Terry Jones

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty three.

Speaker 10:11

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

This week our castaway is one sixth of the Monty Python lot, one of the less tall ones.

Presenter0:36

He's a scriptwriter, a film director, a lyricist, a medievalist, a fish impersonator.

Presenter0:42

It's Teddy Jones.

Presenter0:44

Thiry, have you ever experienced loneliness in your life?

Terry Jones0:48

Well, I think as a child, although I wasn't lonely, I sort of had a very good family life really, I found isolation was something that I sought. I would sort of go away and hide upstairs and write poems.

Presenter0:58

Were you an early child?

Terry Jones0:59

No, I had a brother. I've got a brother. Older or younger? He's older than me, yes.

Terry Jones1:03

But um I found that I was very much always trying to be on my own, usually actually sitting in the garage when it was raining, that was a very important time, or just finding some small place in the house where I could get away from the television set or whatever else was going on. and sort of scribble little verses onto paper.

Presenter1:18

Yeah.

Presenter1:19

You have a miserable allowance of just eight records. Would that help on a desert island?

Terry Jones1:26

Well, it's difficult to say, you know, sitting here in the comfort of Lagham Place.

Terry Jones1:32

I'm not sure, but it probably would. I think anything would help.

Presenter1:34

Have you any musical skill yourself? Do you play an instrument?

Terry Jones1:37

Well, I have a guitar, but I never really learnt to play it. Do you know what I mean? Like you got to that s level of skill where you know that you're not really playing it. You have the chords. Mm, that's right, yes. And people say, Oh, that's jolly good. Play us something else and you know you can't you

Presenter1:54

Right, now, out of your eight records, what's the first one?

Terry Jones1:57

Well, the first record I've chosen is really the the first record I ever remember actually seeing or hearing or feeling, and it was an old seventy eight. My brother bought it when he must have been woo five and I must have been three, and we were living in Colwyn Bay. And so this was what, nineteen forty five, I guess. And this record is by a chap called Tony Pastor.

Terry Jones2:20

And it's called Five Salted Peanuts. And to me it's sort of

Terry Jones2:24

recaptures those sort of days just after the war, I guess, and it's sort of it's very much GI music and uh it's just got an atmosphere that says Colwyn Bay to me, although it won't say it to anyone else.

Speaker 32:37

I put all my pennies

Speaker 32:39

But I don't ever win.

Speaker 32:41

It's driving me nuts.

Speaker 32:44

Those darn machines know how to count.

Speaker 32:48

I always get the same amount I put a penny in the slot But all I ever got was five salted peanuts

Speaker 33:00

They done, Tom, they

Presenter3:07

Five salted peanuts by

Terry Jones3:08

Yeah.

Presenter3:11

It has a lot of impact, in it. Tony Pastor in his orchestra.

Speaker 33:15

Yeah.

Presenter3:16

Right, now, Teddy, you belong to the great Welsh family, Jones. Colwyn Bay, where there used to be a very good repertory company I don't know if there still is.

Presenter3:25

Where next? Did you stay in Colwyn Bay for long?

Terry Jones3:27

No, to my great regret as a child, um we moved when I was about four and a half or five years old. We moved down to Claygate, which is near Easha, in the home counties, sort of uh Stockbroker belt. And I spent the next fifteen, twenty years of my life sort of resolutely saying, I'm not English, I'm Welsh you know, take me back to my home, please, everybody Have you got the language? No, unfortunately not. I mean, uh this awful thing, you see, I'm just saddled with this terrible home county's accent and here I am feeling Celtic and wanting to be Welsh and saddled with

Presenter4:01

You're beginning to sound very well. You went to Guildford Royal Grammar School. Was there a a kind of Welsh colony there?

Terry Jones4:09

Not that I ever discovered. They may have been under one of the floorboards somewhere, but I I never actually managed to unloose them.

Presenter4:15

What were you best at? You must have been a scrum half.

Terry Jones4:17

Actually, I was a wing forward.

Presenter4:18

Uh-huh.

Terry Jones4:19

Maybe I should have been a scrum half, but I played wing forward most of the time.

Presenter4:20

Yeah.

Presenter4:22

What did you want to be as a boy?

Terry Jones4:25

Well, ever since I could write really, I was going to be a poet, I guess. I was always writing poems and scribbling verses onto bits of paper.

Presenter4:33

Were you encouraged with the somebody who saw the the spark in your eye?

Terry Jones4:38

I don't know actually. I remember at primary school people coming along and saying, Oh, isn't it wonderful? you know, as he's using self-expression. It's so good to see this.

Terry Jones4:46

I wasn't doing self expression. I was writing poems about cowboys and trains going through tunnels and everything. To me it was just sort of making things, like making chairs. It wasn't self expression.

