Mr. Cleese, I’m really looking forward to our conversation. I also have to confess that I am very nervous.

You don’t have to be. I’m extremely nice, very, very kind and immensely entertaining.

Let me start with an observation you make in your memoir where you note that «the rules of comedy are nothing more than the rules of audience psychology». That intrigued me, can you expand on it?

When I first got to the West End, I would do the same material to different audiences every night. So you were carrying out a series of experiments, if you will. You would try this and that – and the audience laughed on Thursday, and you’d say Ha! I’ll try that again tomorrow to see if they will laugh on Friday. So all the time you try to find out what makes people laugh. So that’s a question of their psychology. The interesting thing as I got much older is to realize how different people’s senses of humor are. Some of my friends laugh about a certain kind of joke, other friends with an equal sense of humor laugh at some slightly different type of joke. And that’s a reflection of their personalities. And one of the things I found very strange when I was doing my one-man-show recently was to watch the audience’s reaction when I played them a clip, to watch the front row. You see their faces from the light coming through the screen. And to realize that they really did laugh in different places. That was quite surprising.

It’s different with visual humor as opposed to verbal humor, though. I talked to your colleague Rowan Atkinson, and he told me he preferred the visual gag because it was so simple and it affected everybody.

Yes, I think that’s true. The other thing about visual gags is that you can do them without having to wait until the audience has stopped laughing to continue them. See what I mean? So you can have three or four visual gags in a row, and the laughter can be accumulative. But I think he’s right, the simplicity of it, almost the purity of visual comedy. It’s almost harder to bring off than verbal comedy for a lot of different reasons.

I also asked Mr. Atkinson what he as a trained engineer had learned that he could use as a comedian. He said «construction and its details». How about you, in what way did your law studies help you become a comedian?

Yes, I think the whole time I was learning, I was learning construction without perhaps realizing consciously that I was learning it. In the beginning for me it was just [working] creatively instead of conceptually. But when I watched parts of films or sketches that I particularly liked, sometimes I would watch them again and again, then I would try to write them out from memory. And suddenly I realized this line had to go before that line. Then it seemed obvious, but you learned it bit by bit. And then of course it becomes absolutely instinctive.

John Cleese on his memoir – and his mother.

This is why «A Fish Called Wanda» is such a perfect movie – the construction is flawless.

Thank you. I’m just starting today to adapt a play written in France in the 1890ies by Jules Sandeau, he was a great writer of French farces. And the construction of some of the jokes is just wonderful, so observant, but also completely logical (he laughs). Comedy sometimes is like a beautiful piece of clockwork.

Speaking of which: In «Clockwise» (1986), you play an obsessively punctual teacher whose life falls apart when he takes the wrong train. Dou you think you could have become such a person were it not for your career as a comic?

I see (sighs). That’s a difficult question. It was really the writer, Michael Frayn, he was a fine playwright, did you ever see «Copenhagen»?

No, I haven’t.

It’s really wonderful. And he said that’s how he was: Absolutely hopeless in getting anything done and being in places on time. So he became almost Swiss in his addiction to punctuality. It was very much about his own experience. But why don’t you ask me about my experience with that movie?

You seemed to enjoy it, didn’t you?

Yes, but my problem during that was that I suffered some physical injuries. About six weeks before the movie started I had peritonitis, which is a form of septicaemia when your appendix bursts. And I very nearly died, and was fed on tubes. When I recovered properly my thigh muscles wasted at an extraordinary speed. And nobody warned me. When I started the movie, which was six weeks later, at the end of the first week the knee collapsed. And I was never able to play sports again. The next day I had to do a running scene on the train station, and I pulled my hamstring on the other leg (laughs). So I was completely crippled for the last five weeks of the shooting. And that rather took over my perception about figuring out how to get things done.

One thing I really like about your memoir is the way you experienced America for the first time as a young actor. What is your relationship to the US today? If one can have a relationship to such a big country.

