John Cleese | Club Random with Bill Maher
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LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. So you live in England now? I live in hotel rooms. No. Two years ago, I was in 46 weeks in hotel rooms. What did the Romans ever do for us? The woke people have not yet spotted that's a pro-imperialist sketch. Who's that tall glass of water sitting in my bar?

How are you? My leash. Really. Forgive me not getting up. It takes me 20 minutes. I wouldn't let you get up. How are you? I have a book coming out.

Oh! They just started the, put out the, you know, like the first galley where you've done, I have a blurb on your last book, I think. What? I have a blurb on your last book. Yeah, I think you do. I think you do. I wrote a little book on, I wrote a little book on creativity. Have you seen that? It was about Cornell, when you were at Cornell. Oh, that stuff. Yes, that's right. That's right. That was the lectures I'd done there. But I've written a little book on creativity.

It'll take you 45 minutes to read. Well, then I'm going to read it five times. Because I'd love to know what you think of it. I'd love to know where you agree and where you don't agree. I can't imagine not agreeing with you. I don't think you will disagree, but I'd still like to hear what you have to say. Because I've read tweets of yours which were commenting on things I've said. Yes. We do see...

So there's only five. I didn't use four. It was my last one, but I said, no, no, no. I'll get more. I wanted you to have it before you. Oh, I love it. No, no, no. And it has that that you quoted. That essay is in here. Oh, really? It was about...

The younger generation thinking they could reinvent human nature. You remember it. Yeah, that was a long time ago. Well, the communists thought they could reinvent human nature. Yes, that's right. With, like, man is not selfish. Yes. And I compared it to, like, now they think they can reinvent human nature somewhat biologically. Yes, yes. I was reading today about couples now who do not want...

the child to be referred to, the baby, the infant, as a boy or a girl until they can decide for themselves. That's not a joke. I know. I know. I mean, it is. Well, you don't know whether to laugh or cry, really. I'm being quite serious because it is such a serious matter deep down. And it's so crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

One of the aspects, I always say with woke, I'm not pro-woke or anti-woke. I'm pro some bits of woke and anti some bits of woke. But one of the most extraordinary things they seem to believe is that if you have a feeling, then that's it. You shouldn't examine it, which kind of neglects

Everything since Freud, which is quite a long time, and most of the great philosophers, and certainly the religious leaders, all of whom say the art of meditation is a slow digestion of your feelings to discover what's beneficial for you and what you can better do.

Let go. The art of meditation? Well, what's part of meditation, isn't it? Being with your thoughts? I thought that was all of it. Yeah. Do you do it? A bit. Yeah. I would say I'm a meditation school dropout. I mean, like I've tried it.

But, I don't know, there's always something better to be doing, quite frankly. I know I'm hearing the greatest, and I'm missing out on the thing that would keep me happier and healthier, but...

It's just so hard to do it sometimes, isn't it? Because the silly bits of us think that something else is more urgent, which it can't possibly be, but it just looks like it at the time. Well, it's a little like how people sometimes say, and I say it myself, and certainly you understand also because as you get older, the time goes faster. Yes. And so people say, you know, I wish I could make time slow down. And I always say to them, oh, you want to make time slow down? Go to prison. Ha ha!

Time will go very, it will really slow down. I'll tell you about one other time it goes slowly is the first two or three days on a holiday. And it's because nothing is familiar. You're right. So you start taking more in. You become more perceptive. By the second week, you know where the chairs are.

And you're not interested in looking at it anymore. And then it starts speeding up again. But I think if you can do that, if you can actually slow it down by going to different places and having different responses to things, I think that slows it down.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a paradox you could never work your way out of, which is that when things are good, it goes fast. And when things are bad, it goes slow. So either way, you're fucked, you know. But I think one of your old bandmates,

I had a joke about getting older. I remember, I think it was Michael Palin, maybe? God. And it was like, as you get older, time just goes so much faster. So in the morning, you get up to go to shave, and you look in the mirror and go, you again? Right. And it's kind of true. You're like, wow. I've got to the point now, which will sound very strange, when I notice how bored I get with myself.

