you're still feeling this way next week, I know a little man in Fullam. And if you if you like,
but only if you like, I could give him a call
and he could come down there and kill you Doing. There's a man wandering around,
handing out bits of paper. What did he give you? Oh, a questionnaire. Now, I understand I thought he was asking
you for money and I. And then so from then
on, any time she started to say that she was not very happy,
I just wait a couple of minutes and then I'd say, socialite's,
should I call the middle man from Fullam? And she'd laugh every time and say things
like, oh, no, I've got a SHELI party on Friday. In the book you describe,
there's this moment before she laughs
where you wonder if you've gone. But that's where everything lies, right? That's hard. That pause. I did wonder whether I'd gone too far. And I sometimes I sometimes, too. I had two very nice
women assistants in London. This is about 20 years ago. They were late 20s, early 30s. I was very fond of both of them. Mellouli and and know
Amanda, Amanda and Henrietta. And the most extraordinary thing happened,
which is that in a period of two weeks, both of their current
boyfriends were killed in accidents. Oh, one in a car accident,
one in a motorcycle accident. And I walked in a week after that
into the office and and just said, anyone dead today I should know about? I can't I can't behave myself. But the interesting thing was, the best part is, no matter
how mad they get when they tell the story to someone else, they're going to
be like, what did you expect ? But what was interesting was one of them fell about laughing
and the other one burst into tears. It was a very strange. And it all depends
what you get into that kind of humor. There's some people who can stand back
from a little bit more and see it a little bit like a cartoon. Right. Yeah. So that if if Jerry runs Tom over with a steamroller, the most sensitive people in the audience
won't be able to laugh because they will be thinking
how that cat must be suffering. You see Adobe. Yeah. So when we made a fish called Wanda and one of the dogs
was flattened by a car. The audience is falling about. Originally we shot a Close-Up
and the director had got some a bucket of innards from a local butcher and had put these innards
on this sort of raffia mat squashed dog. And the audience is roaring with laughter. And when that Close-Up went up
on the stage, they stopped like that because it reminded them of the reality
of a dog being which you can laugh at. The idea of it is quite different
from the reality of it. So we replaced it with a stupid Rafiah mat
and no blood at all. And then the audience was able to laugh. That's interesting. Yeah. Somebody loved that story. Well, something else happened
that we don't know. You talk in the book about the need
to have the right attitude about failure and being willing to approach that Gulf
where you're not sure how people are going to react. What do you mean having the right attitude
towards failure? Well, a lot of people are terrified
of making mistakes. And as I point out,
so sometimes talk to businesses. If you try to avoid mistakes by just doing the same thing again
and again because it's worked in the past , you'll make the worst mistake of all,
which is that the other companies around you will overtake you. So not making a mistake
will turn out to be a huge mistake. Peter Drucker said that the
the greatest danger was was was rigidity. If people were too frightened of making mistakes, because if you're
going to do something new, some of those guys are not going to work. It was an interesting piece by Paul Krugman in the
in The New York Times this morning. And he made the point about investments
that even the best people like Warren Buffett,
they occasionally make a bad investment because there's an element of risk if you
try to do something new and create it. And a lovely film to a theatrical director in London said that
when he was rehearsing a show, if there wasn't a moment
when he thought this could be a disaster, then it was never a great show. Because you're right. Yeah, totally. Because there's a moment.
What was it called? Popper said it's impossible to foresee
all the consequences of our actions. And that's particularly true
if audiences are concerned. There's the moment. The moment you feel like you've got
everything wired is the moment. Life is about to kick you
in the balls. Absolutely. That's absolutely right. Yeah. And you can see it happening to people. They really begin to think
that they know and that's. They're strangers. Yeah, they're special. Yes,
they're special. There's a wonderful bit of research.
You're Philip Tetlock. If you come across this guy,
it's mentioned in The Black Swan, which is the most interesting book
I've read for years. And Tetlock wanted to find out
whether these pundits, these experts on politics and economics
could make good forecasts. So he went to them and he asked them
a large number of questions about what was going to happen
in five years time and 10 years time. And the fascinating thing
was that they were all hopeless, but the people who were most hopeless. I think this is fascinating
with the most famous one. Because when you have an idea, right,
you have the affirmative bias. Yes. Which is if you have an idea
and then you get two bits of information. One of them confirming what you think
and one of them disproving it. You're much more likely
to accept the one, right? Oh, yeah. So that means that you want something
that affirms your bias or your prejudice. And the bigger your ego,
the more certain you are that you're righ and that you don't need to look at all the feedback coming in, only the feedback
that proves that you're right. And that's why they were the worst people. Totally hopeless at
guessing anything. Anything. Yeah. And that's a lovely realization. This is my this is what my third book's
going to be about. It's going to be
called Why there is no hope. You've been saying this on this book. I have, because I just got interested. It's not in this book which. Oh, where's that pop up? I left it in the dressing room. Oh, I'll get how it my my lovely friend
to bring it in later on. What was attractive? Yeah, it's just the idea which I've began
to get reading The Black Swan. And I think you you know a great deal
more about this than I do, really. Although you'll politely
pretending you don't. Is that is that we don't know
what's going to happen. And that I would go from there
to another thing, because when I started to write
a couple of books about psychology with my old therapist,
who was really quite famous, I said to him one day,
I said, what percentage of therapists in this country do you think that really
know what they're doing? He said 10. You said 10 percent. And after that, every time
I met someone that I thought, this person is special, I said to them,
how many people in your field know what they're doing? The lowest I got was five. The highest I ever got was 20. Most people said 10 to 15. Thank you. Thank you. Most people said 10 to 15 percent of the people in that business
really knew what they were doing. The rest of them
just apply to set a set of rules. But if they didn't work those rules. They're like me.
