John Cleese

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety seven, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a writer and performer. Tall, public school, and Cambridge educated, he appears at first glance to epitomise the sort of character he's lampooned for most of his life. He became famous at the end of the sixties as the tallest and many thought the funniest member of the team who made Monty Python's Flying Circus. He followed this with the hotel owner Basil Faulty, who in only twelve episodes for television displayed the repressed rage of a manic Englishman in a way which has engraved itself on the national consciousness. Since then he's concentrated on films the life of Brian Clockwise and the hugely successful A Fish Called Wander, whose sequel Fierce Creatures will be seen soon. You feel an enormous pressure to conform, he once said. A lot of what I've been doing is attempting to escape from that. He is John Clees. So you don't like conformity, John. It's something to be avoided, is it?

John Cleese1:23

I think it's something to be very suspicious of.

Presenter1:26

But there's a great comfort in it, yeah.

John Cleese1:27

Yes, oh yes, you can feel much safer like that.

John Cleese1:30

Much safer, but I think sometimes as I get older and I look around, I think the world is even sillier and madder than I used to think it was even when I was doing Monty Python. And therefore, I think it's awfully important to try to make up your own mind about what you think about things and not take the established wisdoms.

Presenter1:48

Certainly, but at the same time you want to stay comfortable. I mean why children like wearing uniform or baseball caps backwards or whatever.

John Cleese1:53

Yeah.

Presenter1:55

We like being the same. Wh why did you feel you wanted to be different, had to be different?

John Cleese2:01

I think that I went through the kind of training.

John Cleese2:06

that enabled me to take on that middle-class appearance very, very easily, almost too easily. I could slip into it just at the drop of a hat.

John Cleese2:15

and I think I was always a little suspicious of it.

Presenter2:19

So you decided to to to build on that and m make people laugh as a result. But was the was the desire to make people laugh, did that come first? Or was it the desire to break out of this conformity?

John Cleese2:31

Oh gosh, the the easy ones first. Um I think that the the desire to make people laugh came out of the fact that I was a typical child of older parents, a little bit more withdrawn, a little more thoughtful.

John Cleese2:45

apparently more intelligent, but much less likely to be in the rough and tumble. And I was certainly like that when I first went to prep school and I don't think I was disliked that much, but I certainly wasn't one of the boys. And I discovered that I could make the form laugh when I'd been there about a year. And that is not only a nice feeling, because when people laugh at something you said, you feel very good, you feel terrific. But at the same time, I felt that I became much more popular as a result.

Presenter3:09

And to make them laugh a lot by being shocking.

John Cleese3:12

By being shocking, certainly. Yes, because humour is critical. It's always basically attacking something, usually the status quo.

Presenter3:20

But whatever must your parents have thought these neat and tidy people from Western Supermare when they came to see you in the footlights or whatever

John Cleese3:25

Doesn't even

Presenter3:27

You know, suddenly to see this son they thought they brought up so nicely being so rude, abusive.

John Cleese3:34

Well, I have to say that they both had a great sense of humour. My father had a sense of the ridiculous, whereas my mother has got a different sense of humour. She's got a very black sense of humour.

John Cleese3:45

Very, very black, and I can make her laugh if she gets a bit depressed. And after all, when you're ninety seven, as she is now, you know, it's not that much fun being that old. So when she starts telling me that uh

John Cleese3:57

that life's difficult at that age. I tell her that I have a little man in Fulham who's very nice who will come down to Weston Supermare and kill her when she no longer wants to continue. And uh and she l she she loves it. And I tell her if she has a friend, you know, who also is tired of life, then he'll do a special offer for two and

Presenter4:09

She laughs.

Speaker 24:10

Uh

John Cleese4:16

And this immediately makes her laugh, so she and I can communicate through this actually very black sense of humour.

Presenter4:23

Tell me about your first record.

John Cleese4:25

First record is Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and I remember going to see the movie in Western Supermere when I was about ten with my parents. It was black and white. I can't even remember who was in it. But there was something about it that appealed to me and there's something about New York that always has appealed to me and I think of Rhapsody in Blue as being in New York.