Terry Jones4:56

But I suppose I must have been encouraged, although I can't really remember it now.

Terry Jones5:00

Did music come into your life at that time?

Terry Jones5:03

Only in the form of Tony Pastor and his orchestra. Yes, yes, well, you've done that, which it was going to be my second record, but you said I couldn't have the same record twice, so I had to. No, no, no, no.

Presenter5:05

Which it was going to be my s

Presenter5:10

No, no, no, no, because you can play it as often as you like. Let's have a completely different record as your second.

Terry Jones5:17

Well, I thought if I'd sort of landed in this desert island, it's probably pretty traumatic, I should imagine, me in this place.

Presenter5:23

I should think.

Terry Jones5:24

And I thought I'd need a piece of music that would kind of reassure me about the world and that things were going to be all right. So I chose Five Salted Peanuts by Tony Pastor, but I know we can't have that one again, so

Terry Jones5:38

Instead, I've substituted Mozart's serenade for thirteen wind instruments.

Terry Jones5:43

particularly the third movement, which I don't know any piece of music that speaks more to my soul than this piece of music. It just makes me cry.

Presenter6:47

The third movement of the Mozart Serenade number ten in B flat for thirteen wind instruments the London Wind Quintet and Ensemble conducted by Otto Klemperer. Now from Guildford you went up to Oxford to Sir Edmund Hall. What did you read?

Terry Jones7:03

I read English. It's the nearest thing to not reading anything, really. And what were your other activities?

Presenter7:09

Yeah.

Terry Jones7:09

Well, when I was there I um I designed Isis, which was the magazine of the university. Um but basically I got into uh acting and into the uh the theater side of

Presenter7:19

And what entertainments did you take part in? Well, we

Terry Jones7:22

He put on reviews basically in Edinburgh, the Experimental Theatre Club, would go up with a play every year and a review, and I eventually ended up in the reviews. Though I started actually acting in Turgenev was the first thing, and Brecht I think was one.

Presenter7:37

Yes. Well, the the Oxford University Experimental Theatre Group came into the West End.

Presenter7:42

I'm sure you remember in in a piece called Hang Down Your Head and Die

Terry Jones7:47

Oh that's right, yes I'm you were the one

Presenter7:47

You were the one who died.

Terry Jones7:51

Fair, I thought. But the production didn't. The production didn't. No, the production went on for about six weeks, actually, at the comedy theatre. It was in the vacation before my finals, in fact. So I was sort of sitting studying in a bedsitter in Earl's Court and then uh performing in the evenings.

Presenter8:07

You then appeared in a review, the title of which was Four Asterisks within quotation marks.

Terry Jones8:13

Actually, yes, actually, that was the year before. The year before? I'm sorry, I brought my thing. That's why I know I can say.

Presenter8:15

I'm sorry, I brought my things

Presenter8:19

So you'd move from four asterisks uh uh up to more serious drama.

Terry Jones8:24

Yes, well you see having done four asterisks at at the Phoenix Theatre for two weeks, I mean it was an absolute disaster, I may say.

Terry Jones8:30

That was at the same time that Cambridge Circus were doing their review with John Cleese and Kev. Yeah. So that was the first time I saw John Cleese. Did you meet at that time?

Terry Jones8:38

He did, actually. I think John took me out for a steak and uh tried to con some material out of me, one of our uh

Presenter8:43

Yeah.

Presenter8:45

Did you write some of the material?

Terry Jones8:46

Well, I wrote a little bit of the material, yes, in the Foreestris, which we called

Terry Jones8:51

That's very tactful. What did other people

Presenter8:52

What should other people call it?

Terry Jones8:55

Yeah.

Presenter8:55

Not too good, they said.

Presenter8:58

At this time were you resolved to make a living in the entertainment?

Terry Jones9:00

It happened kind of by default more than anything.

Terry Jones9:05

Having always decided I was going to be a poet, or I have to say, an actor, I'm going through.

Presenter9:09

They're not the same thing.

Terry Jones9:10

It's not, is it? No, I know, but uh, I saw Danny Casey when I was quite young and I thought, well, anybody can do that and uh

Terry Jones9:17

I thought that's the life for me. But it was poetry I was interested in, but I saw the economic disadvantages of this course.

Speaker 39:23

Mm-hmm.

Terry Jones9:24

So I thought suppose I thought, well, I'd become an academic, but sort of three years at Oxford slightly cured me of that. It was actually sitting in the Bodleyn library reading what somebody had written about, what somebody else had written about, what somebody else had written about, what Milton had written.

Terry Jones9:38

And I I looked round all these other people who were reading what somebody else had written, about what somebody else had written, about what somebody else had written, about what Milton or somebody else had written. And it seemed remote. It seemed like I would rather be writing the thing in the first place.

