The John Cleese of Python days is no more.  He has ceased to be.  But
while his new satirical series on the constitution confirms his
reputation for "seriousness", he remains a rebel at heart.

Here is a health warning: do not accept what he says just because he
says it.  Right?  I'm glad we cleared that up, because these actor
chappies can be a pompous pain when they sermonise about not smoking, 
or meddle in politics.  "I couldn't agree more," he says.  "Our views
should be treated with complete scepticism.  Just because we're good
at acting or writing, there is no reason why readers should give any 
more weight to what we say than their tobacconist or bank manager.  My
biggest skill is going to experts for information and then putting it
across in a reasonably humorous way."

He has applied this to *Look at the State We're In*, a series of six
ten-minute comedies which examine various aspects of contemporary 
Britain - the Royal Prerogative, secrecy, law, local councils, VAT and 
political power - acted by a cast including Dawn French, Hugh Laurie, 
Rik Mayall, Ade Edmondson, Antony Sher, Prunella Scales and himself.
"Let me tell you one thing about satire: *That Was the Week That Was*
was wonderfully liberating and terribly funny at first, but the 
standard went off rapidly because the guys writing the jokes didn't 
know as much about the subjects as they should.  It struck me you need
to get teams of people, half of whom are well-informed, the other half
who are comedy writers, which is what we've done.  If anyone challenges
us, we can trot out constitutional experts.  We exaggerate sometimes
for comedic effect.  But everyone exaggerates in politics."  He 
believes Britain has become too centralised, authoritarian ("We're
'subjects', not citizens") and secretive.  Try telling that, I say, to
one of the many public figures whose murky dealings have been exposed
so luridly.

"But they've only been resigning in droves over sexual scandals, which
are the least important.  The reason we have so many in this country 
is because people who are not getting enough love read about those who
are.  I say, without the slightest doubt, that readers of the *News of
the World* are sex-starved, to a man and to a woman.  Anyone reading
that stuff on a Sunday morning instead of doing it has their priorities
all wrong.  The whole system of newspapers stinks.  I feel sorry for
journalists who are under terrible pressure from editors.  I know 
through contacts that there was an editorial decision at the *Sunday
Times* only to do 'spiky' interviews.  What kind of reflection of
reality is that?"

It could be newspapers have become less admiring of self-adoring 
'artistes'.  What's wrong with pointing out that some of them are 
untalented nonentities?  "That's all right.  But there's a difference
between being critical and writing in a snide, *ad hominem* manner.
I've never been hurt by anyone saying my performance was no good, or
the script didn't work.  What I find unacceptable is the highly
personalised style of attacking people, which is all to do with a
journalist getting his or her rocks off.  There's a lot of envy.
Journalists have to deal with it more than others.  I would have 
thought that if you're interested in films or books you'd rather be
producing them than commenting."

In spite of his comic genius, he has been mocked both for his well
publicised reliance on psychiatry and the killjoy puritanism of his
anti-smoking advertisements.  "That's silly," he says.  "The whole 
point of any halfway decent democracy is for people to exchange views.
The Health Education Authority [currently re-evaluating its anti-
smoking campaign] is a government body, not a right-wing maverick
radio station in America putting forward odd views, and I've never 
come across a doctor who thinks smoking is good for you.  Advertising
is an amusing way to explain the downside to smoking, and that is part
of the democratic process.  Most people think the advertisements are
funny but you learn in this business that not everyone has the same 
sense of humour.  There are only about three sketches out of 40 Monty
Python shows which everyone thinks are funny - the dead parrot, the
Spanish Inquisition, the Ministry of Silly Walks."

He was brought up "lower middle class" in Weston-super-Mare, where his
father was an insurance salesman.  After Clifton College he went to 
Cambridge and became a schoolmaster for two years, before starting a
television career.  For all hi affability you still sense he is 
reining in the demons supposedly exorcised by group therapy under Dr
Robin Skinner, a psychoanalyst he consulted first in 1974 and with 
whom he has co-authored two best-selling books, *Families and How to
Survive Them* and *Life and How to Survive It*.  His own life and
three marriages to blonde Americans [Connie Booth and Barbara Trentham,
by each of whom he has a daughter, and Freudian-Kleinian psychoanalyst
Alyce Faye Eichelberger] have been recycled ad nauseam.  "I spoke 
about psychiatry because it had relieved me of some of the heaviness
that used to attend my life and I felt it was absurd not to talk 
openly.  I think I went on for 12 months too long.  People have heard
enough about Cleese and therapy."  So much so that he offered £10,000
to anyone who would write about his work rather than his private life.
He had replies from the *Daily Sport* and the *Spectator*.  "I'm 
always attacked in the *Spectator* but they're a very unbalanced 
crowd.  Talk about *News of the World* readers being short of sex.
You should look at the people sitting round a *Spectator* lunch table,
poor old things."