It’s very different. I have a very large number of friends there for a start. And very few would disagree about what I’m going to say. What I admired when I first came to America is that the place seemed efficient compared to England. And I also thought that the politicians were much more bi-partisan, across the aisle, as they say. And I thought that the atmosphere of the politics in America at that time was so much better than it was in England where there was this relentless antagonism between the tories and the socialists. And now of course that has completely changed. Which I think basically is the work of Fox News and Mr. Murdoch. I don’t think it’s a functioning country anymore. What I do find quite distressing there is that the disparity between the wealthy and the not so wealthy is so huge now. And that used not to be the case. We in the West used to be proud of it, we used to sneer at South American countries where you had six very rich families, and everybody else was impoverished. And now that’s the case all over the USA. It used to be a beacon of hope, it has become a country where nothing works. I genuinely believe that Switzerland is the only country in the West that really works.

«Fish Slapping Dance» by Monty Python.

Since we talk about America, there’s a lovely quote by Sanjeev Bhaskar, the British comedian, about the comical effect of Monty Python. He said the Americans should have thrown copies of the «Fish-Slapping Dance» over Afghanistan as a peace-providing mission.

(He laughs) Yes, he’s right. I had a very interesting conversation yesterday. I was in a department store, a fellow came up, we had a long chat about Equador, he is half-Equadorian, and he said, «they have absolutely no capacity to laugh about themselves». That was interesting. So when you talk about the British sense of humor: The British are capable of laughing at themselves. I think it’s almost a religious or psychological concept: There is a little bit of daylight between you and your ego. If you tried to explain that to a Frenchman, he would not get that.

I’m not sure about that.

The northern Europeans seem to be better at that, and so they like a sense of humor – the English more than the Southern. At least BBC comedies aren’t really sold in Italy or Spain, but they’re widely sold in German speaking countries, Scandinavia, Holland and Belgium.

The interesting thing about comedy is it’s ambivalence. Laughter is stylished biting, as we know. Can there be comedy without aggression?

There can be comedy without aggression, but there can’t be comedy without criticism. Henri Bergson’s idea about laughter is very, very astute indeed: We are almost mechanical and automatic when we are being run by our obsessions and our egotistical posturing. And that’s when we become ridiculous. When we are relaxed and appropriate we are not really funny. So any kind of humor is an attempt to point out that this kind of behavior is not flexible in some way. Let me tell you my silliest joke which I’m fond of which is about a grasshopper. A grasshopper hops into a bar and onto a stool. And the barman looks at it and says, «you know, we got a drink named after you». And the grasshopper says, «what, Norman?» (he laughs) Being stuck in his own Ego. We could arrange humor on a kind of spectrum from the inclusive to the exclusive. My favorite inclusive joke is: «How do your make God laugh? You tell him your plans.» That’s about the human condition. We all laugh together because we’re all stuck with this. But it’s also critical, it says, that’s how we are. Full of our self-importance, making all sort of plans, none of which will happen. Whereas when you tell nasty jokes about a particular group. Here’s a joke I tell about the French. Why did they have so many civil wars? So that they can win one now and again.

My favourite English joke is about the Englishman sitting in the bar of the «Titanic»: «I asked for ice», he says, «but this is ridiculous.»

(He roars with laughter) I never heard that one. Very, very good.

I’m coming back to the aggression bit. What struck me about watching DVDs of Robin Williams perform as standup is the way he dealt with hecklers. He executed them, so to speak. He was vicious. So there is a certain aggression in a comic when he is on stage, isn’t there?

The trouble is, a heckler can wreck things. You’re up there trying to make people laugh, and you want to do a good job, and to a small extent your ego is at stake. Because if you fail, you’ll look very foolish. And then one person who doesn’t know what he’s doing comes along, he can mess it up.

True.

And when one person can mess it up in front of two thousand people, you can’t extend your kindness to this one person, or you might spoil everyone else’s evening.