When the computer goes wrong. We don't know what to do next.
You see what I mean? Yeah. And I think that that's
an extraordinary thought, that six out of seven people have no idea
what they're doing. Well, on moral. You don't disagree with. I don't disagree with you at all. I think that one of the things
that you spend a lot of time doing, what a lot of those experts spend
a lot of time doing is try to hope that they know what's coming. Yes, because not knowing what's coming
next is well, it's genuinely terrifying. It is until you give up till you
give up hope, which is what I'm hoping. I mean, they're encouraging you all to do
with what you say. We don't have a fucking clue
what's going on. We don't know what's going to happen. Then you can just get on quietly
with your life and enjoying a nice glass of wine and making as much money
as you need, but not more. And and the basic principle,
which is trying to be kind to people, just a small number,
because you can affect the smaller try and change the world. I mean, it's it's terribly
funny that you think that people are going out there
to try and change the world. You know, it's it's pointless. I wasn't planning
to get here so early, but incidentally, the book is called
So Anyway, sorry go. Yeah, you. Are you a closet Buddhist? I'm a closet something. I actually think
that there's something going on. I was part of a group that studied it
and we produced a book called Irreducible Mind
if you ever come across it. I have a highly academic tome,
but I don't think it's all things are all explained by the materialist
reductionists view of science. And I don't know
how you can hang on to that since since quantum theory was accepted,
which is quite clearly saying that there isn't a reality
without consciousness being involved. It seems to me. Yeah. So I think I think
we don't really know anything yet. And I think the people who say they're
going to produce an artificial mind is like a human mind.
I think they're delusional. I really do. Do you agree or not? I'm not sure if I've thought of all
the way through to them being delusional. I'm fascinated by what
they're going to discover as they die. Yes, that's right. That's right. But I want them also
to look at other evidence. Well, I mean, the fact of our sentience
is completely astonishing. Fact of what? Our sentience. I mean, I am I have a mind for science and I definitely am reductionist
about most things. Right. But I also understand at the end of every line of question,
the answer is we don't know. Yes. What's crap, we don't know. And one of the most
one of the most depressing things that anyone ever said to me. I was having dinner
with a small group of people who imploded Was it Philip? Jody Gould, the biologist of Stephen, Steven
Drakov, Stephen Jay Gould. And I was asking was very nice guy. And Richard Dawkins was there, too. And we always wondered whether they were going to squabble
and they didn't behave very well. So I asked Stephen Jay Gould. I said, what was the. I said, what do you tell me
what you're working on? And you told me in great detail
about four books that he wanted to write. And he was absolutely clear what
these books were and what was going to be And I said, now,
if you now met God and God said to you, I will answer one question,
what would you ask him? What would you ask him
as something that you've always wanted to understand, you don't understand yet? And he said, I can't think of anything. This is a scientist, and he really thinks he knows it
all. I was shocked. Oh, well, that's why
he said he couldn't think of it. I would imagine he would be
embarrassed for choice. I mean, yes, exactly. I would I would have no idea
where to begin. No, no. It's exactly the point is,
we know so little. And I just ask people, just keep an open mind
about all the things that are going on. So you wrote a book
called Irreducible Mind. Yeah, well, I financed it,
but there were a lot of academics. That was this with the think
tank at Esslin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Michael
Murphy is a pal of mine. Yeah. They're lovely people. They're absolutely lovely. And you know, the people that,
for example, who who worked with them. Oh, God. What was the name of the guy
at the University of Virginia? Stevenson or the reincarnation research? And and it's when you finish
reading it, it's hard to say. It's all coincidence, you know. So I don't know what it is.
I don't know what the mechanisms are. And I think the danger is
when you start trying to pretend, you know, the mechanisms of it. I know there's something somebody said
recently to me that coincidences are what are left over
when the theory isn't good enough. I think I like that. Something you said earlier reminded me
that Richard Feynman said that science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. Oh, that's wonderful,
because I would love to make a film about all the fuckups. I mean, I cardiologist's
said to me in London just last year, a top heart guy,
he said, we got it wrong. For 60 years, they've been saying that
heart problems are caused by eating fats. He said it's not fats,
it's sugar. Oh, crap. If there's one thing
I like more than fat, it's sugar. Oh, me too, me too. It's bad news. Oh, but I mean, the point
is, for 60 years, they were out there telling everyone to avoid fats
and everything was based on this. And now they've decided,
oh, no, we got that wrong. All right. But that's like we are right. I mean, I was saying to one of my kids,
I said, think about yourself five, four years ago. They're 15. Yeah. And think about
what an idiot you were. Yes. Compared to now. Yeah. And I said that's going to keep happening
for the rest of your. I think it was Mark Twain who said he never realized
what an idiot was till he was 15 and he had a long conversation
with his father. But he was surprised. When he got when he got to the age of 20, he was surprised at how much his father
had learned in the previous. That's exactly right. Now, this book about this book. Oh, really? Because
I was going to ask about lemurs. Oh, ask about lemurs.
What is it with the lemurs? Oh, I just think they're
the nicest little creatures. I wish I married
one. It would have simplify. What are the simplified my life, they are the dearest,
dearest little things that I see. One of them's carrying
I've seen an advertisement for a movie. And oh, no, it's a rikoon.
