by John Cleese
To put this sum in context, you need to remember that on The Frost Report I was getting £70 per week as a performer, and perhaps another £30 for writing. That fee of £2,000, then, represented our first sniff of la dolce vita. That was why Graham and I decided that we would take a fair-sized villa in the sun – our plan being that we would enjoy a holiday recovering from, respectively, medical exams and performance anxiety – that I would then return to London to watch England host the 1966 World Cup, and that, finally, we would settle down back in the villa, me with my nose to the typewriter and Graham with his to a sunbed, and knock out a first draft of the film in five weeks (about the same time as it takes me nowadays to make coffee, sharpen my pencils and get comfortable at my desk).
So far, so good. But a bit further, even better; for David now took me aside and told me he was about to do a late-night show on ITV for Rediffusion, and he invited me to be his sidekick on it. I was delighted to sign on to work with someone with whom relations were always warm and easy, and who was offering me a job that guaranteed an income throughout the autumn, a not too prominent position on air, and, it was hinted, the possibility of being involved in some of the more weighty discussions that were planned for the new show (a final flicker of my Newsweek aspirations).
So off Graham and I went to rent a place in Ibiza (which I should explain did not, in those days, have the Bacchanalian image it subsequently earned; it was regarded in 1966 as a smaller, cheaper, less crowded Majorca), and various friends, like Tim, Humphrey, Marty and Lauretta, came to stay. This was where I started reading the Daily Telegraph obsessively, memorising names and dates, and looking up economic and political terms I didn’t know, so I would appear well informed in the serious interviews I might soon be doing, exactly zero of which ever happened. After a few days Connie arrived from New York; she’d visited me in London once already, but now we could have a proper holiday, and we started to explore the island together.
We noticed that a bullfight was advertised. Neither of us had ever seen one before, and although I suspected that Ibiza might not be the most auspicious place to be initiated into the toreadorean culture, we decided to go along. And it was terrible: inept and embarrassing, especially when the second bull turned out to be a practitioner of Gandhi’s creed of non-violent resistance, completely ignoring attempts to make it cross, and trotting methodically round the ring in search of the exit. Connie’s inclination – as was mine – was to support the underdog, but her cries of support for the bull alarmed me, as I thought members of the toreador’s family might take exception to them. Both of us, though, cheered loudly when our bull was awarded a draw and allowed to live not to fight another day; and we were about to leave when a new toreador suddenly rode into the ring on a beautiful black stallion, followed immediately by a bull of a different stripe: a huge bilious piece of cattle with an idée fixe, which was to toss the horse a few feet in front of him out of the arena, even if it took the entire afternoon.
Connie was soon supporting the horse, while I watched mesmerised as the toreador slowed the horse a little, and then, as the bull almost caught up, leant backwards in the saddle, placing two long darts in the bull’s shoulders, and accelerating away in the nick of time. The manoeuvre was repeated again and again, the toreador always succeeding by the tiniest of margins; I came to the conclusion that, as a way of earning a living, this was more stressful than live television comedy. Eventually, the bull slowed right down, and the bullfighter dismounted, took a cape, and carried out a series of wonderful passes, so varied and spectacular that we found ourselves cheering. Finally, everything stopped. The bull, cross-eyed and quite bewildered, stood looking at the man with the cape twelve feet in front of it, as though it couldn’t quite remember what was supposed to happen next. The toreador now lowered the cape, walked slowly and deliberately up to the massive creature, stopped in front of it, reached out and gently touched its nose, and then, to our astonishment, turned his back and walked slowly away from it, to the sound of a deep, all-embracing silence.
At which point Connie cried out at the top of her voice, ‘Behind you!’
I’m pleased to report this got a laugh. One. From me. The rest of the stadium gasped. The toreador turned slowly round and stared. Did this strange woman really believe he had an acute short-term memory problem? There was, of course, no question that Connie’s advice had been offered with the best of intentions. But the sudden loudness seemed to rouse the bull from its torpor and into the slim-hipped toreador positioned right in front of it, bringing the scores level at Spain 1½, Bulls 1½. (I’m lying about this last bit.)