How did you react to Robin Williams’ death? You knew him. Were you aware that he had such a dark side?

I knew him a little bit. What I found about Robin Williams was first of all, I liked him. And second he was a very bright and kind man. What I found difficult was that from the moment I met him to the moment we parted he basically did cabaret.

Exactly.

In my experience you couldn’t just have an ordinary chat with him. Now people who knew him better than I, like Eric Idle, said yes, you got past that when you started to know him well. For me, that was not the case. I always wanted to be able to reach out, as the Americans say, make contact with him. The act, the cabaret that he was doing was immensely amusing, but I think it was also in a strange way to avoid making real contact with people.

Yes, he was always on. He had a manic side, and behind that lay deep insecurity.

I think so. At the beginning of a lunch I was hugely looking forward to I asked him a slightly personal question: How it was that he started having real success when he did only the things he really wanted to. Which is interesting. And the next half-hour I felt very uncomfortable as though I’d done something I should not have done. It was a nasty feeling, I didn’t know what I’d done. Because he kept on telling jokes. Real humor is intimate, jokes can be impersonal.

«Salad Days»-Sketch by Monty Python.

Coming back to your person: What I find striking about you is your position towards violence. You are known for your charity work, for your support for Amnesty International, and you abhor the way Quentin Tarantino depicts violence in his films. At the same time you adore Python sketches like «Salad Days» which parodies the films of Sam Peckinpah and is extremely gory.

The first one Tarantino made, «Reservoir Dogs», almost made me feel sick. It was literally like watching someone being tortured. Older people tended to agree with me, and younger people said no, it’s just ironic. I think it all boils down to laughing at pain, and it’s wrong. I don’t think you can laugh at genuine pain unless you’re very sick. And I have to say genuine pain because there are some people who are drama queens and overemphasize their sensitivity. And you can’t have a society run by those people which is why political correctness can be such a threat to humor. So that takes care of that question, doesn’t it?

You are known to love all sorts of animals. Do you think that some of them have a sense of humor?

(Thinks) I think they don’t like being laughed at.

That’s an interesting point. Cats certainly don’t.

No. I was talking to somebody not that long ago who told me that he had been watching a tiger. He had come down to the edge of a river to sip some water. He put his foot on a stone, slipped, and just for a moment swayed in a very undignified way. You see what I mean? Before he regained his balance. And then he looked around as though he wanted to make sure nobody had seen him (chuckles). I thought that was absolutely wonderful. I think dogs and cats can be aware of being laughed at. I don’t think they really understand humor, but they know that that kind of laughing at, that it’s slightly shameful.

One thing I adored about the Python reunion shows in the O2 Arena was the introduction Mick Jagger gave.

Oh, that was good.

When the Pythons did their live shows in the Seventies, all these rock stars were in attendance, John Lennon, the Stones. George Harrison financed «The Life of Brian», groups like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin helped finance «The Holy Grail». What was your relationship to those people at the time?

Nonexistant. I didn’t know anyone. When I did the show in the West End, Cambridge Circus 1963, the producer of that show, the impresario, was called Michael White. And he put together the money for «The Holy Grail». And he had contacts in the rock world and brought in Island Records and Pink Floyd and a couple of others. I never knew anything about rock groups. I used to meet the guys at the time, and they all seemed bright. But it’s not music that appeals to me. But you’re right, most of the money came from them, with «Life of Brian» all the money came from George Harrison. I think it was because they were creative and could understand what the humor was about. It is extraordinary to look back and say that we very nearly did not make «Life of Brian». The two million pounds we needed – not a single studio in the United States was prepared to put them up. And it wasn’t much money for a movie, even in those days. And my experience is, almost all the way through: People in charge very rarely know what they’re doing. While creative people get it way before the suits do.

Monty Python have always laughed at authorities including politicians. What is your take on the last election in your country, the landslide victory of the Tories and David Cameron?

