Charlie Powell
Rumor has it that the original surname of John Cleese’s family was “Cheese.” However, his embarrassed father changed it when he enlisted in the British Army during World War I, long before the award-winning comic actor, writer and producer was even born.
But even with a less-funny surname, the co-founder of the comedy troupe Monty Python’s Flying Circus, lead writer and star of the British sitcom Fawlty Towers, and contributor to a host of comedic enterprises, Cleese had made generations on both side of the Big Pond laugh. On Nov. 18, he will bring his latest lecture, “Why There is No Hope,” to Overture Hall.
Cleese, who turned 79 on Oct. 27, is long past his best-known Python sketches like “The Ministry of Silly Walks” and “The Dead Parrot,” but his observations about modern times and its various challenges are no less insightful.
The famously tall (6’5”) comedian spoke to Isthmus by phone from his London flat.
The tour is called “Why There Is No Hope.” What’s that about?
Early on someone said that the more you destroy people’s hope the more people hopelessly laugh. And making people laugh is a lovely thing.
What makes these times hopeless?
When Donald Trump was writing his book The Art of the Deal, his co-author said he never saw any books lying about his place. When Teddy Roosevelt was president he read two to three books every day. The fact that Trump is now in charge is funny, because apparently he doesn’t read very much, if at all. Including intelligence briefings. You’d think he’d want to do at least that. Trump doesn’t appear to think any of life’s rules apply to him, and he acts that way. He also has never shared his financial accounts, so we have no idea what kind of business he has in the Soviet Union. But he’s quite deferential toward Mr. Putin, more so than to anyone else. In the end, I say that we might as well give up trying to believe we live in a rational society.
You end every performance with Q&A. Do you enjoy those questions?
That’s the most enjoyable part of the whole evening! We collect questions in writing at the beginning of the performance and then we look for the ones that might elicit the funniest answers. Usually that boils down to the rudest questions. I remember one performance in Florida where a very well-dressed woman stood up and asked me if the queen had killed Princess Diana. I thought that was hilarious, but I was the only one laughing in an auditorium of 2,000 people. I think my favorite question came from a young man in Oslo who stood up and said, “If you could choose to be a component part of an aircraft, what part would that be?” Everyone laughed quite a lot at the question, including me, which gave me some time to think up an answer. I said, ”Well, the joystick, of course!”
Thanks to your preservation work with animals, the Bemaraha woolly lemur is now called Cleese’s woolly lemur.
Yes, isn’t that wonderful? Lemurs live in a matriarchal society where the females make all the decisions. They are just like us!
