Candid and brilliantly funny this is the story of how a tall shy youth from Weston-super-Mare
went on to become a self-confessed legend. En route John Cleese describes his nerve-racking
first public appearance at St Peter's Preparatory School at the age of eight and five-sixths
his endlessly peripatetic home life with parents who seemed incapable of staying in any house
for longer than six months his first experiences in the world of work as a teacher who knew
nothing about the subjects he was expected to teach his hamster-owning days at Cambridge and
his first encounter with the man who would be his writing partner for over two decades Graham
Chapman. And so on to his dizzying ascent via scriptwriting for Peter Sellers David Frost
Marty Feldman and others to the heights of Monty Python. Punctuated from time to time with
John Cleese's thoughts on topics as diverse as the nature of comedy the relative merits of
cricket and waterskiing and the importance of knowing the dates of all the kings and queens of
England this is a masterly performance by a former schoolmaster.