I think that the Americans and the British have fallen under the spell of the economists too much. It’s fair to say sometimes that economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing. In the same way that scientists refuse to take notice of anything they can’t measure: Because people’s per head income is higher that must be a good thing, and that must make them happier. I take that to be an extraordinary simplification. Europe on the whole maintains a better balance than the Anglosaxons. People are more obsessed with money that they’ve ever been. I think that’s a function of the anxiety in the world. Somebody once said when people get anxious they start counting things. That’s right.

No animals were harmed: «Fierce Creatures» (1997).

Obviously you are being recognized wherever you go, you have become an institution.

Not in southern Europe or South America. But certainly in Northern Europe. I’m also surprised that people recognize me in Asia. It varies from country to country.

And do you accept it as part of fame, or does it irritate you?

There’s nothing you can do about it, I just have to accept that when I walk into restaurant in London, quite a lot of people will recognize me, and they will stare a little bit. And what I discovered is: The best thing to do is to come in very quietly, not catch anybody’s eye, sit down and chat to the person you came with. By that time, they had a look, lost interest, and if by then I start looking around I notice very few people are paying attention anymore. The only annoying thing in being recognized is if it happens too much. That is if you are stopped too often like I was stopped yesterday by the guy from Ecuador. You can have an interesting conversation. But if it happens forty times a day it becomes very intrusive.

When your colleague Billy Connolly realized – on the same day – that he had prostate cancer and would develop Parkinson’s disease, he set out to make a documentary about death. What would you do in such a situation?

(He thinks about it) It’s a very interesting question because it reveals so much about your temperament. I wouldn’t do that, I think. I might keep a diary about my feelings, because, you know, people are very upset about death. But the fact is when you’d say to most people, when you’re born, the deal is you die. Would you rather not have been born? Most people would say I’d rather have been born. And when you die, there is the sadness. Or as the Buddhists say, a thousand sorrows and a thousand joys. We don’t talk about death enough. I would love to make a documentary about the possibility of life after death because I personally think something goes on. Although I haven’t the slightest idea what. And I’d try to explain it. If that sounds audacious, the reality is best described by particle physics which nobody understands anyway.

Reading your memoir I noticed the bitterness you still have towards your mother, even though she had a very black sense of humor which is a wonderful thing.

Well, I would take issue with you over that. Because it didn’t feel like bitterness.

Okay.

Somebody quoted Voltaire to me last week: «To the living we owe respect, and to the dead we owe truth.» Now I didn’t say anything about my mother that was untruthful. And if you say bitterness – no, I don’t feel bitter towards her. It’s just that was the way she was. If you have a mother prone to really bad tempers that frighten your father, that will have a lifelong effect on you, even as you grow much older. To describe that to people is not an act of bitterness, it’s an act of history.

Absolutely, you’re completely right. Could you reconcile yourself with your mother before she died? She lived to be a 101 after all.

Yes. One of the great things about the fact that she lived so long is that I really have reconciled myself to her. When I came back from visiting her, my agent told me that he normally would have to cancel any engagement for a couple of days, because I would always be ill. And that was the effect she had on me in my Fifties, you see. So these are the facts. But I don’t feel bitterness because the anger I felt towards her was always submerged. A lot of my ailments had to do with my trying to suppress that anger, not show it. A lot of that anger simply dissipated with time. She also became nicer with time. She also could be mean as she was a lot of the time. The thing that most upset me about her was the way she treated her best friend. They had been friends for fifty years, then her best friend had a fall, a lovely woman called Peggy Glumby, she broke her hip. She suddenly was no longer of use to my mother, and she dropped her like that. So there was kind of a ruthlessness about her which was disgraceful to me. But I liked her particularly black humor, it made me feel connected to her. And what you want from your mother more than anything is a connection. I didn’t have that, and that is the reason, historically speaking, that it took me so long to find the right person to be with. (Tages-Anzeiger)