JOHN M. CLEESE, THE CO-FOUNDER OF MONTY PYTHON

Today, The Grandma has been reading about John Cleese, the English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer, who was born on a day like today in 1939.

John Marwood Cleese (born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer.

Emerging from the Cambridge Footlights in the 1960s, he first achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report.

In the late 1960s, he co-founded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus. Along with his Python co-stars Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman, Cleese starred in Monty Python films, which include Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979) and The Meaning of Life (1983).

In the mid-1970s, Cleese and first wife Connie Booth co-wrote the sitcom Fawlty Towers, in which he starred as hotel owner Basil Fawlty, for which he won the 1980 British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance.

In 2000, the show topped the British Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes; and in a 2001 Channel 4 poll, Basil was ranked second on its list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters.

Cleese co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and Fierce Creatures (1997), both of which he also wrote. For A Fish Called Wanda he was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He has also starred in Time Bandits (1981) and Rat Race (2001) and has appeared in many other films, including Silverado (1985), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), two James Bond films (as R and Q), two Harry Potter films (as Nearly Headless Nick) and the last three Shrek films.

Cleese has specialised in political and religious satire, black comedy, sketch comedy, and surreal humour. He was ranked the second best comedian ever in a 2005 Channel 4 poll of fellow comedians. With Yes Minister writer Antony Jay, he co-founded Video Arts, a production company making entertaining training films.

In 1976, Cleese co-founded The Secret Policeman's Ball benefit shows to raise funds for the human rights organization Amnesty International. Although a staunch supporter of the Liberal Democrats, in 1999 he turned down an offer from the party to nominate him for a life peerage.

More information: Twitter-John Cleese

Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, South West England, England, the only child of Reginald Francis Cleese, an insurance salesman, and his wife Muriel Evelyn, the daughter of an auctioneer. His family's surname was originally Cheese, but his father had thought it was embarrassing and used the name Cleese when he enlisted in the Army during the First World War; he changed it officially by deed poll in 1923.

Cleese was educated at St Peter's Preparatory School (paid for by money his mother inherited), where he received a prize for English and did well at cricket and boxing. When he was 13, he was awarded an exhibition at Clifton College, an English public school in Bristol.

Cleese could not go straight to Cambridge, as the ending of National Service meant there were twice the usual number of applicants for places, so he returned to his prep school for two years to teach science, English, geography, history, and Latin. He then took up a place he had won at Downing College, Cambridge, to read law. He also joined the Cambridge Footlights. He recalled that he went to the Cambridge Guildhall, where each university society had a stall, and went up to the Footlights stall, where he was asked if he could sing or dance. He replied no as he was not allowed to sing at his school because he was so bad, and if there was anything worse than his singing, it was his dancing. He was then asked Well, what do you do? to which he replied, I make people laugh.

Cleese was a scriptwriter, as well as a cast member, for the 1963 Footlights Revue A Clump of Plinths. The revue was so successful at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that it was renamed Cambridge Circus and taken to the West End in London and then on a tour of New Zealand and Broadway, with the cast also appearing in some of the revue's sketches on The Ed Sullivan Show in October 1964.

After Cambridge Circus, Cleese briefly stayed in America, performing on and off-Broadway. While performing in the musical Half a Sixpence, Cleese met future Python Terry Gilliam as well as American actress Connie Booth, whom he married on 20 February 1968.

Also in 1965, Cleese and Chapman began writing on The Frost Report. The writing staff chosen for The Frost Report consisted of a number of writers and performers who went on to make names for themselves in comedy.

Monty Python's Flying Circus ran for four series from October 1969 to December 1974 on BBC Television, though Cleese quit the show after the third. Cleese's two primary characterisations were as a sophisticate and a loony.

More information: Harvard Business Review

In 1988, Cleese wrote and starred in A Fish Called Wanda as the lead, Archie Leach, along with Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, and Michael Palin. Wanda was a commercial and critical success, becoming one of the top ten films of the year at the US box office, and Cleese was nominated for an Academy Award for his script. Kline won the Oscar for his portrayal of bumbling, violent, narcissistic ex-CIA agent Otto West in the film.

In 1999, Cleese appeared in the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough as Q's assistant, referred to by Bond as "R". 

In 2002, when Cleese reprised his role in Die Another Day, the character was promoted, making Cleese the new quartermaster (Q) of MI6. 

In 2004, Cleese was featured as Q in the video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, featuring his likeness and voice. Cleese did not appear in the subsequent Bond films, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall; in the latter film, Ben Whishaw was cast in the role of Q.

Cleese achieved greater prominence in the United Kingdom as the neurotic hotel manager Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, which he co-wrote with his wife Connie Booth. The series won three BAFTA awards when produced, and in 2000 it topped the British Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes.

Cleese is Provost's visiting professor at Cornell University, after having been Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large from 1999 to 2006. He makes occasional well-received appearances on the Cornell campus.

In 2001, Cleese was cast in the comedy Rat Race as the eccentric hotel owner Donald P. Sinclair, the name of the Torquay hotel owner on whom he had based the character of Basil Fawlty. That year he appeared as Nearly Headless Nick in the first Harry Potter film: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001), a role he would reprise in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002).

More information: British Comedy Guide

Comedy always works best when it is mean-spirited.

John Cleese