Speaker 19:47

Uh

Terry Jones9:51

Then after the Edinburgh Review that year, when I came down, we were offered to do a a run at the Establishment Club in London.

Terry Jones10:00

and it seemed like kind of a natural progression, so I kind of fell into it.

Presenter10:04

For that, sir.

Presenter10:05

A water shed in your life, so let's have record number three.

Terry Jones10:08

Well, I'm very fond of stories, Roy. I do like a good story, and I thought I ought to have one, and so this is by Doctor Hook.

Terry Jones10:17

And it's written by one I think one of the best songwriters alive, a chap called Shell Silverstein.

Terry Jones10:24

And it's the story of the wonderful soup stone.

Speaker 310:27

I swear you could taste the chicken and tomato

Speaker 310:32

NOOOOO

Speaker 310:34

Arrow ball

Speaker 310:36

But it really wasn't nothing but some water and potatoes, and the wonderful, wonderful soup stone.

Speaker 310:49

Hanging from a string in my mamma's kitchen.

Speaker 310:53

Back in the hard time days

Presenter10:57

The Story of the Wonderful Soupstone by Doctor Hook. Terry, like so many clean living young Britons.

Presenter11:06

When you came down from Oxford you decided to join the B B C.

Presenter11:09

Yeah.

Terry Jones11:09

Yeah.

Presenter11:09

Uh

Terry Jones11:09

That's putting it strongly actually right now.

Terry Jones11:13

I tried to join the B B C when I was at Oxford, but didn't have much luck.

Terry Jones11:16

I then spent a year writing a thing called The Sex Show, I think it was called. Oh, no, no, it was called The Love Show. It was about sex, that's why I'm talking about it. Did that go on in?

Presenter11:23

Go on anywhere?

Terry Jones11:24

No, it didn't. No, it didn't. Not even with asterisks? No, no, not at all. It was overtaken by the sexual revolution, really.

Presenter11:25

Not even

Terry Jones11:31

And then, after about a year, I decided I really ought to get a job.

Terry Jones11:36

Strangely enough, Frank Muir suddenly offered me a a job as a script editor with the B B C T V. What sort of shows?

Terry Jones11:46

Well, I don't know. See, I went along to see Frank and he said, Well, you know, would you like to come and work here? You could have a an office and um so I had an office and two desks and two typewriters and four telephones and I had fountain playing in the middle. That's right, yes, constantly going to the lava.

Presenter11:59

And that f

Terry Jones12:04

And I wasn't quite sure what I was meant to be doing, except Frank had said, Well, you can come around, see what's happening in the B B C, get an idea about what's going on, and write a few things, read a few scripts as they come in. And so it was wonderful I had this sort of six months introduction to the B B C and how it worked.

Presenter12:19

You did a little light work on late night line up.

Terry Jones12:22

I believe. Yes, that was later actually. I I I did a director's course. Then I became a production assistant, for which I was totally unqualified and was quite rightly uh given the elbow as such. And Late Night Lion suckered me at this point and gave me a harbour as a sort of resident loony there. So Mike Palin and I started working together doing a few little sketches.

Presenter12:45

Yeah, micro pair

Terry Jones12:45

And he'd been at Oxford with his

Presenter12:47

You haven't yet.

Terry Jones12:47

Well, he was a year below me. We hadn't worked together except on Hang Down Your Head and Die. But you'd still speak to him.

Presenter12:52

Yeah.

Terry Jones12:53

I would still, yes.

Terry Jones12:55

Quite good friends.

Presenter12:57

To write for comics.

Terry Jones12:57

That's right. Yes, we wrote for I think the first joke we ever wrote was for Bill Cotton, the Bill Cotton ban Show. And I think it was Russ Conway saying he'd just been on holiday and Bill Cotton says, Oh yes, Costa Brava and Ross said no, costa fiver.

Terry Jones13:18

And it that was the kind of response it got at the time.

Presenter13:20

Yes, I'm sorry I didn't react to that immediately. I was just thinking it out.

Terry Jones13:25

It's it was a complicated one, you know.

Presenter13:27

Very good.

Terry Jones13:28

Uh

Presenter13:28

Uh

Presenter13:29

Do you remember any

Terry Jones13:29

Any other comics you're waiting for?

Terry Jones13:32

Well, yes. The wa actually, the next joke we wrote was for Ken Dodd, actually.

Speaker 313:37

Mm-hmm.

Terry Jones13:37

Which was quoted as kind of joke of the year on the the Newsreel Roundup. Unfortunately, it's a visual, so I can't actually show it here.

Terry Jones13:48

Well, I could show it. I will, yes. Anyway, this is: it was the policeman's walking race, you see. So we had all these policemen at White City all lined up, you see, on their marks. On your marks.