I suddenly think, oh, shut up, please. You know? You see the same repeating the same patterns, and you just start-- Stop it. But don't people have a wife for that? Yes. The main purpose of-- very important creatures. I'm on number four. I tried three Americans, and then I gave up on Americans.

And I got an English one who was quite wonderful. Oh, great. And ridiculously funny. How long has that been going on? About 15 years. Oh, so that's great. Yeah. That's like a golden anniversary out here. This is how we met, which you will throw up, but women love it. I'd been in the dentist's chair for an hour and a half. I was in an awful, foul mood. I was walking back to my house.

And I saw this tall blonde, and she was walking with that slight sway. You know what I mean? And I remember thinking, tuck up, Todd. She's probably a Russian hooker. I'm not even looking at her. And as we walked past each other, we sort of glanced. We took two more steps, and then we both turned around. If either of us had not turned around, we wouldn't be together. So a tall blonde with an ass on her.

Well, I couldn't see that from the front. What I saw was this sort of slightly beautiful swaying movement, and I thought, stuck it. But John, you must have seen swaying movements many times in your life. There must have been something about this one that made it unique.

Well, you see, you know, I wrote a couple of books about psychology. And the guy I wrote them with, or co-wrote them with, he was a psychiatrist. He was called Robin Skinner, and he founded the Institute of Family Therapy in London. And he told me that on the first day when people got together for the training to be family therapists, they would be told to just circulate, I don't know, be 15, 20 or in a room, not speak.

And then to choose someone just on the basis of the face that they felt they would like to have had in their family. In their family. In their family. Not dating. Not date. No, no. In the family. In the family. They would like to recognize, I would like to have had that person in my family. Or she reminds me or he reminds me of someone in the family. And then they'd sit down.

And they would discover that they had similar emotional histories, like a parent died young. Do you see what I mean? Sure. And Robin said he was skeptical until he did it the first time, and there were four people left over at the end who hadn't paid off. And Bill, they were the four orphans.

Okay, so... I mean, think of that. That's extraordinary. But going by this theory then, say...

Say there's a man who's had four marriages. We're not going to say any one in particular. And three of them did not work, and one of them did. Are we to conclude from this, by this theory, that the three that didn't work were because they did not have similar emotional background? Oh, yeah. No. Really? Do you think that's what it is? Well, no, they had similar ones, but in this case, it was workable. But what I'm saying is I think you can pick up an enormous amount of information from somebody just like that.

I find now almost the embarrassing thing is I know within 10, 15 seconds of meeting someone whether I want to get to know them better or not. Right. As you get older, that is something that does...

Yeah, take just such a short amount of time. Very. And it's funny because they think they can put it over, you know, young people. And they don't realize that you're onto them right in 30 seconds. And they're still doing it an hour later. But I'll tell you something. I was just thinking about this because I'm meeting some of your staff here, people you've been with for years. I'd like to get to know almost all of them better.

Just straight away, I just thought this is my kind of... Well, great, because I haven't done it. You can get on with them so well because you see so little of them. I love them all, but I'm always... We tape this on a work night. I have a job that I have to kill myself to... You know what that grind is like. Oh, yes. I mean, I'm sure you've had those nights when it was like... Because you don't want to ever, and you never did...

You don't want to, more than the money or anything, you don't want to disappoint the audience. Absolutely. If you want to know what the ultimate motivation is, I think, for a show, people like us, not schmucks, but people like us,

It's that. I will not disappoint these people on Friday night. I don't want to disappoint them. I always feel on a stage, I want them to feel they've got their money's worth. Oh, money's worth totally. Right. But especially people who are like, you know, you're my Friday night date. I watch you every, you know, they can't wait. We still have, our show is still one of the few appointment television shows for a couple of million who watch, of the people more than that who watch it, though. Yeah.

They really want to see it then. So if people are that devoted to it, and lots of people next day, I watch it on my treadmill at 8:00 on a Saturday morning. I'm like, wow, good for you. I wouldn't do anything at 8:00 Saturday morning. But OK. But I just don't want to disappoint them. So whatever I have to do short of killing a guy,

I think when I started, what spoiled the enjoyment of what I was doing was the feeling, I just don't want to be bad. I was more driven by the thought, I don't want to be bad than I want to be really good. And you guys never were. And even you as a solo artist, you're very much like a band, like a band like the Beatles, where all the albums were good. You didn't do a ton of movies, but they were all great.

