‘He had a great ability to laugh, and to make others laugh, it was infectious’
TERRY Jones, who has died aged 77, helped revolutionise British television comedy as part of Monty Python’s Flying Circus in the 1970s, with characters ranging from strait-laced city gents to glorious, screechy-voiced old crones, including most memorably the mother of my namesake, who was not Jesus, just a very naughty boy.
Jones wrote many of the classic Python TV sketches with Michael Palin and went on to direct Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), the team’s most memorable and controversial film, as well as co-writing it and playing Brian’s mother and various other roles. Post-python, he enjoyed a successful and wideranging career as a film director and writer, popular historian and author.
My impression from meeting him and most of the other Pythons was of a jolly individual with an infectious enthusiasm and interest in everything around him. He had little of the angst that drove John Cleese and seemed more inclined to laugh at the absurdities of life than rail against them. I remember him laughing pretty much all the time, at everything. Well, almost everything. He was deadly serious in his opposition to the Gulf War. He wrote books for adults and children and one of the adult ones was entitled Terry Jones’s
War on the War on Terror: Observations and Denunciations by a Founding Member of Monty Python.
But he had a great ability to laugh, and to make others laugh, it was infectious, while at the same time making a serious point. The central character in Life of Brian is born in the stable next to Jesus and repeatedly mistaken for him, despite his mother [Jones] telling the crowd that he is not a Messiah. “It’s the whole history of the church in five minutes,” Jones said. “You find somebody to believe in and then within five minutes everyone splits up into factions, and they end up killing each other.”
The film came out in 1979, but was banned in Glasgow for 30 years, even after it had been shown on television. The ban was finally rescinded in 2009, four years after it was voted the greatest comedy film ever in a Channel 4 poll – a scenario that I suspect that would have infuriated Cleese, but amused Jones.
Born in Colwyn Bay, Wales, in 1942, Terence Graham Perry Jones was the son of a banker. He was head boy and captain of the rugby team at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford in Surrey, though he had no opportunity to act at such a traditional establishment where “drama was a synonym for homosexuality”. His earliest ambition was to be a poet. He studied English at Oxford University and joined the Experimental Theatre Club. It staged an annual revue as light relief and Jones wrote material with another undergraduate by the name of Michael Palin
The two of them built up their partnership on the Oxford revues of the early 1960s. The shows attracted impressive audiences and played at the Edinburgh Festival and in London’s West
End. Their final revue together marked a move away from satirical material to the more zany and surreal style of comedy that would characterise Python.
Jones graduated in 1964, Palin in 1965, and they subsequently wrote for, and occasionally appeared in, comedy and satire programmes, including The Frost Report and The
Complete and Utter History of Britain, which featured TV interviews at the Battle of Hastings, an anachronism that would become a favourite device of the Pythons.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus premiered in 1969 and ran for four seasons, pushing the boundaries of acceptability both in content, including nudity, and style, with sketches simply ending when actors walked off. Python became a fullblown phenomenon, with books, records, “concert” tours and feature films.
Continuing his working relationship with Palin, Jones co-wrote the comedy series Ripping Yarns in the 1970s.
Subsequently he wrote and/or directed the
David Bowie fantasy film Labyrinth, Personal Services, a comedydrama about a suburban brothel, inspired by the story of Cynthia Payne, and an adaptation of The Wind in the Willows, in which he played Toad.
On TV he presented the history series Crusades, Ancient Inventions and Medieval Lives. Latterly he described himself as a “quasi-academic” and said he liked laughing and “silly things”.
Critic George Perry once said Jones could speak eruditely on any subject from fossil fuels to Rupert the Bear, while Python colleague Eric Idle good-naturedly maintained he was the most boring man in the world.
One feature that perhaps typified his gallery of Python characters more than any other was their cheeriness, no matter the situation.
He would have made a good Santa Claus, delighting the children with his warmth and silliness, and then enthusiastically explaining the origins of the character to their parents.
In later years he suffered from dementia. Palin said: “The thing that struck me was how Terry reacted to his diagnosis.
“He was very matter-offact about it and would stop people in the street and tell them: ‘I’ve got dementia, you know, my frontal brain lobe has absconded’.”
He is survived by his wife, Alison, and two children.
I remember him laughing pretty much all the time, at everything. Well, almost everything. He was deadly serious in his opposition to the Gulf War