MONTY PYTHON’S JONES DEAD AT 77.
TERRY JONES 1942-2020
Terry Jones, who has died aged 77, was one of the six original members of the Monty Python team.
A swarthy, large-featured man, Jones specialized in the show’s cast of bizarre middle-aged women characters, though he also became familiar as the nude organist who appeared between the main sketches.
Perhaps his most famous creation was the mother in Monty Python’s Life of Brian who yells at her son’s devoted followers: “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.”
Jones also directed three Python films — Life of Brian, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Meaning of Life — and committed to screen the sequence in The Meaning of Life in which he played a gourmand who explodes after a gargantuan meal.
Terence Graham Parry Jones was born Feb. 1, 1942. At Oxford he became involved in the theatre. There, he met Michael Palin. After graduating in 1965, they joined the BBC.
In 1968, Jones and Palin were working with Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam when John Cleese suggested they join him and his writing partner, Graham Chapman, to work on a new show. The BBC commissioned 13 episodes.
After debating suggestions for a title, they decided on Bun, Wackett, Buzzard, Stubble and Boot, only to be told to think again. They opted for Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
The troupe lasted until 1973, after which they continued to work together, though never very harmoniously, on feature films. The Meaning of Life (1983) was their last as a team.
During the filming of Holy Grail, Jones spent hours in the British Library working on what would become Chaucer’s Knight (1980), a controversial but acclaimed study in which he suggested the poet was being ironic about chivalrous knighthood.
In 2003 he co-authored Who Murdered Chaucer? a non-fiction mystery sparked by the absence of the poet from records of the time.
He then hosted popular BBC history programs and was a speaker at literary festivals.
He also wrote for The Observer, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, emerging as a strident critic of the “despicable” Tony Blair and the war in Iraq.
In 1970 Jones married Alison Telfer. In 2005 he said they had an “open” marriage and had both taken lovers.
He began a relationship with Anna Soderstrom, a Swedish Python fan — whereupon his wife threw him out.
Jones, who had been suffering from dementia in later years, is survived by a daughter and son from his first marriage and a daughter with his second wife, Soderstrom.