Monty Python is-- Michael Caine's right. If you do a few terrible ones, nobody remembers them. He said-- Michael Caine said, do every role you're ever offered. Because if it works, everyone knows about it. And if it's no good, it disappears immediately. Everyone forgets it. Yeah, unless it's like eight years of that in a row, and then you're Nick Cage. OK? So I don't-- I'm not going to say that that theory works completely. Michael Caine was a special kind of dude. Yeah.

But he also made some terrible movies. Of course. Well, nobody can make 100 movies. Because it's quite difficult making a good movie, which the critics seem to forget. Whereas being a critic is actually rather easy. No. What year was Fish Wanda? Fish called what? 18. 88 or something. But I mean, that was like a big. 87. 87, 88, something like that. Yeah.

And I just remember thinking, oh, wow, that's very similar to like, you know, Don Henley was in the Eagles and now he's got some great solo albums, you know, which was a great... Well, yeah, I mean, I wanted to do something. All the others of Paisley's, Graham had made two, Phil's, Michael had made two, Eric had made one. Yeah. Terry Gilliam had made about 33, very, very, very expensive ones. I was about...

I was the only one who hadn't made a movie. I think there was one other. Oh, no, no, Jonesy made one. So I thought I'll try and do one of my own. It was 14 drafts, Bill, because the huge advantage that I have over other comedians is that I believe that it's harder than they do. So I work at it more. Yeah.

Well, I mean, again, not to beat this dead horse, but I honestly think it's not just tequila. You want some? Yeah, I'd love a taste. It's not... I like tequila more and more these days. Yeah. Knock yourself out. What am I going to have? Is that a little glass? That's a shot glass. That's a shot glass. Do you want a shot of it? I bet this is quite a good one. Just like a big boy.

Cheers. Thank you so much. What a pleasure it is. Are you kidding? I've been looking all week. Good. I've been thinking about this. I mean, obviously not specifically because I obviously don't prepare anything, but that's the attempt of this endeavor to be completely. There you go. Oh, my God, that's good. I'm going to get the name off that one. Really? So that's how you drink?

I don't drink much now because my body can't absorb it. But I like tequila and I like vodka. Everything else I find a bit too heavy. I've even slightly gone off wine, which I used to love because it's, I feel the heaviness of it now. I mean, all populations drink, of course, but, well, maybe not the Amish or, I don't know, Iran. It will probably get you in trouble, but they do. Yeah.

But the British, wow, they can drink. Oh, they can drink. I mean, like, they're up there with, I don't know who, Russians or Poles. I don't know. Like I say, everybody drinks. But British, Irish, I mean, I've been in those pubs where the person is just passed out on the stool, and it's not something anyone else is even noticing. They're just fully out and still being served. Do you think, I often thought that there's some similarity between

The Japanese and the British, you know? Small, slightly isolated items. Yes, I thought of that too, yes. Very inhibited. The best book I ever read about British inhibition was Remains of the Day. Oh, yeah. You remember, by Ishiguro? I remember. Was it a Merchant Ivory movie? Yes.

Yeah. And I wonder if it isn't about when you, you see, if you crowd people together, they kind of have to have better manners because otherwise fights will break out.

So you learn how to become a big inhabitant. Yeah, the Japanese, all this stuff, and the British. Yeah, well, you haven't been on the subway. No, that's true. I mean, their main form of sex is masturbating on the subway. I mean, I don't think I'm talking out of school.

Well, he's certainly not talking in school. That's true, too. No, I love the Japanese, and of course, I mean, they do have fun. There's a lot of sort of ritual, and it's very like the English upper class, that extraordinary sort of almost too well-mannered, which kills real feeling. If you consider marrying your phone a ritual, because they do that, too. They're very into, like, you know, relationships with people

you know,

Not a lot of them, but yeah. Or gadgets. Well, marry your phone. They literally, I mean, this is a movement. All that thing, I remember going into New York when I was first in America in 1964, and I began to notice it after a time, this extraordinarily unnecessary thank you. No, thank you. No, no, really, thank you, all that. And I was sitting in Los Angeles, almost the first time I was there, I was at a big lunch,

And there was an English guy, and I was sort of watching him. And he wanted the salt. But everyone was talking, and he couldn't reach it. And he pointed at the salt and said, sorry.