Speaker 25:27

I think it's

Presenter5:46

Part of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with Michael Tilson Thomas and the Los Angeles Philemonic. You grew up at John Cleese in Western Supermare in the sort of late forties, early fifties. Tell me about it. Lot of jellyfish, I remember.

John Cleese5:57

Lot of jellyfish, a lot of mud, and it was alleged that there was some sand under the mud. Last time I made remarks like this, I'm afraid I got cross letters. So I have to say it's a it's a very decent little town, but not in the early fifties, full of excitement. And uh I'm afraid I used to spend an awful lot of mornings in the snooker saloon above Burton's, the fifty shilling tailors.

Presenter6:19

It's not the impression I have of you at all. I imagine he was s like something out of the famous five, you know, sort of Enid Blyton schoolboy, with long short trousers and three quarter socks, and open sandals.

John Cleese6:28

Well, it's certainly true that I was so tall so early that I did look ridiculous in shorts. Abs I was six foot when I was twelve, so I was taller at the age of twelve than any of the teachers in the school that I was at.

Presenter6:39

It is huge for twelve.

John Cleese6:41

It was enormous. And it it was very strange because of course you stick out. One of the teachers once jokingly referred to me as a prominent citizen. You stick out in such a way that you can't just fade into the background as you want to do a lot when you're a kid and you're embarrassed.

Presenter6:41

I said it we

Presenter6:54

What effect did that have on you, then?

John Cleese6:56

I think it uh it taught me, like every English class boy, to pretend that I was a lot more grown up than I was.

Presenter7:02

You were an only child. I think your your mother said that you were

John Cleese7:03

Yeah.

Presenter7:06

Born just before just after the outbreak of war, but you were a bit of a bombshell in yourself, because they they didn't expect to have one.

John Cleese7:12

No, that's right. They'd been together for thirteen and a half years and I think that they'd assumed that they wouldn't have children. But as you say, I was what Eric Idle calls a phony war baby. And um for some reason, the first few years uh of my life we just traveled everywhere because the the Germans bombed Western Super Mare quite early on in the war. As I always say, who says they have no sense of humour?

Presenter7:33

Uh

John Cleese7:33

Uh

Presenter7:33

No father so

John Cleese7:34

Sold insurance. That's right. Drove around in Little Austin Ten. Little Austin Ten and sold insurance, and he was a very.

John Cleese7:41

Decent, honest chap, and all the local solicitors and bank managers trusted him. So, Dad used to start work about 10:30 in the morning and finish at about 4. And every year managed to sell more life assurance for the Guardian, as it was then, insurance company.

Presenter7:56

He had done something quite racy, hadn't he? He'd changed his name.

John Cleese8:01

Yeah.

John Cleese8:03

Because he was born Reginald Francis Cheese.

John Cleese8:06

He got fed up with the teasing when he was at school, and when he joined the army in 1915, he changed the H to an L.

John Cleese8:15

It's it was strange because he was for some reason he was embarrassed about the fact he'd changed it. I don't really know why. But he had a sister called Dorothy Cheese who actually lived with us in Bristol in the fifties. And when people said, How strange you should have someone in living in your house called Dorothy Cheese he would say yes, extraordinary coincidence.

Speaker 28:20

Ready?

John Cleese8:33

So I I never knew what the shame was.

Presenter8:36

Record number two.

John Cleese8:38

Because of all my happy days with the Pythons, I would like to have a reminder of all those relationships.

Speaker 28:46

Are we here?

Speaker 28:48

What's life all about?

Speaker 28:51

Is God really real?

Speaker 28:53

Or is there some doubt?

Speaker 28:57

Well tonight, we're going to sort it all out. For tonight, it's the Phoenix.

Speaker 29:07

What's the point?

Speaker 29:09

How are these hoax?

Speaker 29:12

Is it the chicken and the egg time? Are we just you?

Presenter9:17

Eric Idle and the meaning of life. There are so many characters in that film, John. Well, it's a series of extended sketches, really, isn't it? That that must have their roots in yours, you know, the blundering army officers, the pompous, ponderous schoolmaster, you know.

