What’s the view from your sofa?
Usually, it’s cricket – I love being indoors watching endless hours of cricket. I like the footie, too. I used to support Chelsea but I got tired of having my weekend ruined by 11 men in shorts.
Are you watching anything else?
Television now seems to be people trying to bonk each other on islands, game shows or news shows, so it’s not terribly interesting. I mean, it’s been stolen by the streamers, which is really bad news. They’ve uninvented television and it’s very sad.
Do you miss watching television?
Growing up, my generation – so that’s all of the Pythons – grew up without television. That’s quite a big difference, rarely observed. We grew up with radio, where the words involve your imagination much more. On radio, the Goons could set the Thames on fire.
Is listening to radio where your love of language comes from?
It meant we had a bias towards language; Terry Gilliam was the one putting in all the imagery. If you look at the Python sketches that are really funny, they all evolved from language – Argument Clinic, for example. Later, as we did on a couple of German shows, they were largely visual sketches. But that was because we had to learn them in German and we didn’t want to talk.
When did you realise that you were on to something with Monty Python?
When we were given our TV show, it was late on a Sunday night and the BBC was just trying to see if anybody was awake after 10pm and the pubs were closed. What was really lovely was that we could please ourselves, there was no one overseeing us, so it was executive-free comedy and all the funnier for it. No executive has ever improved a comedy.
What makes you laugh today?
What South Park is doing with Trump is heroic and I know they’ve done him a lot of damage. There’s a reason Hitler and Trump get rid of the comedians first. They hate being laughed at. So, it’s great that Governor Newsom is taking the p*** out of Trump and his hands. Comedy is saying the right thing at the wrong time. It’s so important. It’s telling truth to power and it’s keeping people sane. I was in the war, we laughed at Hitler and it makes a difference because it diminishes their power. I think it connects with an undercurrent of anti- and that’s vital. Stephen Colbert [who just won an Emmy as host of the US Late Show] was fired by his network very pusillanimously, but he’s got till May to say anything he likes.
You’re prodigious in your output. Where do you get your work ethic from?
I think it comes from boarding school. I was there for 12 years in Wolverhampton, and it wasn’t the most exciting place to be. Reading became a great escape. And the older you got, the more you wanted to read. History and literature is fascinating. I like geography, too. I made my own escape.
You’re touring again. What appeals about performing live?
I’ve always liked getting out there. On that stage, you must make the audience laugh, and if you do, you can surf that laughter; it lifts you up. So I’ve tried to go on stage at least once a year, especially in my later years, because it’s important to scare yourself, and to make sure you’ve still got that skill.
Is it a farewell tour?
Everywhere should always be goodbye. At my age [82], most of your friends are dead, which isn’t great. But it’s important to remember them, and remember them as funny. In my show, I talk about and show clips of old friends and sing songs about them. I sing a song called This May Be the Last Time You See Me, because it might be.
Your song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life gets played at funerals a lot. What will be played at yours?
Well, I used to say Sit on My Face, but my wife said I can’t say that any more.
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