That's how an Englishman asks for the soul. Well, what about tennis? You know, they say, thank you before you even get the ball. You know, that's the way you anticipate. So there's all this routine to stop people hitting each other.

Deliberate politeness. And Bill, that's why they need the alcohol. You see what I mean? But don't all societies, I mean, if you studied Joseph Campbell, that kind of those, have you read those books? Some of them. Yeah, but you know the general gist we're talking about. We're talking about behavior across societies. They've studied many cultures. They'll study, I don't think we use the word primitive anymore. No.

When we were kids, you could say a primitive culture, you know, a tribe. Oh, you can't say that. No, absolutely not. Living in rolled up holes. The Wild West was a height of sophistication. What was it? What's the Wild West? Yes, exactly. No, I mean, I absolutely respect people who worship mud and

Living rolled up balls of straw. And I will fight anyone who says they're not the equal of any culture. I'm not even saying where these people are, so you can't get me on that. But, oh, shit, what were we talking about? Well, we're talking about the importance of

to uptight people who are too well-mannered of alcohol, because that's the one way they can let go. Oh, cultures. No, we're talking about the things cultures do to keep the peace. These are all the things... I had a friend who went to prison once, and I said, was it rough? And I'm sure there are prisons, and most prisons are rough and horrible, but he said, actually...

The people I was in there with, maybe I was just lucky, they just really wanted to get out. It wasn't like a maximum security prison, but it was a prison. So everybody was actually super polite because they didn't want to fight. Now, that's certainly not the way a prison is in every single television show and movie ever made, where it's just this hellscape. And it probably is. But that also could be the case.

You could go to prison, and it could be that people just want to do their time and go. But that's a morbid future to think about. That's interesting. I hadn't thought of it like that. No, I hadn't either until I talked to this guy. But the point of the society thing is that cultures have to develop some sort of rituals that,

For getting along. Yes, so that you're always greasing the, you know, so nothing. And of course, we now live in a culture where politically we do the exact opposite. You know, it's always picking and...

polarizing until we're at this you know we're at a real Sarajevo kind of moment where yeah oh I mean it can happen Sarajevo hosted the Olympics in 84 and seven years later you were getting sniped out if you went out for milk yeah you know that that was I was there for a film festival I learned something is that right I guess it's about 20 years ago so after the war maybe 50 years after the war after the war

And I was there, and they showed me the underground tunnels and explained that the Serbs had been up there lobbing shells down, telescopics, shooting people across the street. And, you know, Bill, it really taught me a lot, this. They said, do you know what we did? I said, no. They said, we found an underground car park. We turned it into a cinema. And we used to go in the evenings and watch comedy. I said, what? They said, yes, just comedy.

And they watched a lot of Python because they liked that sense of humor in the Balkans. And I said, well, what? And they said, well, when we came out, we felt better. And I said, but nothing had changed. And they said, no, but we felt better. And I suddenly realized that comedy has a very laughing, has a very positive effect on people. It moves them to a more positive part of their mind. Oh, wow.

And music. You know, you need both, I think. Some people don't, but I certainly suspect people who don't laugh or, like Trump, never really laughs. No, of course not. That's a psychopath, you know? Yeah. Really, I mean, that's what... No, no, we're right. It's a very psychopathic kind of thing to do. You cannot... I don't think that's kind of true. I've never seen that. I mean... No, no.

Because it's a moment of real relaxation. But you can't go too far with this. I remember Bono, who I adore, but he did get up before our Congress and suggest sending comedians to ISIS when that shit... Do you remember this? What? Do you remember this? It was all in the press. I forgot the name.

