Lifelong friend tells of the ‘ joy brought to all of us’

TERRY JONES’ fellow Python, Eric Idle, said his friend’s death was “a cruel and sad thing”.

But he added: “Let’s remember just what joy he brought to all of us.”

Idle, who had in the 1960s been a member of the Cambridge Footlights revue with Pythons John Cleese, Graham Chapman and the future members of The Goodies, said he loved Jones “the moment I saw him on stage” at the Edinburgh Festival.

“So many laughs, moments of total hilarity onstage and off we have all shared with him,” he said.

“It’s too sad if you knew him,but if you didn’t you will always smile at the many wonderfully funny moments he gave us.”

Stephen Fry, David Walliams and Adrian Edmondson were among the other comics paying tribute to Jones, with Fry praising him as a “wonderful talent, heart and mind”.

Walliams wrote: “Thank you Terry for a lifetime of laughter.”

Shane Allen, BBC controller of comedy commissioning, wrote that it was a “sad day to lose an absolute Titan of British comedy” and “one of the founding fathers of the most influential and pioneering comedy ensembles of all time”.

Bradford-born Edmondson remembered Jones’s appearance in an episode of his sitcom, The Young Ones, in the 1980s.

He wrote: “Terry Jones was the only Python who agreed to appear. It was like affirmation from God himself.

“This was the man who’d directed what was, and still is, the funniest feature film ever made. We loved him for it, and always will.”

Jones pursued a writing and directing career beyond Python.

His other credits included The Wind In The Willows in 1996, with performances from Idle, Palin and Cleese, the 2015 comedy Absolutely Anything, and Personal Services, a 1987 romp starring Julie Walters and inspired by the headlines surrounding the London “madam”, Cynthia Payne.