He doesn't agree with Michael Palin that Monty Python was a form of 
therapy.  "There was a tremendous sense of exhilaration at the 
beginning.  I don't know if I'd have been worse had I not done Python,
but whenever I've met artists who claim their art is therapeutic they
never strike me as people who have grown up very much.  I guess I'm
not grown up either.  I'm probably now operating from the base of 
about a 14-year-old, rather than eight, which I used to be.  I've only
met two completely grown-up adults in my life - one was a guy who ran
a fundamentalist Christian organisation in the US and the other was
the Dalai Lama.  One of the alarming things about being in your 50s
[he is 55] is that when you were younger you assumed people of this
age were grown up and you realise it's complete nonsense."

His wealth - even after divorce settlements - allows him to be 
generous, although it is not always appreciated.  It was fine in 1992
when he took 40 friends on an all-expenses-paid three-week trip down
the Nile, but when he lent money to others only about ten per cent 
paid back and it left a residue of bitterness.  "Polonius ["neither a
borrower nor a lender be"] was right.  I remember my dad telling me 
that after he took me to see Laurence Olivier's *Hamlet* when I was 
ten.  I never believed it at the time."  His own financial independence
was assured when Video Arts, a firm specialising in training films, 
was sold for £50 million in 1989, earning him an estimated £10 million.
"Not many people have spent 20 years on something so fundamentally
unpromising as training films.  It was a strange thing to do.  I 
really only got into it because I adore Tony Jay [chairman, and author
of *Yes, Minister*] - sorry, Sir Tony.  I'll never get an honour. The
Establishment doesn't actually dislike me but they know I'm not one of
the team.  I'm an outsider, fundamentally subversive.  I don't see the
point of honours anyway.  They're slightly humiliating and infantile,
like getting the Form 4 reading prize because the headmaster wants
parents to know you've made an effort and supported the rugger team at
away matches."

He may be subversive, but many fans were disappointed when he appeared
to become too "serious", introvert, joined the "health police" and 
wrote serious books.  Where was the humour?  "All I can say is I'm
sorry, but I find other things interesting as well.  People have a go
at me [he quotes some on the back of his book - "The secret of self-
esteem lies in flattening Cleese's nose all over his stupid face"] but
I know the first book is really good.  It's sold 400 copies a week for
12 years.  The media will be gunning for me with my next film [a sequel
to *A Fish Called Wanda*, provisionally called *Death Fish 2*, now 
being filmed], but you can relax because they give everyone a work-
over.  When they were unpleasant to Palin I predicted they'd have a go
at Mother Teresa - and a month later they did."

Last week saw the start of re-runs of *Fawlty Towers*.  "The second
series was the toughest thing Connie and I ever did because I knew it
had to be better than the first.  *Wanda* caused the same problem. 
You'd rather succeed than fail, but a medium-sized success would have
been a lot easier to follow."  His original fee for writing, acting,
helping direct and produce *Wanda* was $300,000 for 18 months' work.
"But because we were on percentages we made a lot of money.  I'd much
rather take a sensible fee up front and gamble it's going to be a 
success than take these obscene sums.  You talk to anyone who has been
on a film with Stallone or Schwarzenegger and they'll tell you everyone
else gets very small fees.  I auditioned a young actor last week who 
had scenes with Stallone in a film and he never spoke to him, except
on camera.  I don't know why people behave like that.  It's infantile.
Even the nice stars go mad.  People I like very much have quite clearly
gone barmy."

He and Alyce divide their time between homes in Holland Park, west
London, and Montecito, California, where they spend the winter.  "The
mornings are lovely and lift you.  We returned to England in March 
this year and you can see people have had such a struggle to get
through the winter.  They look beaten and it takes three or four weeks
of sun before the bounce comes back.  The other advantage of living
partly in America is I don't have a deep personal stake in the country,
so when things go wrong with the government I can observe from a 
distance.  Here, I become much more worked up and disappointed.  But
there are good and bad things everywhere - a boring thing to say, but
it's how I feel.  San Francisco is the nicest city in America, yet
people living there are very parochial.  It's a question of trying to
get the good bits and avoid the bad bits wherever you are."

There are a lot of "bad bits" in England now, he believes.  "There's
been a general depression since the early 70's.  Governments haven't
worked and everyone knows it.  People feel they don't have control
over their own affairs and there's nothing to be done about it.  We
need to be more involved, not sitting at home watching videos."  That
is one reason he and producer Roger Graef devised *Look at the State
We're In*.  Over dinner they wondered, as one does, why "constitutional
reform" was a turn-off.  "We're trying to inveigle them into watching
by having well known names.  I want people to sense their powerless-
ness."  And come the revolution?  He smiles, "It will be a very gentle
one, with lots of coffee breaks."


Transcribed from Radio Times, 20-26 May 1995, pp 18-20.