Presenter13:55

Um

Terry Jones13:57

Get set, go!

Terry Jones13:59

And then ordered a walk like that, you see?

Presenter14:02

Yes, come back.

Presenter14:04

Didn't it come over on the radio or it didn't come over visually.

Presenter14:09

Well, at the time it seemed funny.

Presenter14:12

Well, despite all this, you were promoted really to strip editor, having sort of written for comics, which meant that having been a writer, you were now permitted to mess about the writings of other people.

Terry Jones14:24

Well, no. It was really the other way, actually. I moved from script editing, really, into writing. Um, we started writing for the Frost Reports, really, in earnest.

Terry Jones14:32

And eventually Jimmy Gilbert, who was then and directing the Frost Reports, allowed us to come and take part in them as well, because we weren't making it much money. We were getting, I think it was seven pounds a minute for what we wrote. Seven pounds a minute Well, that's not a minute's worth of writing. For a forty hour week.

Terry Jones14:50

Unfortunately, no, it was a minute of what went on, you see. So we'd spend forty hours writing and then if we were lucky that we'd get two minutes' worth on the Frost reports, which meant seven pounds each for Mike and me and our growing families.

Presenter14:52

Oh I see.

Presenter14:59

Mm-hmm.

Presenter15:04

Now you decided to write for yourself. Do not adjust your set.

Terry Jones15:08

It was at this stage we began to feel that uh in writing for other people, like the two Ronnies and Marty Feldman we were writing for then I am.

Terry Jones15:22

Curve

Terry Jones15:23

You know, we'd write these scripts and they were getting on, but they weren't quite what we'd written when they were actually done.

Presenter15:28

You mean the comics were messing about with?

Terry Jones15:30

Uh Well, I tell you what happens, Monty. What happens is you go at home, you and Mike write a nice little script, you give it in to the producer, he reads it and laughs, and the comic then reads it, and then they all laugh round the script table. And then they start rehearsing it, and after about a five days' rehearsal, nobody's laughing anymore. So people start inventing other things to make it funny again. And your joke's out. That's right, yeah. So the whole thing just suddenly evaporates.

Presenter15:52

So the whole thing

Terry Jones15:54

Uh

Presenter15:54

Yeah.

Terry Jones15:54

Yeah. So we began to feel we'd like to do our own thing a bit, you know.

Presenter15:58

Well, you did that. Do not adjust your set. Then you did another series for London Weekend. You you got sort of a bit huffed with the BBC. Well

Terry Jones16:05

No, it was just we Mike and I had got this idea for doing this history series, which was eventually called The Complete and Utter History. And it was just happened that again Frank Muir offered us to do a series, so um we grasped it with both hands and He had moved over to London Weekend. He had, yes. So it was one of the very first shows that uh London Weekend did. It was done in black and white, can you believe?

Presenter16:20

Beha.

Presenter16:21

So

Presenter16:25

Well, we've got you launched on your career, so let's have your fourth record.

Presenter16:30

Well, I

Terry Jones16:30

I'm going back to school time at this point. This was a uh a record that somehow means a lot to me. I can't quite explain why.

Terry Jones16:39

It was a a record that our music master used to play as an exercise. He used to play it to the whole class, and uh anybody who laughed during it would be given to detention. This is a slight exaggeration,

Terry Jones16:53

And so we used to sit there trying not to laugh. And eventually I bought a copy of it and trained myself not to laugh at it. And actually I rather enjoy it now, as a strange thing.

Terry Jones17:02

But I thought perhaps your listeners would uh like to listen, and if anybody can listen to it without laughing, I think perhaps we should give them a prize.

Speaker 317:41

Uh

Terry Jones18:09

Now there you are, Z Roy, you were laughing at that.

Presenter18:12

Wasn't. Perfectly straight face, I promise.

Terry Jones18:13

Perfectly straightforward.

Presenter18:15

Duet for two violins in the sixth tone system, played by Wiesmeyer and Stein, and it was by Haber. Wasn't laughing, perfectly straight face. Beautiful in its way.

Presenter18:27

Now, with Michael Palin and four others, you were in a series called Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Terry Jones18:33

Yes, that came about, I suppose, in about sixty nine at the time.

Terry Jones18:37

Mike and I had just done the Complete and Out of Histories and we were recording the last series of Do Not Adjust Your Set and writing a pantomime for Watford Rep at the time.

Speaker 118:44

And

Terry Jones18:49

And suddenly the telephone goes and it's John Cleese suggesting that uh we might like to do a show together. He'd been on the Frost Report, so we we knew of him. Right. And although I'd met sort of over a state several years before, we hadn't really known each other. But we kind of knew that they were writing the funniest stuff around as far as we were concerned. We'd seen the ninety forty eight shows and things like that. And so we grabbed it and said, Oh, yes, and can our friend Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam, can they come al along as well?