It's recruitment's. No, I just love lemurs.
And I think they're absolutely adorable. So I do a little bit to help because
they are getting wiped out in Madagascar. It's the only place, this huge island. And because we think it's small. Can we look at the map next to Africa?
It's the size of France. And and those 30,
they keep discovering the species. In fact, I have a species
named after me. No. Yes. Latin. Latin, yes. Avahi clezio. Friezes. Wooly lima. Isn't that wonderful? That's fantastic.
Lovely. And I turned on a peerage. I think you have your priorities. I got my priorities right. I've got a lemur named after me. So when I paid off the animal,
I was give them something. So about this book? Yes. You know, you started out before we met. You started zero. And you take it right
to the first Python performance. Yes, that's right. Does that mean you're
planning on a sequel? Oh, I should do a couple more. This only gets to the first.
But people have said. Some people said, well, we thought
it was all going to be about Python. And I got slightly embarrassed. I said to the publisher,
if we misled people. He said no. He said, if you were going to write
a book about Monty Python, it would be called Monty
Python by John Cleese. If it's an autobiography,
people will expect to be about your childhood and your parents
and your schooling and all that stuff. So what from a from
a python point of view? It's sort of showing how my sense of humor
developed over the first 30 years. And it's I recount
the very first python recording when Michael Payden
and I was sort of standing in the wings watching Graham Chapman and Terry Jones
about to do a sketch about flying sheep . And I looked at Michael and I said,
do you realize we could be the first comedians ever to record a show to complete silence? And Michael nodded
and said I was having the same thing. So it was his wish. Is that when we started? Wow, we didn't know. Then there's a little bit at the end
about the O2 show, which we did in July, because it was interesting
the sort of bookends, you know, for me from the very beginning of Python
and then to talk sixty-nine and then talk about 2014 and how utterly,
utterly different the shows were. I mean, one was a tiny little private
TV thing that was put on late at night and some some weeks
some BBC would cancel it and put out a showjumping
instead. I remember. And then suddenly we're in the in the
this is a lovely theater. This is just fabulous. It's just a great size. We were in one 16
times bigger than the stupid. It just went back and back and back. And it was just amazing because they were
all Python fans and that was. Were they reciting along the lines? Yeah, they knew the script
better than we did. You know, it was a case from the time
when I was in New York once, and I knew how the audience knew it. And Michael threw me completely with a with an ad lib in the dead parrot. Yeah. He offered me a sluggy
to replace the parrot. And I said, does it talk? And he was supposed to say, not really. But he said, well, it's
been muttering a bit tonight. And by the time I'd recovered,
I'd forgotten where I was and I was so relaxed like tonight. If you have a great audience,
you get very relaxed. I just said to the front row,
I said, what's the next one? They all shouted it up. And I said, What is the point of this? You pay good money to see me perform. You know the fucking sketch
better than I do. So that's I was wondering,
the characters you guys took on to do something
like the parrot sketch are very specific. Thirty years after the last
live performance, when you go to the O2, does Michael
go back into the exact same character? And so do you or do those
get modified over the years? I don't think they get modified much. I think my voice has dropped
a little bit as I got more relaxed because I got older
than they used to be. A tightness in my voice, which I think a certain amount of therapy
helped, helped to clear. But otherwise, going into the new year so far, we had a weird dinner
with John Paul Sartre, like his wife. He's a bit gloomy. John Paul, you know,
he talked a lot about existential angst. You see what I mean? I could really just
go straight back into it. And it's peculiar that. But the certain characters, if you played characters a great deal, it's as though they continue
to exist somewhere in you and you can just connect
with that place and go . Even the gestures will be all right.
It's a real thing. It's a consciousness. It's a real consciousness. And I think sometimes
when when authors say that the character that they're writing takes over the book,
I think that that happens. I think when you're writing a character sometime, if you're an actor
playing a new character, you kind of feel it, you try to feel it,
and then you do something in rehearsal and you suddenly think, oh,
that felt right. And then maybe an hour later,
you do something else, you do that, you got two points on the graph,
and then ever so slowly you try and join it up
and have other moments and then you have less
and less of the part feels wrong. And then eventually, with any luck,
you feel you own all of that part. And at that point,
you could go straight back in. But it's so much more than memory
because the gestures and the physical, you know, how you sit
and all this kind of thing is, is Quentin Tarantino
said while he was writing Jackie Brown that a key plot point in Jackie Brown
is that she keeps going to ORDELL and telling him the whole plan,
even while she's double crossing him. And Quentin said
every time she did that, I was surprised he was writing it. But the character that's one
has its own motivation. And this is what happens. You know, you started when we started out writing Basil Fawlty, for example,
which we wrote six hours of him. You see 12 1/2 hours at the beginning. It took a little time to feel
what was right for him on what was. And then by the end,
he so much existed almost outside our control that we knew
exactly the sort of thing he would do. And I think people don't don't understand
how that that can happen. That's a wonderful story
about about Tarantino, how this character became so real to you that a part of you
that you're not really conscious of utterly tunes in on him
and then your unconscious starts. Making him behave right? Yeah, that's extraordinary. It has its own logic,
but I think one of the main things I got from the book,
I was going to say the novel, the book that I didn't know it was that you are a writer, first and foremost. I've always thought of myself as a writer. Yes, it was. I got to