John Cleese9:32

Yes, and particularly the service in the chapel. I remember sitting in all those interminable Church of England services, just thinking, what is all this about, year after year after year?

Presenter9:45

So that was at Clifton College, Bristol, where you went to the city.

John Cleese9:47

That was at Clifton, yeah. I went there in the mid fifties, yeah.

Presenter9:49

But were a lot of the characters you've used, be it in that film or in other sketches or whatever, in Monty Python generally,

Presenter9:57

You know, born of people you knew in Western Supermare who attended your parents' sherry parties or whatever. Were there a lot of pinstriped folk around?

John Cleese10:04

No, I don't think I've ever been ever been terribly good on uh on on basing characters on individuals. I think I have a certain ability sometime to kind of focus in on archetypes.

John Cleese10:15

And

John Cleese10:16

When I started to be funny or to try and be funny, I simply realized as a matter of practice that what is funny is people's lives unraveling. You know, if you have a film in which somebody gets happier and more organized, it's not going to be a comedy.

John Cleese10:30

And therefore the more respectable and apparently in charge they are at the beginning of the film or the sketch, the funnier it is when they become unraveled. Because if they started as someone who was kind of unemployed and watching television all day and drinking too much lager,

Speaker 210:46

Hmm.

John Cleese10:46

it would there wouldn't be anywhere to go. You see what I mean? The unraveling wouldn't have any consequences. Whereas if the guy is in charge of the British Secret Service, which is one of the first sketches I ever did, there are rather a lot of consequences and that makes it funnier when his life unravels.

Speaker 210:49

Yeah.

Presenter11:00

But you were supposed to be one of those people in a sense, weren't you? I mean, your parents wanted to meet you.

John Cleese11:04

Yes, dad wanted me to join Grace Derbyshire and Todd, chartered accountants of Bristol, when I was uh well, just after I'd taken my O levels, and bless him, I don't know why, but I said I wanted to go to university. None of my family had ever been anywhere near university, but there was something in me that wanted it, and we were not wealthy, but my parents made uh you know, sacrifices, they were

Speaker 211:23

Uh

Presenter11:23

Who knows?

John Cleese11:25

Very kind, and I'm grateful for that, which enabled me to stay on until I could get a place at Cambridge two years later.

Presenter11:31

Next record.

John Cleese11:32

One of the things I've I feel very pleased that I've done, if I could be smugged for a moment, was I started the Amnesty concerts. And the great problem about the Amnesty Concerts where you had so many funny people.

John Cleese11:43

that the the the temperature, the excitement, the level of expectation for humour would become so high that at a certain point you had to diffuse it. And I would always ask dear John Williams to play a piece, and then you would cool the audience off so that they could start laughing again.

Presenter12:59

John Williams and Cavatina.

Presenter13:01

You're obviously, though, John, a a a very good boy. I mean, you

John Cleese13:05

Yes, this has been the problem all my life, but uh

Presenter13:08

But was the discovery of footlights when you got to Kim was that the beginning of John Cleese going off the rails in the eyes of Western Supermayor?

John Cleese13:16

Oh, absolutely. I'm sure it was. And the funny thing was, when I first went up to the Footlights desk at the Big Society's Fair at the beginning, there was this terribly embarrassing scene. I said I might be rather interested in joining. And they said brightly, Oh, do you sing? I was never allowed to sing at school. I was given extra Greek. I was so terrible. So I said no. And they said, Do you dance? And I said, Well, no, not really. And I fled in confusion. And if my closest friend really hadn't come to me about two terms later and said, Do you want to do something with me at the Footlights? I know someone in it. I'm not necessarily sure that I would have ever got in it.

Presenter13:49

Then what would have happened to you?

John Cleese13:51

Well, I think I would have become a solicitor and either shot myself or started to write funny bits for punch.

John Cleese13:59

I think I would have been drawn eventually into, oddly enough, into writing. It was for some strange reason I've never quite understood performing. I know people would be surprised, but it's never meant that much to me. I don't think I've ever been envious of another actor. And somebody once said if you want to see what matters to people, see who they're envious of. And I've always en felt envious of people like Tom Stoppard and Alan Aikbourne or Michael Frein, these kind of people, David Mammet, with a body of writing behind them, either for stage or for screening.