Presenter19:21

Yeah.

Terry Jones19:21

Yeah. And that's really how the six of us got together.

Presenter19:23

Well, that's five of you. Who was the other one? Graham Chapman. Six of you, just like the crazy guy.

Terry Jones19:24

Bench

Presenter19:28

Yeah.

Terry Jones19:28

Yeah.

Presenter19:28

Ah, see.

Presenter19:29

Who invented Monty Python? Yeah.

Terry Jones19:32

Yeah.

Presenter19:32

Oh

Terry Jones19:32

Oh, it was a tedious business boy. We sat around for week after week when we should have been writing scripts, trying to decide on names. We went through things like oh, what was it, a horse, a spoon, and a basin, was one name.

Terry Jones19:47

My favorite.

Presenter19:47

I'm glad you didn't settle on that.

Terry Jones19:48

So

Terry Jones19:50

I don't think it would have caught on. There was another one, the toad elevating moment, was one of my favourites. I like

Presenter19:56

The

Terry Jones19:57

What about owl stretching time? Any good?

Presenter19:59

No, sordid.

Terry Jones20:02

Sam

Speaker 320:02

Uh

Presenter20:03

Now how did you sort the jobs out? Who did what?

Terry Jones20:06

Yeah, a fairly anarchic group, really.

Terry Jones20:10

We kind of fell into roles. I mean, insofar as we've got any roles, I'm not sure that we have, except that I always made the coffee.

Presenter20:16

Who was coordinating all this? Did you have a producer or director who would say no?

Terry Jones20:21

Well, what happened was that when the BBC approached us about doing a a show, we'd just seen the the the Spike Milligan show, so we said, Well, we'd like uh Ian McNaughton to be our director.

Presenter20:30

Mm-hmm.

Terry Jones20:31

And so we were working with Ian, but basically it was the group, it was the six of us sort of autonomously producing the programmes and deciding what we were going to do and then presenting Ian with the material.

Presenter20:41

Here.

Terry Jones20:42

Which poor fellow he had to sort of then get onto the screen somehow.

Presenter20:45

A lot of it

Terry Jones20:45

Yes, it was quite disciplined actually. We'd write the whole series almost before we ever started doing anything. So that we're going to be able to do it.

Presenter20:54

We, the whole six of you. Yeah.

Terry Jones20:55

Yeah, so I'll say it's

Presenter20:57

How many programmes were in the first series? Thirteen. And how many series were there?

Terry Jones21:01

Yeah.

Presenter21:01

The worm Screen

Terry Jones21:02

I don't think he was being uppity. I think he's sort of genuinely got a bit bored with the group. See a group is very in a way it's a kind of release because you can do something that is sort of bigger than any single individual in it. But at the same time you can never follow something right the way through. It's always going to be slightly fragmented because of six people putting in.

Speaker 121:27

Yeah.

Terry Jones21:29

And eventually, I think it comes a point when you feel you want to go right the way through with your own thing. And I think John felt it earlier than the rest of us. Let's have your physical.

Presenter21:37

Uh

Terry Jones21:37

Yeah.

Presenter21:37

Yeah.

Terry Jones21:37

Record.

Terry Jones21:38

Now I don't think I could possibly be on any desert island without uh the Beatles.

Terry Jones21:44

It's difficult to choose any Beatles record more than another, but at this one I remember hearing when I was driving my car across London, I suddenly heard this song, and I didn't know who it was, and it just electrified me. I just sat up and said, Who on earth is that?

Terry Jones22:00

And it was only later I discovered it was the Beatles.

Speaker 322:02

Connor is a banker with a motor car.

Speaker 322:06

The little children laughing him behind his back.

Speaker 322:11

The banker never wears a mine

Speaker 322:14

In the boring rain

Speaker 322:17

Very strange, very lame is in my ears and in my eyes

Speaker 322:30

Super.

Presenter22:32

The Beatles, Penny Lane, which of course is Liverpool not very far from Colwyn Bay.

Terry Jones22:37

No, indeed.

Presenter22:38

Now, you six Monty Python people set up in business together, but you're all going to live your own lives most of the time.

Terry Jones22:45

Yeah, I think it's kind of the essential thing, I mean perhaps why the group is still being able to make films together, is that we've gone off our separate ways and there's that release, so we don't we don't feel we're dependent up upon each other anymore.

Presenter22:58

No more television series, but a feature film or two, occasionally.

Terry Jones23:00

Yeah, I think so.