Connie subsequently maintained that what she had actually shouted was ‘Look out!’ I record this, as I want to include both sides of the story, but I’m sure it was ‘Behind you!’ Either way, it was, to be blunt, a redundant remark.
I feel I should balance this by telling a story against myself. Although I had a facility for ball games (provided they were not too rough) and I could balance umbrellas and billiard cues on my nose or my foot, I had always known that I was awkward and spindly when it came to anything that required a combination of strength, agility and physical courage. So I decided to set myself a challenge. I was now spending a lot of time on the beach for the first time in my adult life, and I soon became aware how irritated I was by waterskiing. Not only did it encapsulate all the skills I lacked, causing feelings of inadequacy and resentment (otherwise known as envy), it also seemed to provide dedicated narcissists with a ridiculously simple way of showing off. There they all were, with their flowing blond hair and suntans and lean bodies being dragged through water by a boat. If any of them had been pulled along a road by a car, people would have thought them unhinged, but at sea they could parade their rather narrow range of skills to an appreciative packed beach, provided only that they were beddable.
So I decided to take some waterskiing lessons, not because I wanted to waterski, but because I wanted to prove to myself how easy and therefore pointless it was. The only problem was the potential for public humiliation, but by booking a lesson first thing in the morning, I reckoned I could get it all over before people began arriving on the beach. Except that on the appointed day the water was too rough, so I had to wait three hours for it to become calm enough, and by the time I was eventually able to start, the throngs had arrived.
I was now acutely aware that I was the only visible entertainment, but had the idea that if I could convey the impression that I had previously suffered an injury, spectators might, out of a sense of tact, not watch me too closely. I therefore acquired a sudden limp, which rather puzzled my instructors (though they might later have thought that it explained my subsequent performance). I donned the skis, sat down into them, grasped the ring by which I was to be towed, obeyed the instruction to sit up as the motorboat accelerated away, but then failed to lean back enough, with the result that I simply disappeared head first into the water in front of me, having gained about two feet. When I’d finished expelling the surprisingly large amount of seawater that my body had acquired during this first trip, I tried again, but because I was now consciously trying to lean back more as the boat surged forward, my skis shot straight up in front of me, and I spun backwards, landing with an enormous splash. By the time I was ready for my third effort, every eye on the beach (except one of Marty’s) was focused on me. This time, as I steeled myself for my third and final attempt (a lesson, thank God, consisted of only three goes), I cleared my mind, remembered to pull on the ring and lean back, but not too far, and to stand up, keeping my back straight and my arms half-braced, not at full stretch, as the boat pulled away, and to relax, above all to relax, and to try to take the full weight of my body on my thighs, and to keep my head up. And the boat surged and I was up, up, UP for about a yard when I let go of the ring, toppled sideways with my arms flailing, and produced the biggest splash of that summer. As I staggered to the shore, believing that my misery was at an end, I became aware of the crowd, who were standing applauding
and laughing, with several of them offering my instructors money to buy more lessons for me.
Connie was very sweet to me when I got back, but Marty, Graham and Tim drifted away almost as though they didn’t want to be seen with me. I suspect they were envious of the laughs I’d got.
Marty, who was always amused by my painful politeness and inability to shake off people who were being a pest, had developed an annoying habit since his arrival. Every morning, after we arrived at the beach, he would wander off on his own, chatting to people at random, until he came across someone – always a man – whom he judged to be outstandingly boring. He would talk to them until he had ferreted out their pet subject – or better, hobbyhorse – and would then say, ‘What a coincidence! I’m here with my best friend, John, and he’s also just crazy about badgers/ garden sheds/ postage stamps/ potholing/ model railways/ plastic forks. You simply must meet him!’ Then he would bring the megabore over and introduce him to me. ‘You’re both crazy about brass rubbing/ moths/ flying saucers/ Tranmere Rovers/ folk music/ bestiality. You’ll have so much to talk about!’ And then he’d retire to a safe distance, and snigger. On one occasion, to his delight, the only way I could escape from a Scrabble fanatic was by swimming further out to sea than he could.
