ScrambledMess

Hello mr. Cleese. I'd like to start with the usual 'thank you's' and say I've been an admirer of your work since I was about 9 years old and of all the comics around, you probably made me laugh the most and Fawlty Towers never failed to cheer me up even during the most difficult times. That's the first big thank you. But what's so interesting about you is that besides the fact that you are a very skilled performer, both verbal and physical, you've always been a writer who performs his own material. And it's very clear you always took great care to the writing before it got on the screen.

I've seen some of your lectures on creativity. You've not only found a very captivating way of explaining your theories on creativity but it's also completely accurate. I had been writing for some years before I discovered your method of the tortoise enclosure and discovered that it truly made a huge difference. So thank you for all that and much much more!

I've always wondered about the writing within Monty Python. I know you did your usual Python writing with Graham Chapman, but you also wrote some material with (at least) Michael Palin and Eric Idle. I don't know if you wrote things with Terry Jones. You've talked alot about what it was like to write with Graham, but what was it like for you to write with the others and was your role in those combinations a very different one from the one you had with Graham?

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this and I hope you're having a lovely day.

Hi Norm, big fan of your work, especially your novel and the podcasts. One of the things I admire about you is that you not only do many things, like acting, stand-up, interviewing and writing, but you also do all of them very well. Yes, even acting!

I once heard you say you found writing your book incredibly difficult, which is kind of surprising, considering when you look at the interviews you do or your podcast you are always brilliant at improvising, or as your brother once said, 'off the cuff badinage'. I think the novel certainly shows you worked extremely hard at it, and it absolutely paid off, but for a man who makes it all seem so easy, why would you say writing the book was so difficult?