Presenter23:02

The first one, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Terry Jones23:04

Well, the first one was actually called And Now for Something Completely Different, but it was a compilation really of uh the first series material that had been on T V. So in a way we kind of don't count that. The Holy Grail was the first one which we wrote specifically as a film and and were able to direct ourselves.

Presenter23:16

Mm-hmm.

Presenter23:22

Now how did you work? I mean, six people sitting in a room arguing about a script must have taken a long, long time.

Terry Jones23:27

Uh

Presenter23:28

Well, it wasn't too

Terry Jones23:28

Too bad with Holy Grail. We worked basically as we did with the T V shows, which is that we would go off and separate and write our own little pieces and then come back together and read out the material we'd got. And after about sort of uh six weeks of doing that we had a certain amount of material. Then we sort of split up for another six months and then got together again and decided, hey, look, we could make this into a a medieval thing, we could make it all about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Terry Jones23:53

So then again, having decided on this subject, we then split up again and started writing individually. So we don't argue every line exactly. We're we're actually sort of coming back, reading the stuff to each other and agreeing on what we like and what we don't like. It's pretty time consuming.

Terry Jones24:07

It is, I suppose, yes. It but it's the kind of essential part of it because it's the internal criticism that goes on at that stage that I think is the strength of the group in a way.

Presenter24:16

Now your second one, which you directed, Monty Python's Life of Brown, New Testament Times, a Messiah, a Crucifixion there were howls of protest.

Terry Jones24:27

Yes, I mean uh very misguided I think. Uh I think most of the protest came from people who hadn't actually seen the film.

Terry Jones24:34

And subsequent to the the protest we had, various churchmen then did eventually go and see the film and we uh were eventually getting very complimentary remarks from the churchman.

Presenter24:44

Now, why? I mean, the fact that Brian's life was remarkably similar to that of a divinity was was hardly a coincidence. Oh, no.

Terry Jones24:51

Well, in fact, the film did start off. We were going to actually write A Life of Christ. We thought it would be quite interesting to write A Funny Life of Christ.

Terry Jones24:59

When we actually started working on it, which meant we s went back to the Gospels and started reading them again, I think we all very quickly came to the opinion that Christ was a very good bloke saying a lot of very good things that we we all agreed with. And the f humour wasn't in Christ at all. The humour was in the way in which somebody can come down, say things which are true and real, and then for the next two thousand years people go ahead fighting and killing each other because they can't agree on what this good person has said. And that is really what the life of Brian was doing, really. Brian himself wasn't Christ in the end. He was born in the next door manger. But the parallels are there. The parody is the is the parody on the church. So it's heresy rather than blasphemy.

Presenter25:43

Well, that's comforting.

Presenter25:45

I hope they've marked that down for you upstairs. And your third film was going to be the story of World War Three, but uh it turned into the meaning of life.

Terry Jones25:56

Yes, well, just in case, you know, we didn't want events to overtake us and make the film obsolete, you see.

Terry Jones26:02

The meaning of life. Uh yes, I thought we thought it was time somebody tackled this subject, you know. We we didn't really want to leave it for somebody like, you know, Bergman to take up or something and spoil. We thought we'd take a serious uh look at it.

Presenter26:15

The new film is really back to the Monty Python television series. It's it's a series of sketches.

Terry Jones26:19

Well, I think we felt we'd never succeeded in making a ninety minute film that had a shape and yet still had the freedom of the old T V shows. So in fact, I think the film is very different from the T V shows.

Speaker 126:28

Uh

Terry Jones26:31

But it does have that same feeling of freedom that it can go off in any direction and that it can use the animations to link it. Yeah.

Presenter26:38

It does. And the more rough stuff, the more howls of protest, of course.

Terry Jones26:42

Well, I w I suppose there will be. When we first showed it in New York, it was actually in Yonkers, and we had an audience of about four hundred high school children, and before the end of the film eighty of them had walked out in protest and disgust and shock horror.

Terry Jones26:59

which I was very surprised about.

Terry Jones27:01

But I don't think there'll be any sort of uh organized protest in the same way there was with Bryant.

Terry Jones27:06

I think basically it's offending too many people for them all to get together, you know?

Presenter27:10

Yes, but I think you offend everybody at one time or another.

Terry Jones27:13

Yes, I think so. I think to get really good organized protests, some group has to feel you're directly getting specifically at them, but uh everybody can see we're getting at everybody else.

Presenter27:22

Uh

Presenter27:23

Right, record number six.

Terry Jones27:25

Well, this is really for the artist on it. It's a violinist uh named Jeanette Nevere.

Terry Jones27:31

When I came across her, because it so happened, my French pen friend happened to be her her nephew. What age was this? Oh, I must have been fifteen or something. And uh I heard the stories of Jeanette Nevere and how she'd died at such an early age in a plane crash, and how her Stradivarius was unharmed on the seat beside her in the wreckage.