You remember it, though. I'm not making it up. Oh, no, I don't remember. Yes. And I have his statement, and again, I love him, but the statement is like, you know, he prefaces it by saying, I'm dead serious about this. That's right. He even blocked that passage. He couldn't even see that. That was very funny. And I remember thinking, you know,

Why don't we try musicians first? Everybody loves music, right? ISIS, music, it's a no-brainer. And then we'll send in the comedians, right? You take the band over there. Everybody loves the band. You know, in fact, do what you did here. Remember when you put the album on the computer even though we didn't ask for it? Do that with ISIS. They'll love it.

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New Year, healthier skin. That's one skin, healthier skin, say healthier and younger for longer with one skin and laughing also works. I read a definition of humor which really stuck with me. And what they said was that having a sense of humor is the ability to suddenly see a change of context. Do you like that? Yeah. You suddenly see that it's like a pun. Yeah. You suddenly see that there's another meaning.

And the people who have the most difficulty with context are people who are often very literal-minded. Right. And they can only see the one meaning.

So they have terrible trouble with irony. I once entered into a relationship with someone who was brilliant, but very literal like that. It was the dumbest thing a comedian can do because you don't want someone

It's like, of course that's not true. It's a joke. And they weren't trying to be obstinate. It was just like a scientific way of thinking, which is fine for this person. But why I did this? Well, I know why. But the literal minded are very strange because, I mean, we used to talk about it a lot in England. For them, we're strange. We're strange. Well, we're strange to them. Of course. Of course.

OK. But you've got people who don't get sarcasm and who don't get irony and who don't understand that understatement can be funny. Right. And they don't understand that you can exaggerate for purposes of humor. So they just have the one meaning of what's being said, which is, in the case of irony, the actual opposite of what the person meant. It's great when someone in an audience heckles you

And it's obvious they didn't get the joke. My friend George Wallace used to tell this story about he was on stage where I started out at Catch a Rising Star, and it's July. And he wants to get the light. He's got to wrap up his act. And he says, well, I'm going to go home and take my Christmas lights down. And the guy yells out, you were a little late, pal. Now, that's not getting sarcasm. Oh.

And irony is even harder to, you know, you're winnowing your audience the more you, you know. But the trouble is, and I think it's one of the things where I'm not pro-woke, is that you now have people with very little sense of humor trying, and who have difficulty with changing context, trying to determine what material people with a good sense of humor are allowed to laugh at.

It's almost like somebody who's colorblind being shown a color chart. And he says, I can't see those colors. I can't see colors there.

So nobody ought to be able to see them. And anyone who says they can is phony. It's very worrying that that kind of literal mindedness becomes serious. And the more anxious people are, the more literal minded they are. I couldn't agree more. I'm fighting this every day. But can I try to talk you into a different view of the word woke? Because I get what you're saying.

agree literally woke used to mean alert to injustice and who's not for that and who's against being kind the only thing that annoys me is that they do set tender behave as though they invented kindness about four years ago of course right but woke itself it had a definite racial context as it should yes

as it should, because there was a specific group of people we needed to be more woke about. Yes. And, of course, you can always get more woke. That's the thing. But there comes a point where they're just...

keeping their jobs, being the woke police. Because like-- and they get on the cases of people who obviously are very awake to all these issues that are important to them. But we don't bend the knee when it comes to calling out the bullshit. Right. Is that right? Well, yes, because I think the funny thing is microaggressions. I've thought of setting up-- Oh, microaggressions, yeah. I thought of setting up an academy where people could be taught

to notice microaggressions so that in the alternate course of life, they wouldn't notice them and they'd be perfectly happy. Now we can train them to be super sensitive so that when there is a microaggression, they can get upset about it and try and discredit the person who committed the... I mean, is this a recipe for happiness? I mean, the level of fragility has... I'm watching this series on... I think it's on Apple...

I don't know, streaming is so crazy. Forgive me if it's somebody else, but I think it is. It's Tom Hanks' Spielberg's show about the airmen in World War II. Oh, yeah. Called Masters of the Air. Yeah. Problematic title. But okay. So...

You know, it's about the American bomber wing that was based outside of London in 1943. Which suffered the most appalling casualties. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And the British only flew at night. I learned this in the show. And they thought we were insane. Insane. Because they were suicide missions, and they kind of were. And they kept getting up in them. That's what Catch-22 is about. The great book Catch-22 is, you know, Sarian is a bomber pilot.