Presenter14:27

It's just that footlights required that you did both, I suppose.

John Cleese14:29

Yes, that's absolutely right. I mean there were a few performers in Footlights, but they didn't get to do much because uh the the ones who wrote the stuff wanted to perform it themselves. And that's really what the Pythons were about. Peo people don't understand the Python group. It was actually six writers who used to perform it because they were less likely to screw it up than six other performers who might have been brought in.

Presenter14:50

But in the end, because you all wrote together, it became writing by committee and you got exasperated.

John Cleese14:55

Well, we had a wonderful experience on Life of Brian, because fortuitously we all seem to have the same basic philosophy about organised religion. So the thing was a dream. When we got to Meaning of Life, we never knew what the film was going to be about. There was a big selection of sketches written and we kept trying to unify it into a story. And in the end, I suggested we should just give up. We went to Barbados for two weeks for a holiday. And after three days, I said, let's stay and enjoy ourselves for ten days, have a wonderful holiday, and then go back and pretend that we're sort of at our wits' end and we just creatively are total failures and we're not going to make the film. And I nearly won the day, but Jones came down the next morning and said, Oh, you know, I really believe we can make this really good. And we came up with a film which for me was scrappy and unsatisfactory inasmuch as I did not think that we put the best material in. But it's probably just as well, because Graham and I had written a series of sketches about the Ayatollah Khomeini, which really could not have been any more abusive and rude. And had they been in the film, we would probably both be under a fatwa. In fact, maybe that's the problem with Graham. I don't know.

Presenter16:01

More music.

John Cleese16:02

Well music. Well, now it's some I I either seem to like music that I find in some way touching, or I like sort of rowdy, cheerful music. And I knew I was going to have to have something by Scott Joplin. So I I played through and I thought Maple Leaf Rag was as cheerful and rowdy a piece as I could find.

Presenter16:51

Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag, played by Sidney Becher with the New Orleans Feet Warmers, and that was recorded in 1932. And I can see you, John, you know, going mad on the beach, really, dancing.

John Cleese17:01

It's rather like farce. It's got the same frenzied energy that farce has. But when you have a farce, you have this wonderful combination of almost mathematically perfect shape and then all this madness within it. And I love that I'm very aware of the structure in that music we've just been listening to, as well as this glee.

Presenter17:23

That's what you felt, I think, isn't it, in in writing about Basil, Faulty, writing Faulty Tars, that the it was a very intricately structured thing, wasn't it, each one of those episodes?

John Cleese17:33

Yes, I mean uh it's it's the writing uh that Connie and I did that I always have felt most proud of. I know people think of the performance, but we spent about six weeks each on those those half-hour scripts, which is unheard of. And I don't think we started writing the dialogue for at least three weeks. We just ran the story again and again. We told each other the story again and again and again until we sort of flattened out the bumps.

Presenter17:58

But what Basil had obviously was again what I mentioned at the beginning, repressed rage. And he had that in common with a tremendous number of the the funny characters that that you created, whether they were architects who, as you said, began life as being very conventional characters and then suddenly

John Cleese18:03

Jihad.

John Cleese18:10

They were.

John Cleese18:11

Yeah.

Presenter18:15

burst out full of anger and abuse.

John Cleese18:18

Uh

Presenter18:18

Yeah.

John Cleese18:18

Oh, and everything and everything. I knew a guy called Harvey Orkin years ago, and he said to me, John, he said, humour is about anger, it's about lust, it's about envy, it's about greed. And then he paused and he said, You show me a sitcom about St. Francis of Assisi and I'll show you a bummer. And I remember that when we constructed the poster for Wanda, that's what we said. It was about lust, greed, anger, rage, envy, and seafood. And that was in my mind. It's all about the worst aspects of human behaviour.

Presenter18:51

But why why do we laugh at that?

John Cleese18:53

Because we all know that we have the emotions inside us. But what is funny is when people try to disguise how they're coming out.