Cambridge on on science, which the law because
I wasn't really interested in science. And I just discovered
one day by chance that if I if I was given a sheet of blank paper,
I could write something down. And that if somebody,
perhaps myself, not necessarily performed it right, people would laugh. And it was an astonishing discovery to me. But from the very beginning, I was always
performing what I had written. And if you actually look back over the things people know me from,
which is Python and Fawlty Towers and Fish called Wanda, all of those
I wrote or co-wrote myself, you know, and the only thing I've ever done,
the only big movie I've ever done, which was written by someone else,
was was written by Michael Frayn, who wrote to Neusoft, do you remember? And Michael wrote
a movie called Clockwise. And I'm very pleased to find now that
a lot of people, especially in Canada, know about this movie because it did
no business at all when it came out. But you just go clockwise
and it's about a headmaster who has a very important speech to make to all the other headmasters ,
and he gets on the wrong train. And it's just a series of disasters and it's very good
except for the last three minutes. But up to that issue. But you said that the tension
that existed among the pythons while writing existed within the writing,
but not within the performer. No, that was the bizarre thing, you know,
because we did fight and argue a lot and the arguments
were always about the script. Was the script good enough? And we never argued about
who was going to play what role, because as writers, it was quite obvious
that we've written something will obviously Graham is going to play,
that they will play that Marco play that. It's obvious we never argued about that. But when we got into the into arguing
about the script, we used to get extremely worked up, much too much,
too much, too much. But one of the problems was there were
two really difficult people in the group. The first was was Terry Jones
and the second was me. And we used to butt heads
and it was sort of temperamental. Terry, I don't usually say this in public,
but it is sort of known, Terry, as Welsh. And I want to explain to to Terry that God had put the Welsh on the planet to carry out menial tasks for the English. And he was it could never get his mind
around. He could have and insisted on behaving
as though he was an equal. You know, so there were
a lot of fights, terror. Did you guys end up fighting over
the same territory or was it. No, it was just whether
something was funny. This is how ridiculous it got. There's a story in the book with some that we somebody written a funny sketch sit in a dormitory
and then somebody said there should be a very sort of dusty
rundown kind of place. And somebody said, yes, but with one
magnificent Louie, the 14th chandelier. And somebody said, yeah, that's funny,
but not a chandelier. A dead stuffed farm animal with a light bulb
in each one of its four feet. Somebody said obviously a sheep, and somebody said,
what do you mean a sheep? And the guy said, well, obviously
it's funnier if it's the sheep. Somebody said, no,
it's much funnier if it's a goat. It's very sad. A wooly chandelier. That's hilarious. Said, no, no,
the goat is much funnier. Visual guy with the horns. You see this argument went on. And I remember quite seriously,
it went on for a quarter of an hour. Three were passionate
that it should be a sheep. Three were passionate
that it should be a goat. And I remember I sort of sat back
and I thought, this is insane. What are we arguing about? It's obvious he's
going to be a fucking goat. Now, there was a
lot a lot of passion went into that. I can see, you know, it was ridiculous. But you have I remember reading after
meaning of life came out that you guys I don't know if I got this correct, because I'm going back
to my brain at that point. But did you guys write that in Hawaii? No, we were a bit of it
in the West Indies. What happened was that after
Life of Brian, which the pythons all feel is is very much
our best show. Hello. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And best film. And I agree. And I think the first half. Thank you. I think the first half of life of Holy
Grail is very, very, very good. But I don't think the second half
is worth a life of Brian. There was a real
that was a real story there. And I was soup and it was about
something important, too. And when we got to the meaning of life,
we could never agree on a story. And we kept meeting
and writing for a month. We have masses of material and nothing
could come together to unify it. So we all went off
where we'd been to finish life. And we went off to the West
Indies for two weeks. And I said on the first night,
I said, I have a plan. And they said, What? What? I said, let's not do any work at all. Let's just have a wonderful holiday
on the beach, in the sun, and then go back to everyone and say,
we're very disappointed. We just couldn't put it together. And I just about one the argument and then that little Welsh bastard came down the next year, it will warui I was thinking last night
I anything and he had put all the different sketches
into sort of stages of life. And I remember my sense of disappointment
and oh, come, we are going to have to make this
fucking film now. And he was entirely responsible. It was his determination. Otherwise we would have had
a wonderful holiday. Life of Brian does contain, I think, what
might be my single favorite python joke, which is you're all different. That's that is the greatest that is the greatest joke
of all comes up on these. He's decided he's going to pretend
to be the Messiah. I think that's right. And they
they say tell us. He says, you've all
got to think it out for yourselves. And they all cause. Yes, we've all got to
think it out for ourselves. And then he says, you're all individuals. And they shout, yes,
we're all individuals. And then one guy says, I know. And then the oil will be out of Scope's. I love that joke,
but I'm asking you seriously, am I right in thinking it has no meaning? The joke, the joke to me, the joke that is if the Buddha loved comedy, that would be
that would be the one he loved. Yeah. But then I'm equating
myself to the Buddha. So what an asshole. I don't think the Buddha was an asshole. I hope. Sorry. No, no, never miss a laugh,
even if it's cheap. I was going to wait
for the audience questions, but someone wants to know
if you'll validate their parking. No, I'm rather annoyed by that question. The up, but not any more. I'm looking at my questions
