Quite a number of years ago, Cleese delivered a Rectorial Address to the students of St. Andrews, which is apparently a school somewhere on Earth. In it, he said:
I've always had the strongest dislike of public speeches of almost any kind. Why I should have this prejudice against public speaking I don't know. Perhaps, because many years ago I noticed that on pages of advertisement in newspapers, offers of tuition in the art of public speaking always seemed to be sandwiched between cures for stammering and blushing on one hand, and recommended treatments for haemorrhoids and nocturnal enuresis on the other. This association has remained so strongly in my mind that I think I may subconsciously assume that people speak in public only to compensate for the humiliating nature of their private lives.
Apparently he got over it. Or his private life has become so humiliating that he felt he had no choice but to go out in public and do some compensating. Certainly the dominant figure mentioned in his peroration is his mother, about whom he has nothing whatsoever nice to say--except to thank her for making his life so rotten that he had no choice but to become a comedian. Indeed, almost the entire show consisted of an onstage autobiography, moving more-or-less chronologically from birth in the stupefyingly dull "seaside resort" of Weston-Super-Mare through the Python days, Fawlty Towers, and on into the later career, with deliciously biting mentions of Fierce Creatures and poor Graham Chapman's boondoggle Yellowbeard. Now even I will readily admit that little of this was what you might call brilliant writing--it was wry, it had some bite, it was all consistently amusing, but little of it was out-of-the-park funny. (Two notable exceptions: a section in which he statistically analyzed how many members of the audience would die from various ailments, indicating with a flashlight how many rows would be done in by heart disease or car crashes; and the concluding section on how completely fucking hopeless the world is nowadays. Trust me, it was hysterical.) In short: it would be easy to look upon this show as one of those pieces that actors sometimes do, late in life when they don't have the energy for an all-out play, to pick up some money on the hustings. (Cary Grant died in the middle of one such tour.)
Not that it matters. I've said for years that Cleese is one of the funniest men on the planet, and the fact that he was doing ordinary material only demonstrated how astonishingly good his comedic skills are. Of course, something else might be true: since I've spent so many years watching and rewatching his work, listening to the records, buying and reading the script books, imitating his cadences and his timing, I'm probably primed to respond positively to anything he does. I might, in fact, laugh like crazy at his reading of a phone book. So perhaps I'm not the best person to judge; but if I'm not, then neither was anyone else in the crowd, because everyone seemed to be having a pretty great time.
There was a moment when Cleese did an audience read-along, in which we all read off a screen the words we might say if we were to meet him in person one day (so that, if we ever do actually meet him, we won't have to bother him by saying any of it). Naturally it all turns nasty, so that we ended up collectively saying some quite rude things as he affected shock and dismay. But I realized during the show that he was quite right--having seen this show, if I ever were to meet the man, the sorts of questions I would be inclined to ask were pretty much covered during the show (which included a Q&A session afterward). It's like meeting the man, and getting everything I could want from him, without having met him. Nice for me, and I'm sure delightful for him. Happy happy on both sides.
Next time: That Pesky Molar, Part Two. In which my delightful buzz after the Cleese performance went right down the tubes.
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