John Cleese

Kent and I saw John Cleese Thursday night at Zellerbach. The show was a mix of autobiography and vaudeville. The best thing for a comedian? A boring childhood. His evidence? All the Pythons were from boring towns. The only American of the group? From Minnesota.

Cleese is proud to have a lemur named after him. He had a giant picture of it on the stage. It was accompanied by giant pictures of his mother, his father, one of his seventeen cats, and himself in his first starring role.

His mother died in 2001, I think. Having been born in the last year of the 19th Century, she lived all the way through the 20th. Of all the big events of that century, he said, she only noticed one. World War II. And that was because the Germans bombed her town. Why did the Germans bomb this boring no-account little town? Cleese said, Maybe they had a sense of humor?

He stuck around after the show and took a few questions. "Can you still do those silly walks?" "Not since the hip replacement surgery. I can't imagine how I ever did those silly walks. It must have been I was so skinny and had so little muscle structure."

Cleese's father's name was Cheese but he got so tired of being teased that when he joined the army he changed the H to an L. Son John says his parents each pronounced it differently, his father rhyming it with Cheese, his mother rhyming it with Peace.