John Cleese19:04

Ah you see what I mean. Because if the emotion comes out in a very straightforward way, it's not funny. It's always when it comes out in a disguised way, but we know what's really behind it. That's what makes it funny.

Presenter19:17

And always somebody is watching him. I mean, that's the other point about it, isn't it? That he never just bangs his head or kicks a car all by himself. Somebody else is watching him doing it.

John Cleese19:22

That's right.

John Cleese19:26

Yeah.

John Cleese19:28

That's exactly right. Mad behaviour is never funny unless there's someone looking at it thinking what on earth is going on. And I remember learning that in the Marble Arch Odeon in about 1963 and I went to see the first Pink Panther. And there was this scene in the after a fancy dress ball. And they were all dressed as animals.

John Cleese19:49

you know, stuffed animals. And a man comes out of a tritoria, who is obviously the worst for wear, and he goes back into the tritoria, emerges with a chair, puts the chair down, sits on it, crosses his arm, crosses his leg, and just watches. And that's when I realized that it wasn't very funny until you saw it through his eyes.

Presenter20:09

Record number five.

John Cleese20:10

Well, as I think I said, uh music either seems to sort of cheer me up or touch me, and I think of all the most romantic tunes I've ever heard. This touches me and almost has a physical effect on me.

Presenter21:22

Part of the prelude to Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, played by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karian. It's a very romantic piece, John. Is is is romance, romantic love important to you?

John Cleese21:35

I think it has been and certainly when I was young I made the mistake of thinking it was significant and uh led me into a number of relationships which probably

Presenter21:41

Mm-hmm.

John Cleese21:44

Well, hopefully I learned a lot from which were but which were ill-fated.

Presenter21:48

But your marriage to to Connie Booth, you were talking about who with whom you wrote Faulty.

John Cleese21:50

Yeah.

Presenter21:53

um, broke up during the mid seventies and and and the writing of Fort Titas and you became very depressed then. Is that when you began your therapy session?

John Cleese22:01

Yes, I mean I think most people find the break-up of the first marriage is a kind of coming together of a whole lot of difficult strands of their life and I guess I was really fairly continuously depressed for probably two years, probably seven years ago. Seriously, clinically depressed? No, not unable to function. I mean I never had to not go into work but at the weekends I used to sit around and stare into the distance and Robin Skinner, bless him, explained to me that there really is a function in of being sad. In the old days I used to take a Basil Forty attitude and say, What's the point in being depressed? We didn't win the war by being depressed. That sort of thought was genuinely the way that I'd been ta taught in Western Supermare to think about this. Then I realized that if you can be quiet and process emotions, actually allow yourself to be present with them, they begin to pass through you and then you come out the other side.

Speaker 222:18

Seriously clinically depressed.

Presenter22:56

And so together with Robin Skinner, you wrote a couple of books, How to Survive Families and How to Survive Life, I think. I wonder why you thought you were the ideal person to do that, really? I don't think.

John Cleese23:06

Yeah.

John Cleese23:06

I did think that, actually. I think my attitude was that I'd learned a certain amount being in the group with Robin, and my real motivation was to learn a lot more.

John Cleese23:16

Because if I look at my life, it's really always being about trying to understand how human beings' minds work, how mine works and how other people work.

Presenter23:25

But more so than the rest of us do.

John Cleese23:26

I think so. I mean, if I hadn't had absolutely rotten teaching uh when I was at Clifton, I would have finished up, I'm absolutely sure, an academic psychologist somewhere, because that's what I was aiming at. It was just that the teaching in biology was so awful that I switched to the physics group. And in a sense, that that interest came back in with the experience with Robin.

John Cleese23:49

and writing the book with Robin was fascinating because it did enable me to make sense slowly of certain things I didn't understand before.

Presenter23:56

Let me put this to you, because one critic has said

Presenter23:59

I quote The conventional wisdom about John Cleese is that neurosis made him funny and sanity has made him dull, which seems rather harsh and and actually rather difficult to justify, but nevertheless, is there is there a grain of truth in that?