for the first time this time, you looked at that. Yeah, I think so. You said that the two geniuses you met
were Peter Sellers and James Burrows. Yes. And Peter Cook and Peter Cook. James Burrows was the director of Cheers. And he was the best I've ever worked with. Extraordinary things that would be last minute
rewrites handed out just before the show. And when we had a read through
in the dressing room with the new not a read through,
we would all do the lines. But incorporating the new ones
that had been suggested, he already knew the new lines
better than the actors did. I don't know how he did it. Wow. And he's an absolute genius
at knowing where to put the cameras to make it all work. He had a bad experience early
on making a movie. And he said, I'm
never going to make a movie again. And he just went on and made these great television
show, wonderful shows. Peter, Peter Sellars is the greatest
comedy actor I ever saw. And if young people. Yeah, if young people don't don't know him,
then you must watch Dr. Strangelove. Yes. Yes. I was just going to bring it up. The greatest one of the greatest comedy I it might be I'm
every time I watch it, I'm laughing hysterically and I'm crying at the credits
because I'm so sad. Yes. And that scene where Mirkin Monthly, where
he's the president and he's on the phone with Demetri telling him about the bomb
and the camera doesn't move. And I was thinking
he did this 10 or 15 times that day. Yeah. For Kubrick. And it's the most
I mean, Bob Newhart, who I love and invented that phone, standup comedy,
it is such a masterpiece. When he's talking on the set. The subject is so serious. It is nuclear destruction of the world. And it's the most wonderful, wonderful. And he plays Strangelove,
this strange German rocket scientist. Yes. Whose arm, when he's talking,
is almost a year ago, sort of like Mr. Hilter, Mr. Hilter. And then he also plays an RAAF officer,
which is extraordinary. And then Peter Cook, who is the greatest
producer of comic material. And the extraordinary thing about Peter
was he was a genius because he didn't have to work at it. But it's very interesting because when his genius ran out after 20 years, he didn't know how to grind it out
like the rest of us. He couldn't do it. He went really went a long way downhill. So all intuition,
it was just if you wanted three minutes of funny material, you would just hold the microphone
up to his mouth for three minutes. I mean, it was just extraordinary
what he could do. I'm astonished by the level of detail
you said writing this book. I've read an interview where you said
writing the book was relatively easy and straightforward,
but I'm gobsmacked by the detail. I mean, how did you compile
all of the timelines? There must have been a lot of. Well, there was this was a guy called
James Curtis is a really marvelous writer who was written
a wonderful biography of Spencer Tracy. Before that, W.C. Fields. And he was helping me with the timelines because he was so expert
on that kind of research. And he dug up reviews
that Washington papers have done, of shows I'd done for a week
in a nightclub in nineteen sixty five. I mean, he found this stuff everywhere. And it was incredibly helpful
because sometimes you'd think. But that doesn't make sense. I can't. And then you suddenly realize, oh, no,
I did the show in Chicago. Then I went back to New York
before I went to Washington. Just little things like that which clarify
these puzzles that you come across when you can't figure out what happened
in what direction. But you see, my experience
and memory is that when I meet someone that I used to know very well,
they will remember two stories about me
in considerable detail, which I will have no recollection
of at all, and vice versa. Yeah. And, you know, I can tell them very specifically what happened,
and they have no memory of it. And that happened yesterday. Somebody told me in great detail or something that had happened
that it involved me when I was about 18. No recollection of it at all. And in fact, when I was doing a rather fun
show in New York with four fun women
who sit on a sofa, the view, the view is fun. Therefore,
they show the great fun. And they showed me a clip of a sketch
and I watched it. And I would have bet money
that I'd never been in that sketch. I had no recollection of it at all. And I sat there watching it. I'm just amazed that
you could have forgotten something. But look, someone else wrote. Which is one of the reasons
I probably didn't remember it. And then I rehearsed it for five days and
recorded it, and that was probably 1969. So it's the memory,
what it seems to me that memories. You remember what's meaningful. And you forget the rest. So if there was a
are you tend to remember stories when there's a kind of moral
at the end of them, the sort of Aesop tale
moral memorial for yourself. Yes. Or a point or a learning thing. Those are the kind of stories I tend
to remember more than outright jokes. Well, so I mean, when you go back over this material
and you comb through it, you must find other stories
you totally forgot about. Yeah. And scripts that I'd forgotten. For example, I talk about a series here
which I did with Marty Feldman and Graham Chapman
and Tim Taylor, and I did it in 67. We did six shows in the spring
and seven shows in the fall. And then after they'd been transmitted, once the Frost Organization
wiped the tapes, because the tapes in those days
were about that big and that thick. And by the time you book
13 of them on a shelf, you were running and most officers
were running out of space. And they used to take them, wipe them
and use them again for another program. Wow. Shows with Marty and me and Graham. And they just wipe. Well, they're beginning. They're beginning to crop up. The Swedes found five compilation
shows in a vault in Sweden. Dear Marty's widow,
Loretta, died last year and left me two tapes
from her attic. Two more shows. Wow. David's youngest son is
my godson, found two more shows just before the O2,
including a last show. The last one we ever did,
the 48 show was called, which is so like a Monty Python,
that if I showed it to you guys now, you'd just be amazed.
The only thing that's not Python is the faces,
but the humor's exactly like Python. So it's very it's very interesting
when you discover this. I mean, here, if you've
got a book, what's that? You got one with you? I don't. Oh, I left it in the car. Can we have his book? We'll read the sketch together.