Terry Jones27:54

And I also heard the family stories of about how she was in the conservatory with Yehudi Menuin and Jeannette Nivelle used to come top and Yehudi second. That was the family story. And then they played me some of the records, and when I heard the records, I was just amazed by her violin playing. I'm I'm not a connoisseur of the violin, but it seems to me when I listen to her, there's this tremendous power and kind of forcefulness, almost sort of masculinity in what she's producing.

Terry Jones28:25

It's kind of totally unsentimental, and yet in this piece of music it kind of conjures up to me this sort of uh I don't know, the world after the war and Europe in ruins, although it was written by Brahms quite a long time before.

Speaker 329:05

Mm-hmm.

Presenter29:40

Part of the first movement of the Brahms violin concerto played by Jeanette Nevet with the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Presenter29:47

Now, as I said, between the films, Terry, you've all six been busy with your own projects. You and Michael Palin, for example, writing Ripping Yarns.

Terry Jones29:57

Yeah.

Presenter29:57

Yeah.

Terry Jones29:58

That was a kind of desire to get into story, really. I mean, Mike and I had written some stories which we'd used in Python.

Terry Jones30:05

And I always had the feeling that Python could have gone into storylines, even in the T V series, but it never did. So when Michael was offered the chance of doing his own show, uh and he suggested to me that we write it together

Speaker 130:10

It never

Terry Jones30:17

I was very keen to get into this kind of storyline and uh I love stories.

Presenter30:23

You've also achieved what most of us would like to do. You you've got your own brewery.

Terry Jones30:29

Indeed. Well, it's it's not my own brewery really now, but I certainly did uh set up a brewery in uh Hereford. And it's working well? Penros Court. Yes, it's wonderful beer. Well, when the beer's good, it's wonderful, and when it's not, it isn't.

Terry Jones30:43

I think the best thing about the brewery in a way was the fact that when I set it up it was in 1976.

Terry Jones30:48

Kinda nobody'd thought about doing it for, I dunno, a hundred years or so. Really, there hadn't been anything set up much.

Terry Jones30:55

And since we set it up I think there's been about sixty or seventy little breweries all over the country kind of have have sprung up.

Presenter31:00

And it's really.

Terry Jones31:01

Oh, it's making me an audience. Oh no.

Presenter31:04

Now you've written a book or two?

Terry Jones31:05

Yes, indeed, yes, I think.

Presenter31:06

A fairy tale

Terry Jones31:08

Oh, fairy tales, yes, this is a

Presenter31:08

Yes.

Terry Jones31:10

A book I wrote with my daughter Sally. How old is Sally?

Presenter31:12

How old is

Terry Jones31:13

Well, she's now nine. She was five or six at the time I wrote the the the stories.

Terry Jones31:18

And I just thought it would be well, I'd been reading Grimms to her. I love fairy tales, again the idea of story. And I started reading Grimms and Anderson, and found that really they were a bit too long and a bit too waffly. And to tell the truth, there were some bits of them I didn't really agree with. Some of them are rather horrific. Well, yes, you see, you take Snow White, for example, and you have this nice little story which you're reading to your daughter at bedtime she's going to sleep in her nursery, and you suddenly come to the end of it, and it says in the original version that the wicked stepmother was punished by being made to put on these red-hot iron slippers and dance until she falls down dead. But I don't really like something that condones violence in that way. I think there's plenty of room for violence in uh stories and in comedy, and I wouldn't excise it, but I think it's the attitude to the violence which is important.

Presenter32:05

And you've written a serious piece of mediaeval scholarship, Chaucer's Night.

Terry Jones32:09

Yes, that was something I had to get out of my system, really. It started really when I was at Oxford. Um I kind of felt that I didn't really understand.

Terry Jones32:19

Thirty-six lines of Chaucer's poetry, uh, his description of the night, and uh

Terry Jones32:24

I suppose while we were doing Python, I think, I started doing a little work at the British Museum and sort of ferreting away, doing a little research.

Presenter32:31

You decided that he wasn't a a very perfect gentle knight.

Terry Jones32:36

No, it took me a long time to reach that conclusion. I just felt I couldn't understand why Chaucer wrote this list of battles in which he'd been involved, when I know that elsewhere in Chaucer's work he describes very pacifist sentiments and obviously clearly dislikes war and warns people that war is something that to be avoided as far as man may. And I couldn't understand why, if he thought the knight was the perfect gentle knight, he would have this list of battles spanning over something like sixty years.

