So, Anyway...: The Autobiography

The one and only sketch Graham and I wrote for the show that, judging from internet viewings, has stood the test of time concerns two airline pilots who become so bored on a long-haul flight that they decide to amuse themselves by making ambiguous announcements to frighten their passengers: Captain (John Cleese): (over intercom) ‘Hello, this is you

Exam panic now peaked. One evening I was looking so depressed that Martin Davies-Jones picked up the old-fashioned gas ring on which we could boil a saucepan, and offered it to me. I didn’t even smile. In the event, though, my fears turned out to have been misplaced. The exam papers were not bad, and all the

In addition to the sketches Graham and I wrote for the show, Connie helped me with a couple, the first time we had ever worked together. One of them drew on her amusement at the way in which the English upper class avoided the pronoun ‘I’, as though there were something vulgar about using it. I’d already noticed that using ‘one’ instead of ‘I’ seem

As for me, although my contribution to the show was small, and sometimes absolutely minute, being involved in it proved an extraordinarily valuable experience. The three-times-a-week live performing of material, sometimes written only six hours before, forced upon me a different mindset from the one I’d had in The Frost Report. There I could aim to

rewrite in evening, but by now we have lost all confidence in it, so start thinking of new sketch to replace it. Eventually think of one. Write it. Fourth day: Rehearsal. New sketch doesn’t work. We stop rehearsing early so we have extra time to come up with new sketch. We are feeling tired and a bit anxious, and don’t like any of our new ideas as

got every laugh, never missed a beat, my timing was exquisite; I was relaxed, disciplined and hilarious. There had been nights when I’d got most of the sketches dead right, but never before had I done the whole show impeccably. I was superb. (Please remember we did about 180 performances and this happened just once.) The result: exhilaration. And t

No, I think it’s simply because there was nothing in the whole damn show that was really funny. And I think that, deep down, that’s what has always really motivated me. When I’ve had enough artistic control, I’ve always aimed at being as funny as I can possibly be – not at being clever or witty or amusing or charming or whimsical or quite funny – a

worrying proved to have been a waste of time. The problem was that I carried around with me a tendency to feel that other people’s respect for me would vanish if what I did was second rate. And while I accept that this ‘perfectionism’ is likely to stimulate the production of better work, it doesn’t, unfortunately, go hand in hand with a relaxed and

And all this agonising – this ridiculous time-wasting – was because it took me another thirty years to learn that if you say ‘No’ in a friendly, chatty way, people accept it with great grace and goodwill, and do not hate you, or send death squads after you, or report you to the Daily Mail. And until I realised this, I found myself resenting perfect