That'll be all right. What do you do? Absolutely. Because it's. Is probably we could get a book
from someone in the front row. Has anyone got what they can lend us
for a little bit? How are you going to get it to us? Right. Thank you. And don't think you're
getting it back. I really I really love this sketch. I shouldn't say that just before I'm about to read it with you,
but I got I got to 95. I know it's because
I read it the other day. Now I want you to play Graham Chapman, OK,
because I'm sitting in an office and it's a it's a place that you go if you want to train your memory,
if you want to get a better memory. So you come in and I say, come in. Oh, good morning. Come in. Thank you. Now, do sit down. What can I do for you? Well, I'm interested in your memory
training program. Oh, good, good. Well, a lot of people feel
they'd like to improve their memories. The wonderful thing is improving
them is not as hard as some. It's not as hard as nails. I beg your pardon. It's
not as hard as nails. It's word association. You see, it's the basis of my system. You remember things
by associating with them with with people like that. People like what? They like to improve their memory. Now, what can I do for you? I'm interested in your course. Good. You remember that. You say you have learned you've learned to associate your interest in my course with my asking why since the association of IDEO is the basis of everything
that we do to acquire a better memory. It's not as not as hard as I think. No, not as hard as nails. Remember? Never mind, never mind,
you'll soon pick it up. Now take a common object like this. Saucer. Good. Well done. Now, what does it make
you single, you know? Well, well, what
would you like to think of? I like to think of nude woman,
a nude woman, a nude Warren. Well done. You're getting it. What is the nude?
What is the nude woman doing? Drinking tea. Good. And what are you drinking? Tea out of a cup. Quite right. A cup and saucer. It's a saucer, you see. You get it? I'm not sure. Well, one of the association ideas,
that is the basis of our method, in fact, the whole
the whole of the hole in the wall. And what do I see through the hole in the wall? A nude woman? Every time. Every time. Of course, it's
such a strong image. You can't forget it. You associate it with anything
that you want to remember anything. Numbers, dates, names, anything. Just just try to get
a battle of Trafalgar. Oh, Trafalgar, Trafalgar Square, square hole in the wall. Look through the hole in the wall. What do I see? A nude woman. Excellent. Excellent. And who is this nude woman? I don't know. The Empress Josephine, 1815. See, it rhymes Jospeh 1850. 1815 was Waterloo. Trafalgar was 18. Oh five. Yes. But wait, wait a minute. I haven't finished yet. Joseph. Josephine's wearing boots,
Wellington boots. See, you can't see the toes. So deduct the 10
that you can't see from 1850. Eighty and five civil right. The date of Waterloo, 1815. Yes, but how do you do it? Wait a moment. Waterloo, Waterloo,
Waterloo Station, Waterloo Station, train train to Brighton, Brighton, peer
to peer through the hole in the wall. And this the Empress
Josephine in the new 1815. But she's got Wellington boots on. No, the Battle of Waterloo,
Duke of Wellington only comes once his boots back, so he sees her toes. No need to deduct Waterloo, 1815. Fire of London. What
the date of the fire of London? Oh, let me take it. The fire in London. Fire, fire, fire. Samuel peeps. Yes, Peeps wrote in his famous
diary about the Farallon Samuel Beets peeps through the hole in the wall. Hmm. And what does he see? A nude woman? No, no. Three nude women
by the night of the fire. He sees three stunning,
gorgeous nude women. Sex, sex. Sex. Sex. Sex, sex. You see, it's quite exciting for me to think that we wrote that back in 1967. Yeah. And that could easily be
the price of a sketch, you know? And the lovely thing
is, as as we recover it, I want to take that material
and make it into another show. I don't know whether to make it
a very sort of modern kind of way of linking it all together
or to keep it old fashioned or whether it should be
television on stage. But my my lovely P.A. Howard is actually working on recovering all the material
and it keeps cropping up on the Internet. It's extraordinary. He'll suddenly find he found a bit
recently was 10 seconds or something that we didn't know about on the Internet,
but it gave us a clue as to where we were,
where we should be looking. Now, did you choose Faste as a comedic style
or did it just choose you? It chose me. It was it just chose me. I realized that it was
when things got absurd, when they went past
a certain level of wildness. That was when I laugh the most. And I slowly began
to see that it was it was what we call farce. And the thing about farce is, is that
there's usually a moment at the start. The protagonists in most of the famous
faces I've ever come across is male. So let's assume it's a chap because he's
more likely to happen with men. They get more wound up
in a strange kind of way. So he does something at the start
which he's got to hide, you know, because it's usually about a taboo
and he's broken the taboo. And he has to try and hide it
very often to do with sexual infidelity. And the great French
forces of sort of 1890. And what happens
is that as he tries to cover it up, it gets his attempts to cover it
up, don't quite work. And then he attempts to cover up, get wilder
and wilder and wilder and wilder. And it's that sort of emotional wildness when people get completely frantic
like Basil Fawlty. That's what makes me laugh
more than people swapping jokes. Yeah. You know that that's one of the things
that Kubrick said when he was writing Dr. Strangelove, that he was originally
writing it based on the material from the book Fail-Safe.
