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Most Brits became acquainted with John Cleese in 1969 when he,
Graham Chapman,
Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin launched their
surrealist comedy show, Monty
Python's Flying Circus, on the
BBC. The BBC had rejected some other names of the show that the team
suggested including ""A Horse, a Spoon and a Bucket", "The Toad
Elevating Moment" and "Owl Stretching Time". The Monty Python team wrote
and and performed their own sketches. The TV tseries spawned
touring stage shows, films, numerous albums, several books, and a stage
musical as well as launched the members to individual stardom with John
Cleese the most prominent.
John left the Flying Circus at the end of the third season,
He later explained that he felt he no longer had anything fresh to offer
the show. He was also finding Graham Chapman, who was at that point in
the full throes of alcoholism, difficult to work with. According to an
interview with Idle, "It was on an Air Canada flight on the way to
Toronto, when John (Cleese) turned to all of us and said 'I want out.'
Why? I don't know. He gets bored more easily than the rest of us. He's a
difficult man, not easy to be friendly with. He's so funny because he
never wanted to be liked. That gives him a certain fascinating, arrogant
freedom." However, John collaborated with one or more of the other
Pythons for decades to come, including the Python movies released in the
mid-70s to early 80s
When he left the Monty Python, John was approached by the BBC to do
something else, and he and then-wife Connie Booth who was a regular
guest on Monty Python's Flying Circus collaborated on
his next television series Fawlty Towers (1975), n which John
based his character on a proprietor he had met while staying with the
other Pythons at a hotel in Torquay, England. According to John,
the hotel manager was called Donald Sinclair, someone Cleese considered
to be the rudest man he had ever encountered.
John has the most prolific solo career of all the Pythons, with 59
films, 22 TV shows or series six video games, and a number of
commercials/ John and Terry Gilliam are the only members of Monty
Python to be nominated for Oscars- both for Best Original Screenplay,Terry for
Brazil (1985), and John for A
Fish Called Wanda (1988).
A recently discovered species of lemur, avahi cleesei, was named
after John in honor of his support for endangered primates, which
figure prominently in his movie, Fierce Creatures (1997).
So to celebrate the birthday most
famous member of the Pythons who himself is becoming an endangered
species, what could be more appropriate than Poached Garlic
Python Steak? A caveat - boneless python meat is a little pricey ranging
from $50.00 to $90.00 a pound. We suggest pairing it with the delicious
Monty Python and the Holy
Grail (1974).
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Poached Garlic Python Steak |
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