John Cleese24:11

My experience of therapy, I mean, once you have been given a little bit of creativity, which is no more than the ability to play, once you have that, I think that therapy can kind of open up the field so that you can go in areas where you might not have been able to go into before. For example, in Wanda, I played a rather dull part, but it was a sort of romantic lead, or at least it was enough of a romantic lead to justify the comment.

Presenter24:36

You became a sex symbol.

John Cleese24:37

Well, so they tell me. Irresistible they are. But what I mean is that that softer side was something I would have had difficulty portraying on screen in front of p lots of people if I think I hadn't um

Presenter24:38

Irresistible they

John Cleese24:53

Had had some of the therapy.

Presenter24:55

You'd have had difficulty taking your clothes off in front of Los Angeles.

John Cleese24:57

No, that's surprisingly easy. I was quite surprised. I did a movie with Connie in 1974, with sure Robert Young directed. And I had to spend a lot of that. It was an adaptation, a little short story by Cherkov. And I had to spend a lot of that naked. And the first time I took my underpants down, it was like going through an emotional sound barrier. I mean, it was almost as though the muscles froze. You know, you were unable, like running in mud in a dream. And about three days in, somebody said, okay, John, let's do the take. And I had to look down, I caught myself looking down to see whether my underpants were on or not. And I thought, you know, that's all so true. You can go through those kind of fears very quickly.

Presenter25:36

Don't need therapy to cure.

John Cleese25:37

Not that one, no.

Presenter25:39

Look, let me show

John Cleese25:40

Yeah.

Presenter25:40

Yeah.

Presenter25:42

Record number six, quick.

John Cleese25:44

Uh record number six. I love people um who have uh combine witty lyrics with tuneful music with a slightly eccentric beat and I wondered whether to choose something by Randy Newman or something by Harry Nielsen and in the end I decided I'd choose Gotta Get Up by Harry Nielsen because it's how my life feels at the moment.

Speaker 226:07

Gotta get up, gotta get out, gotta get home before the morning comes. What if I'm late, got a big day, gotta get home before the sun comes up? Up and away, got a big day, sorry, can't stay. I gotta run, run, yeah. Gotta get home, pick up the phone, gotta let the people know I'm gonna be late.

Presenter26:31

Harry Nielsen and Gotta Get Up. Now comes the um sequel, as it were, to Wander, which is Fierce Creatures. Does it have anything in common with one other than this same rep company of actors?

John Cleese26:42

No, that's exactly right. It's exactly like going to see the local rep and last week they did this play with a different plot and different characters and this week they're doing another one with the

Presenter26:51

Except this has been eight years in the making, but in the writing.

John Cleese26:52

But it's because making movies is it's a pretty much of a grind. I remember saying to Peter Cook when I saw Bedazzled many years ago, I said, you know, has it been fun? And he said, It's two years of your life, John.

Presenter27:05

You sound as if you find it a boring process.

John Cleese27:08

Two and a half years, any filmmaker I mean, they don't say this in interviews, but they all they all think, Oh, thank God that's But I shouldn't have said that, I didn't say that. But understand that too,'cause it's you know, it's really been very exciting.

Presenter27:19

The awful thing for you is that you thought you'd finished it and then you hadn't'cause you had to redo the ending.

John Cleese27:24

Well, it wasn't as bad as people think, and I'll tell you why, because we reshot the ending of Wanda twice, which most people don't realise. So when we showed this, and I was doubtful about whether the ending was good enough, one English audience had quite liked it, one had not liked it enough. So when we showed it in America, it was really a confirmation of my feeling that it wasn't good enough. It's worth getting them right. Otherwise, they sit there and you look at them and you think, Oh gosh, I wish we'd done that bit better.

Presenter27:54

But that's also that indicates that you're a perfectionist.

John Cleese27:57

Yeah.

Presenter27:58

But

John Cleese27:58

But that's the neurotic side, you see. Is it? Well, perfectionism is a kind of neuroticism.

Presenter28:04

Yeah.

John Cleese28:04

Uh

Presenter28:04

Is it That that You know, you've got so far to fall, I suppose, that everything you've done, if you like, from Python through Faulty and on to Wonders, has been a great success. Well, I've had.