And he was writing a serious movie. But every time he took a scene to its
natural natural conclusion, it was funny. And so halfway through the process,
he called up Terry Southern and he said,
we've got to make this a comedy. I didn't know Terry
Southern or Terry Southern. I got that right. Yeah. Yeah, Terry. So I didn't know. Yeah, he co-wrote
it with Kubrick. Well, I. So that's fascinating to me. I didn't know that, but it is it is
strange because I remember somebody said to Arthur Miller,
Do you think life is a FASTR tragedy? And he said, I'm not sure. He said, but on the whole,
I tend to think it's a farce. And I think it's a much healthier attitude
to go through life just saying, we've no idea
what we're doing, we're all idiots. We are all getting it wrong. Nobody nobody knows what
they're talking about. Just occasionally you come across
one person like Richard Feynman, who in one area knows
what he's talking about. All the rest is bullshit. Wall to wall bullshit. People pretending that see, I came across
this wonderful bit of research. I'm a phony professor at Cornell. And I or at least I used to be
before the alimony. I haven't been I haven't been back
for some time because I can't afford to take the time off. But there's a fellow
there called David Dunning, and he's been interested
all his life in self-assessment. How good people are at knowing
how good they are at doing things. Oh, right, the dry
Kruger effect. Yes. Yeah. And what he's discovered
is that in order to know how good you are at something requires
almost exactly the same aptitudes as it does to be good
at that thing in the first place. Which follows as
a corollary that if you're absolutely no good at something,
you lack exactly the skills that you need, that you're no good at it, you're no good. And once you realize
that there's thousands of people out ther who have no idea what they're doing
and they have absolutely no idea that they have no idea this is this is not tragedy material,
I think. I think the only disappointing thing
is that at the end, we die. I think that's the one thing
that's hard to to maybe there's a left we don't know about. Maybe there's a lot of we don't know. But I'm interested
in one bit of research done by people interested in the paranormal. Some woman call. Oh, I forgot. She's up at Iona's and she does
paranormal experiments with an English gu whose name is something like Weitman
or something like that. And when the two of them together,
if she does the experiments, they appear to work. And when he does them
with her watching, they don't know. I think that's interesting. Yeah. And I'm wondering
when if when we die, what happens is what we think is going. I like that you're not going to have
an afterlife, I, I. It would be nice.
It would be. I don't know. You don't think? I have a feeling that there will be one. So you see, I won't be
seeing you there because. I Castañeda says in
one of his books, his teacher, Don Juan, tells him, no, it turns out
there is no point to any of this. No point at all. There is a thing that gives us
our consciousness. It is hard and cold. And we refer to it as the eagle,
because that's what it reminds us of. But it is something that gives birth
to our consciousness. And then when we die,
it eats us back up again. And Cassaday says, well, what's the point?
So there is no point. But as a thanks for this brief
period of sentience, we try and expand our consciousness
while we're here, because it makes it
particularly delicious meal for the eagle That's very good. Thank you very much. Oh, I love that. That's that's as good
as it's all been most interesting. I like the I like the grammarian
who as they were doing, I can't remember who it was,
but apparently they said I am going to or I'm about to die. Either is correct. My favorite one,
which is which was an English practical joke in the 20s, who had a private income
and he used to amuse himself with practical jokes,
and he lived in a very small but beautiful flat right off
Piccadilly Circus, and he lived about above a very famous French fish restaurant called Prunier. And one day he had a heart attack
and the ambulance arrived and discovered the steps
up to his little flat at the top. Prunus was so steep that they couldn't
bring him down on a stretcher and they had to use an emergency exit,
which meant that he had to be carried out through the restaurant. And as he was carried
out through the restaurant dying, he raised himself from one elbow and said, no, don't eat the halibut. There's a local resident near here, Steve Wozniak,
co inventor of the Apple Computer. Yeah. Do you know
about his practical jokes with money? No. He buys uncut sheets of bills
from the US Mint and then he does things with them like
he has them laminated into a checkbook. So that when he wants to pay you
with a 20, he tears it out by perforation That's his whole goal, is to convince you
that he's giving you money. He just printed. So he'll also have them put on rolls
or he'll just pull out the sheet and use a pair of scissors
to cut you out. Forty dollars. So now this is a
good way to use a lot of money. Exactly. That's exactly what billionaires
should be doing. Oh, absolutely. They should be having. You know, we've rather lost lost practical
jokes, haven't we? Well, they one of the problems with practical jokes
is they get mean really quickly. And it takes real intelligence
to do a practical joke. That's not mean. Yeah, because means easy reading is easy. But to do one, which is just
a really glorious. Benevolent attempts to completely waste someone else's time. All right. I always wanted to do a hidden camera show where
someone would wake up and it was 1934 where everything was just slightly wrong. The windows were five inches
smaller than they were the previous day, and they can't quite figure out
the glasses are 10 percent. The cleverest practical joke
I ever heard was of a French poet in Pari in about 1870, 1880, and
he lived on his own in a block of flats. And there was a concierge, a nice
old lady, and he was very fond of her. And one day he was out in a walk and
he saw pet shop and he just wandered in. He didn't know what he was doing. And he saw this dear little turtle and he thought, I'm going to buy
it as a present for it. And he bought a little too little bowl of water
and so forth and took it back to her. And she was so thrilled she couldn't
stop talking about the fucking thing. So after time, he had a brilliant idea. He waited till she was out
and he went and got the turtle, took it back to the pet shop
and swapped it for a slightly bigger one, took it back. And she was so excited. The next day, she said, oh, look,
look how well he's doing. He kept doing this, which is every week it goes off in a. And then the genius. He started making small. That's beautiful. It puts a whole different slant
on scientific inquiry, doesn't it? Yes, it does. That's right, yeah. I think it's time to start
asking some questions from the audience. Oh, yes, it is. What would you be doing
today if not for Monty Python? Oh, what an interesting question,
if not for Monty Python, I don't know what
I'd really like to be doing is I would like to make
documentaries about things that I really don't understand,
which would be humorous. They would be really humorous. I'd love to make a documentary
about what religion would have been if the churches hadn't fucked it up. So I think that would
be interesting to see what is what is mystical experience,
you know, what what is it what is it about why why do people find it
so extraordinarily emotionally powerful? And yet why does it always fall
into the hands of people who then basically turn it on its head? Because I think it's very hard to justify, for example,
the Spanish Inquisition, you know. Well, you know, if you were there
in an altered Dufay in Seville in what would it be, about 15,
16 , if you say so? Well, counter-revolution around the. And and there they are
burning heretics, you know. And you can imagine Christ arriving
and rising to one of the the Inquisition people. Could you explain what you're doing? Why are you burning these people alive?