I asked Marty to stop, but unsuccessfully. He passionately believed that the highest form of practical joking was to waste someone’s time. Years later, it occurred to me how many of his sketches involved an annoying man (usually called Mr Pest) doing exactly that.
There was one other incident which I should mention, since, according to Connie, it revealed an aspect of me that was new to her. I’d happily assigned any further involvement with waterskiing to my next reincarnation, but I’d come to the conclusion that there was one other physical skill that I did need to come to terms with – riding a bicycle. I’d never asked my parents for a bike, because it had never occurred to me that I might want one. But the moment we arrived in Ibiza, all the others hired them and were incredulous to find I didn’t know how to ride one. I could get away with not being able to drive, but my inability to cycle provoked an unprecedented level of banter. So one evening I crept away, stole a bike, took it about a hundred yards from the house, and on a rough track in semi-darkness, mounted it, and started falling off. For two hours I persevered, using a cold fury to keep me at it, until I could actually travel a reasonable distance between each crash. Then I went back to the house to look for Savlon and plasters, and discovered that Connie had been observing my struggles. She’d never glimpsed this intense bloody-minded determination before and she said that she now felt she understood me better. Mind you, I’ve never had a lot of it on tap, but it does occasionally emerge, usually to help me to get work done. In other aspects of my life it’s largely absent, except in occasional tussles with crosswords and sudoku. I wish I could focus this intently on my non-professional interests, but making a real effort always seems to interfere with taking things easy, and so I remain a perpetual dilettante.
Graham and I had taken things very easy since getting to Ibiza, and we’d done little to advance the film script. And now, to add further delay, the World Cup loomed. I had tickets for all the games, so, leaving Graham behind, I returned to London, along with Tim and Connie, and then put Connie on a plane back to New York. It was a moment of sadness, neither of us sure when we would see each other again. Once Connie had gone, I sought to pull myself together, and then settled down to the demanding process of watching England play football, beginning with a 0–0 draw with Uruguay so tedious, uninspiring, leadenly predictable, and utterly, irredeemably devoid of promise or hope, that I did a very silly thing. I gave my Cup Final ticket to Bill Oddie.
Yes, I know. But I calculated that the furthest this England team could get (with the help of miracles) was the semi-final. I therefore called Graham, told him I would be returning sooner than expected to start writing – which helped to alleviate a growing sense of guilt over playing truant for so long – and (a glutton for punishment) returned to Wembley for the next ordeal: a game against Mexico, who began the match in an original way. At the kick-off, their centre forward touched the ball to an inside forward, who promptly kicked the ball sixty yards, straight to the English goalkeeper, Gordon Banks. The Mexican team then retreated to a man into their last quarter of the pitch and defiantly twiddled their moustaches. After just ten seconds, a goalless draw was staring us in the face! Stare, stare, stare, it went, for thirty-seven minutes and then . . . Bobby Charlton! He gathered the ball in the centre circle, swayed left, accelerated right and smashed a glorious thirty-yard shot into the top left-hand corner of the Mexican goal, releasing scenes of transcendent joy, and above all . . . RELIEF. The whole stadium was on its feet, leaping about, arms waving, hugging, screaming ecstatically, and as I cavorted, I suddenly felt my knee bump someone. Glancing down, I was startled to see the only two people in the stadium still in their seats, right next to mine: a nicely dressed middle-aged couple smiling happily. I’d barged into the husband.
‘I’m so sorry!’ I said. ‘I’m afraid I got rather carried away.’
He smiled sweetly at me.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’d like to be on my feet too! But I’m afraid my wife doesn’t approve.’
And they looked at each other lovingly.
Ten days later I was sitting in the same seat when the wondrous Bobby Charlton scored both the goals that sent England to the World Cup Final against Germany. That night I was on the plane back to Ibiza. Silly me.
