John Cleese

John Cleese

John Cleese (John Marwood Cleese) was born on October 27th, 1939 and is currently 85 years old. John Cleese was born in Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, England. Cleese attended Downing College, Cambridge where he received an upper second degree in law.

John Cleese is a presenter, actor, comedian, producer, and screenwriter.

John’s biggest comedic influence was The Goon Show. Kids loved it. Spike Milligan wrote it, and Peter Sellers was in it, who was the best voice man ever. In the morning, they’d be at school, discussing the whole entire thing and rehash their favorite jokes and talk about it. They were incredibly obsessed by it.

Their last name Cleese was originally Cheese, but his dad was embarrassed by it so he changed it to Cleese when he went into the Army during World War I.

He first achieved success during the 1960s at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe after emerging from the Cambridge Footlights and as a performer and scriptwriter on The Frost Report.

During the mid-70s, he and Connie Booth (his first wife and an actress) co-wrote Fawlty Towers, in which he starred as Basil Fawlty and won the British Academy Television for Best Entertainment Performance in 1980. The show topped the British Film Institute’s list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes, and in a 2001 Channel 4 poll, Basil Fawlty was ranked 2nd on its list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters.

John won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for Cheers and got nominations for 3rd Rock From the Sun and Will & Grace.

So, Anyway.. takes listeners on a grand tour of his ascent in the entertainment world. His huge comedic influence has stretched clear across generations; the unique brand of physical comedy he perfected and his sharp irreverent eye now seem to be written into comedy’s DNA. In a rollicking memoir, he recalls his humble beginnings in a sleepy English town, his early comedic days spent at Cambridge University, and the founding of such a legendary comedy troupe that’d propel him to worldwide renown.

He was only days from graduating from Cambridge and heading off on a law career when he got visited by 2 BBC executives, who offered him this job writing comedy for radio. That fateful meeting, and an almost simultaneous offer to take his university humor revue to London’s famed West End, propelled him down a different path, cutting his teeth writing for stars like Peter Sellers and David Frost, and later joining up with the 5 other Pythons to pioneer a new sort of comedy which prized silliness, invention, and silliness. Along the way, he found his first true love with actress Connie Booth and transformed himself from reluctant performer to a world class actor and back again.

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1. J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter Series.
2. Mark Twain, author of the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn Series.
3. Charles Dickens, author of the novel: A Christmas Carol.
4. Dean Koontz, author of the Odd Thomas Series.
5. Louise Penny, author of the Inspector Gamache Series.

John Cleese: F.A.Q