Because they're in great pain. And he would say, well, you see, we are we
we discovered that they have a different interpretation
from us of your gospel of love. Yeah. And in America, I mean, in some extraordinary way, Christianity is because of overlaps
with capitalism, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah. It's all real estate. It's all real estate and huge quantities
of money being generated by preachers. I want to say that I'm a woman, and I
don't think he said blessed are the rich. So it's fascinating. Somebody once said that an idea is not
responsible for the people who hold it. I think that's very, very accurate. So I'd like to do that
and I'd like to do a documentary about why very, very rich
people need to be very, very rich unless they want to play practical jokes. I agree. I find myself
wondering about that, too. Why and why do they need so much? I remember I said to someone in Santa
Barbara once, the funny thing about the very rich is how greedy
they are, that they still want more. And he said, no, no, no, no. They're rich because they're so greedy. In other words, they're not really affected by the money coming
in, that is the personality type. They just keep they're
continuing to attempt. That's right. Satisfied? That's right. And a psychiatrist and a beautiful thing to me
about a year ago in London, he said, if you want to think what if you want to understand
what God thinks about money. Look at the people he gives to. I had dinner with a clinical psychologist whose specialty he's
British, was studying lottery winners, and in the UK over there,
they just give you the whole mouth. I didn't know that. He said he had yet in 10 years
of studying them to find one person whose life wasn't
ruined by winning the lottery. Yeah. Yeah Speaking of money, we're Pink Floyd,
happy with their investment in Holy Grail Yes, I think they will, because that was
the first time we ever made any money. It was a work in an English television. We wanted to work for the BBC. But the money was extraordinarily small. I know we're talking about 69 and 70. But but but for doing seven
and a half months work, writing, performing, filming, editing,
13 shows, a series of 13, we used to get about 4000 pounds. And when it was shown in New York,
we used to get one quarter of one percent of the original fee with the original fee
was 240 pounds a show. So one percent of that
is two pounds and 40 paid. A quarter of that is 60 P. So if they showed thirteen shows, 66 threes, as we would get 78 P, I mean, seven dollars P. It's not a lot of money for a whole
television series, is it? No. And when we were making life
and they're making Holy Grail, we were paid four thousand pounds
for the whole thing, two thousand before it started. And then they rang us up and said, well, we can't pay you the other two yet,
but we hope to pay to you in a couple of months. And then the producer said, would you mind
very much sharing hotel rooms? Thank you. I don't think anyone ever asked Paul Newman to share a hotel room,
you know, except Paul Newman. Except Paul Newman. Yeah, that's very good. Someone wants to know what's the inspirati I was trying to come up with silly cheeses
and I came up with some more when we did the we did
the 02 incident is a DVD of it out. It should be worth looking at
because there was some wonderful moments when we broke up
that would just utterly, utterly special. And where you broke, where you cracked
each other, each other up. And then it was just it was just wonderful
to have that freedom and to know, you see, what happened
was on the second night. You know, Eddie is yeah,
brilliant, wonderful. He came to seven of the shows you believe that he gave the seven
of the shows and on the second night, a very weird thing that we started off
with a silly Spanish number and guitars. And then we went into white tuxedos
and talked about these these businessmen who was Yorkshire
businessmen before Yorkshiremen and would get competitive about how tough
their lives would be, you know. And we were halfway through the sketch
and I was mainly listening to my on my right, Eric on my left. And I glanced over at Terry Jones,
and he had blood running down the side of his face, but
it was the side away from the audience. And I saw what had happened was
when he'd taken his guitar off in a hurry because it was second night,
we were still rushing. He cut his arm and it bled profusely. The next time I looked at it, he'd done that because he thought
there was something there. And he had a red hat. And I blew a couple of lines. You know, I said the wrong thing
and I saw Eddie backstage. About 10 minutes later,
he was just wandering around and I said, sorry about blurring the line. You know, just I don't know. Why bother? He said, no, no,
you don't get it. And I said, what? He said, the most important thing to me that anyone said for 10 years,
he said, you, but you're going to realize they've seen you do it right
countless times. It's much more special
when something happens that's never happened before. Yeah.
And he was right. So it was the opposite of what
a theatrical performance is supposed to be about. It
becomes a completely other kind of animal And the Shia, the Shia goodwill and happiness in that arena was an extraordinary thing to experience. And I suddenly I know
this will surprise people. I suddenly thought
maybe entertainers are important because they do see that, you know. Yeah. And because it was
bringing people together. And I was on a TV show four weeks ago
in London with Neil Diamond, and the same feeling happen
when they were all singing Sweet Caroline And suddenly I just got to this audience
and everyone was having a good time. And there was some
I thought, this is good. There's no question this is good. Agreed. I think that's a fine place to finish. OK, John, thank you so much.