And so Graham and I finally got down to our first film script, and I can say with complete confidence that we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. Of course, we had no idea that we had no idea what we were doing, and that meant that our enthusiasm stayed intact. We had also not done much research, so we knew little about how either pollsters or British politics worked. But we raced ahead anyway, starting at Scene One, confident that from a score of decent three-minute sketches (or scenes) we could construct a hundred-minute film, and so displaying an optimism similar to that of two youths who, having put up a garden shed, now decide to build a cathedral. If this sounds a bit hard on the two of us, it’s because I wish to be honest (and realistic) about the many screenplays that I have set eyes on. With one exception (Michael Frayn’s Clockwise) I’ve never been offered a top-class comedy role, although there have been a handful of screenplays which contained well-written, smaller parts for me. It used to puzzle me why there were so many clueless comedy film writers making a living, until I realised that the producers who were commissioning them had no idea whatsoever how dreadful the screenplays were. Talk about the blind leading the blind . . .
Anyway, Graham and I steamed ahead, with me sitting inside at the typewriter, and Graham lying on the balcony outside, sunbathing and helping out in his inimitable way. It was a lop-sided arrangement but one that never bothered me, because I was such a control freak I liked Graham not being able to see what I was typing. Sometimes I let him win one of our occasional arguments – which were very seldom heated – but then I would actually type out the version I preferred, safe in the knowledge that he would never remember what had been agreed in his favour.
Far more important, I had tracked down a little cafe in the next village, with a television set that was going to show the World Cup Final on the Saturday. I arrived there mid-morning when it was still deserted, had a couple of beers, ordered a sensational conejo au Franco, and then sat, drinking coffee, and watching the room fill up.
With Germans. I was expecting plenty of locals and a sprinkling of tourists, even in an obscure little outpost like this, but not half the population of Dortmund. In fact, I came to the slow realisation as they poured in and sat around me . . . that I was the only Englishman there. They were very friendly, but there were many of them, and all my exits were cut off. What strategy could I employ? It was too late to pretend that I was German. I’d greeted the early arrivals with ‘Guten Tag! Ich liebe Deutschland’, but within a few seconds
found myself conversing in English, in which they were all fluent. Perhaps, I hoped, they would think that I was an English-speaker but not actually English. A Rhodesian, possibly, or a Canadian, there just out of curiosity, to try to pick up the rules of this so-called ‘Beautiful Game’. But I knew that I lacked the self-control to fake an attitude of benevolent detachment while watching what was arguably the most important event since the Crucifixion, so I plumped for the role of the ultra-sporting, frightfully decent Upper-Class Twit, and consequently found myself shouting ‘Oh, well played, Germany!’ when Helmut Haller opened the scoring in the twelfth minute, and managing to restrain myself, when Geoff Hurst equalised, to ‘Good show! Bit lucky though!’ My fixed grin and easy manner did not betray the writhing contortions of my hands and legs beneath the table, however, and when Martin Peters put us ahead twelve minutes from the end, I clapped a little too violently; I tried to compensate with ‘Come on Germany! Give us a game!’ but that seemed to strike the wrong note. The most testing moment, though, came in the last minute of normal time when Uwe Seeler fouled Jackie Charlton, and the pig-dog dolt of a Swiss referee, finally revealing his Nazi credentials, had the gall to penalise England, and then ignored Schnellinger’s blatant handball, allowing a Prussian swine named Weber to draw the game. I sat there applauding warmly, as a horde of fat, arrogant, sausage-eating Krauts capered around me, spilling beer and celebrating their racial superiority.
Still, we nailed them in extra time, didn’t we? Disputed goal, my arse! When the final whistle sounded I rose slowly to my feet, shrugging apologetically, smiling wryly and nodding, and managed to get clear of the cafe and its complaining ‘Never crossed the line!’ Bosch clientele without actually saying that I, personally, never thought that they’d lost the Second World War either.