Sometimes it is more telling what a person doesn’t tell you about themselves when writing about their lives, as opposed to what they will. Given that John Cleese’s So, Anyway… ends in 1969 after the formation of Monty Python (with a brief fast-forward to a 2013 reunion), he has omitted an awful lot of material in this 400-odd page book. Which suggests to me that he has either signed a two or three book deal with his publishers, or that he simply believes in the old adage that if you don’t have anything good to say about a person, then don’t say it. Though he does have some vitriol for those who he disagreed with, or otherwise felt hard done by. He refers to fellow Python Terry Jones as an ‘irrational… plump Celtic demi-dwarf’. A housemaster who didn’t appoint him as a prefect receives similar treatment, Cleese calls a ‘dour, grim little gnome’.                 

I am not a huge Cleese fan, but imagined an account of his life to be a good read. Certainly an entertaining read. Cleese began writing and performing comedy in the sixties for the likes of David Frost, Peter Sellers and Marty Feldman, surely that should auger well for a great biography. Not necessarily so. The book goes in to tedious detail about his schoolboy days in Weston-super-Mare, and his family’s frequent moves. His university days were a little more interesting, when he finds his niche with the Cambridge Footlights, and meets his writing partner and future Python Graham Chapman. These revelations aside, the book was just on the bland side.

I realise that Cleese has much disdain for the kind of incautious indiscretions that feature heavily in today’s reality television entertainment, but really, weren’t there any parties with Mick Jagger? I guess not, and he concedes very early in the book that the happiest moments in his life are not connected with work, which should have been a tip off that the resulting narrative may be a bit dull. Though it could also be because Cleese considers himself first and foremost a writer, and the acting was something that he fell into, which whilst helping to make him famous, felt more like a cross to bear: imagine people the world over asking him to do the silly walk (from Python’s famous Ministry of Silly Walks), or calling out ‘Basil’ to him.

Cleese describes his mother as a constant source of tension in the house whilst growing up, and the reason why he has been married four times, as he developed the habit of walking around on eggshells with women. Years of psychotherapy may have helped him, but given that he is still taking the rather out of date Freudian tradition of blaming mummy, I’d say that the years on the couch may have been counter-productive.

It didn’t help matters with his being an only child, and that he was sent to all boys’ schools where he learned nothing about the opposite sex. Still, by the book’s end he is still happily married to his first wife, so there is a wealth of information that didn’t make it into the book. ‘Wealth’ quite possibly being the operative word, I am wagering on at least a couple more volumes to get his audience up to speed, but that could just be the cynic in me speaking. Not too cynical, though, given that his last tour was called the ‘Alimony Tour’, referencing his financial woes following his third divorce.

I hope for all of Cleese’s die-hard fans out there that there is a follow up book, if only to hear more of the fun stories behind the making of his films, rather than the churlish asides of a personality who was never really temperamentally suited to being in the spotlight.

JOHN CLEESE: SO, ANYWAY… has been published by Random House. Hardcover. ISBN 978-0-385-35824-9. RRP $28