John cleese biography wikipedia search history

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John Cleese — — British comedian, actor and film producer. Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, England on 27 October His father was an insurance salesman, who ironically during the First World War, had changed his surname from Cheese to Cleese because he thought Cheese sounded funny. The family moved to Bristol where Cleese attended Clifton college; at school, he was a good sportsman boxing and cricket and a good scholar.

After school, he spent two years teaching at prep school — before gaining a place at Cambridge University, Downing College to read Law. Cleese began writing material for the Footlights Revue and appearing in performances. Cleese was a key member of the Footlights Review as writer and performer who gained rave reviews at the Edinburgh Festival. Cleese also met Peter Cook, who was a big inspiration for his own comic career.

He often played slightly ridiculous upper-class figures of authority. On the Frost Report, he played the tall upper-class person who looked down on middle class Ronnie Barker and the very short working class Ronnie Corbett. Cleese was in strong demand as a scriptwriter for the new wave of comedy programmes, which were appearing on TV. Building on the new wave of absurd and satirical comedy of the s, Monty Python is widely regarded to be a seminal comedy programme, introducing new concepts and approaches to sketch shows.

There was often no obvious thread, with seemingly random movement from sketch to sketch. The sketches were often based on ordinary people in slightly absurd positions. Cleese frequently played upper-class characters or characters of authority, such as the Upper-Class Twit of the year, the Minister for Silly Walks and the army major teaching cadets to defend themselves against dangerous fruit.

He felt the quality of the scripts had declined and he was running out of ideas.