Terry Jones33:07

And so I started researching into those battles, and it was the research into those that led me to the conclusion that the knight was in fact

Terry Jones33:14

Type of his age. He was a mercenary, which was a kind of a new style soldier in the 14th century. There had been mercenaries before, but it was an explosion of mercenary employment in the 14th century. And the mercenary armies of the 14th century, of Chaucer's day, became a horrific element in society. For instance, the great company that formed itself in the 1360s, which was the people who were left over from the Hundred Years' War when peace was declared in 1360, all these out-of-work soldiers, instead of all going home, they all said, Oh, no, we're having a good time here, let's get together. And they formed themselves into a company that at one point was something like 16,000 strong, according to one of the chroniclers. And can you imagine? That's a band of brigands wandering through the countryside, 16,000 strong. Up to all sorts of horrific enterprises. Oh, they were just sort of raping, looting, burning the whole place down. And they weren't doing it for any creed, country, or ideal, just for what they could get out of it.

Presenter34:10

Yeah.

Terry Jones34:10

Has been accepted in Chaucerian circles? I think it's accepted more by historians than maybe by the literary critics.

Terry Jones34:19

I think the case will eventually be accepted, but I think it's a difficult one for people to accept right now.

Presenter34:24

Record number 7.

Terry Jones34:26

Well, this is a man I think is one of the uh the great songwriters of our time.

Terry Jones34:33

Paul Simon. And uh this song actually I don't think is his best song by any means. But you know how sometimes somebody says something and it actually changes your way of thinking.

Terry Jones34:44

I I remember as a child being a slightly gloomy child very often. I mean I loved going to the cinema, but I was used to get very depressed about going to the cinema because I I used to say, Well, it's all going to be over in three hours and then I read the cover of a book by Bertrand Russell, in which Bertrand Russell had just written on the cover of the book, I believe that happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it is transitory. And I suddenly said, Of course he's right and I became much more cheerful after that.

Terry Jones35:11

And in this song by Paul Simon, although it's not one of his best songs, it does contain the lyrics, some lyrics that sort of change my way of looking at things. He says Some people never say the words I love you. It's not their style to be so bold.

Terry Jones35:26

Some people never say the words I love you, yet like a child, they're longing to be told.

Speaker 335:37

Some people never say the words I love you

Speaker 335:43

It's not their style.

Speaker 335:46

Be so though.

Speaker 335:50

Some people never say those words, I love you.

Speaker 335:56

But like a child, belonging to the door

Presenter36:02

Paul Simon thinks o' right.

Presenter36:06

Terry, what about life on a desert island? Could you cope? Could you look after yourself? Are you a practical person?

Presenter36:12

Yeah.

Terry Jones36:12

I think if I was put to it, I'd I'd be all right. And so long as I didn't have any accountants or um people advising me what to do, I think I'd be all right. Have you ever done any camping out?

Terry Jones36:23

Yes, a little bit. An old friend of mine, Richard Rampton, and I used to cycle down to the south coast, and once we we tried sleeping out. Unfortunately our tent wasn't long enough for us, and our both our legs stuck out at the other end, and it rained during the night.

Presenter36:35

Rained

Presenter36:36

Now, what about food? Could you look after yourself? Could you cultivate? Could you fish?

Terry Jones36:42

I'd have a go. I I I I'm not really a fisherman, but I I think I'd uh I'd certainly have a go at it. I enjoy cooking.

Presenter36:49

You try to do a

Terry Jones36:49

Escape

Terry Jones36:51

I'd be dead scared of that. The f sea fills me with an unutterable fear, and I love seeing it, but as long as I'm on dry land.

Presenter36:58

Your last record.

Terry Jones37:00

My last record is

Terry Jones37:03

Imagined by John Lennon.

Presenter37:05

Yeah.

Terry Jones37:05

Yeah.

Presenter37:05

Why?

Terry Jones37:05

I think it's one of one of the great songs of our age.

Speaker 337:15

Imagine there's no heaven.

Speaker 337:21

See if you try.

Speaker 337:28

Go hell.

Speaker 337:29

We're lowers

Speaker 337:35

Above us only sky

Presenter37:39

John Lennon, Imagine

Presenter37:41

If you could take only one disc, Terry, which would it be? Oh gosh, I didn't realise you were going to ask me that boy. Um

Presenter37:48

I think it would be a ma Imagine

Presenter37:49

Right. And one luxury to take with you, one item, one object of no practical use at all that would give you pleasure to have. Oh, can I take a

Presenter37:59

Pencil and paper? Yes, of course.

Terry Jones38:01

I think that's what I Yeah.

Presenter38:02

And one book. You have the authorized Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare provided as standard equipment. You can take one other book.

Terry Jones38:10

I take the complete works of Chaucer.

Presenter38:12

Right. And thank you, Terry Jones, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc.

Terry Jones38:17

Thank you, boy.

Presenter38:17

Yeah.

Presenter38:18

Goodbye everyone.

Speaker 138:44

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