John Cleese28:07

Yeah.

John Cleese28:12

Well, I've had my failures, but they've been buried fast and quietly.

Presenter28:17

Yeah, and efficiently.

John Cleese28:18

And efficiently. So people have forgotten those and the good things, thank God, keep getting repeated. But you're right. The trouble with fierce creatures, and it I think is the only problem, is that the expectations will be too high to meet.

Presenter28:31

Record number seven.

John Cleese28:32

I've had a brush with opera in the last few years and I find that what bothers me about it is that the stories, the characterisation, the dialogue and the acting, which are things I rather care about, seem to come at the bottom of a list in opera. On the other hand, the sound is magnificent and this I find particularly magnificent.

Presenter29:40

Part of the Easter hymn from Mascagne's Cavallaria Rusticana, with Fiorenza Cosotto and Maria Graccia Allegri, and the chorus and orchestra of La Scala Milan, conducted by Herbert von Carrion.

Presenter29:53

So there you are, on an island now. This is where we sent you. What happens to John Cleese on an island? Does he. Oh, do you?

John Cleese29:58

See

Presenter30:00

I thought you probably topped yourself.

John Cleese30:02

No, no, no, no telephones.

John Cleese30:05

I went on a stress reduction weekend about twenty years ago, and on the Saturday you went into your room, uh they closed the door, the curtains were drawn, no television, no radio, nothing to read, and it was just being quiet and

John Cleese30:23

Meals left outside the door, knock, knock, you never saw anyone. And after twenty four hours they came to the door and said, It's all right, John, it's all over now. And I I felt, Oh, what is it now?

John Cleese30:33

In other words, this peace, this quiet, I absolutely loved. So I think this desert island is going to suit me very well.

Presenter30:40

And you'll you'll survive happily then? I think so.

John Cleese30:44

Yeah.

Presenter30:44

Yeah.

John Cleese30:45

Mentally

Presenter30:45

Mentally, obviously, but physio I mean, can you do all those things, like building shelters and?

John Cleese30:49

No.

Presenter30:50

Yeah.

John Cleese30:50

Oh no.

John Cleese30:51

No, that's right. I'll be dead in a week, come to think of it. Yes, I hadn't looked at it like that.

Presenter30:54

Yeah, yeah.

John Cleese30:55

But I'll enjoy it up to them.

Presenter30:58

Last record.

John Cleese30:59

Last record, Louis Armiston, what a wonderful world, because the older I get, the more I realise how much there is to enjoy.

Speaker 231:13

I see trees of green.

Speaker 231:17

Red Roses J.

Speaker 231:20

I see them blue.

Speaker 231:24

Five minutes.

Speaker 231:26

And I think to myself.

Speaker 231:31

What a wonderful world

Presenter31:37

Louis Armstrong and What a Wonderful World If you could only take one of those records, John.

Presenter31:42

Which one would you choose?

John Cleese31:43

Oh, Easterham, I think.

John Cleese31:46

I have a sense that there's something going on.

John Cleese31:49

That isn't just to do with the material world. I don't think that the Orthodox churches know a great deal about what it is. But I think there may be some kind of spiritual force around though. How we get in contact with it is a rather different matter, a rather difficult one. And I think I would need something to keep my spirit alive. And I think the Easter hymn touches me more than the any of the others.

Presenter32:11

What about your book?

John Cleese32:12

I thought I would ask for Tammy Winnette's autobiography, Stand By Your Man.

Presenter32:19

Yeah.

John Cleese32:19

Uh

Presenter32:19

Let's see.

John Cleese32:20

The reasoning behind that is I think I wouldn't get too upset if I lost it.

Presenter32:25

A new luxury?

John Cleese32:26

Michael Palin, please.

Presenter32:27

You can't have m

John Cleese32:28

Michael Davy.

Presenter32:29

He's animate.

Presenter32:30

You can have him stuffed.

John Cleese32:32

Okay, that'll do.

Presenter32:34

John Klees, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

John Cleese32:38

Thank you.

Speaker 332:46

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.