Because that's what I think Joseph Heller lived that. Yeah. And they kept raising the number of missions. It was like, if you could live through 25 missions, which odds were not good, you have... But the odds were worse than not good. Right. I mean, the odds were against you getting through the missions. Right. But I'm saying, so if you got to your 25...

And they told you, that's what you have to do, and then you can go home. And then they raise it to 30. I know. To test a man to that degree, and they, you know, and of course in Catch-22, he tries to tell them he's crazy because that's the way to get out of it. But if you know that you're crazy, then you can't, then you're not crazy. That's some catch. He says, no, that's some catch, that Catch-22. Yeah.

Brilliant. Brilliant book. Absolutely. Also, I like the movie. Do you remember the movie? Yes, Mike Nichols. Mike Nichols, 1970. That was some great stuff. So where were we? We were on something interesting before we got boring.

What were we on? It was the whole idea. What I was going to say was that the woke bit that I don't agree with is the absolute opposite of Stoicism. Now, I've read a bit about Stoicism, and it was an extraordinarily powerful book.

set of beliefs, which is basically about you only try to control what you can control and you accept that there's an enormous amount that you can't control. Well, that's Eastern. Hmm? That's Eastern. That's Eastern, too.

Yeah. But I mean, it was Rome and Seneca and all that was, right? Marcus Aurelius. They were all Stoics. Stoics were Greek for the 5th century BC Greece. And then you have people like Montaigne.

And it always comes where people are living in societies where everything is very unpredictable. And everyone's a bit scared about what's going to happen next. But it's a sort of way of coping with that situation, which is about being, in a sense, as strong as possible. Whereas the wokery is worshipping weakness. It's saying you're very, very weak. And therefore, you can control everyone else. Yes? Of course. But here's the thing about the word woke. You...

My view on that is they lost it. You can lose a word. Yes, it used to mean alert to injustice. And we're all- Particularly racial injustice. And particular racial injustice. And we're all down with that. Yeah. The word and the people who are the social justice warriors migrated to a crazy place, many of them. Many of their beliefs, in my view, and many people's views.

or just 10 subway stops past where anything made sense. I mean, it all starts out good. Absolutely. And then it just goes to this place. And I think a lot of it is the generations always have to be the opposite of the previous one. But also, it's partly that people get an idea, and then they think not that this is an important idea, but that this is the only important idea. Right.

You see what I mean? Yes. Like the French existentialists who've affected a lot of American academia now, who have one good idea and then say it's the only truth in the universe. Like you say all language is about power. Well, you can see all relationships are being about power if you want, if it helps.

You can say, well, my relationship with my cat, as I'm much more powerful than my cat. It's not the only thing. I've always maintained that there are three phases to any relationship. Courtesy, that's when you first know somebody. Like, if you can't even be courteous,

then there's nothing to build on here. You have to establish as a human, do you not return calls? Whatever, any of that shit. Good manners. Right. Second level is power. And power is when one person likes the other person more or less. Whoever likes the person more has less power. Yep. And when you get past that, love. Courtesy, power, love. I like that.

Go on about the second to third stage. Well, right. I mean, there is a time when you're like, you could become an asshole because, and girls do it to guys who are like completely pussy whipped and guys do it to girls. And they just pig out on sort of having that power as opposed to,

renouncing it, like George Washington when they offered them that third term. Just say no. Sometimes you just got to go, hey, I've had. And when you love somebody, you would never do that. You would never lord it over them. So I don't know. I mean, we were talking before about why three relationships fail and one works. I think what I've found is heaven is zero pressure.

Zero obligation. So many guys are always feeling like they're disappointing someone and they should be doing better and they're not doing good.

Oh, my God. I read this. There was this article. I think it was in The Atlantic. It was always a book. Maybe it was reviewed. It was called On the Divine Tedium of Marriage. Did you hear about this? Did you hear about this book? No. Oh, my God. That's funny. I have to send you the article at least. It was like a big thing for a minute. Divine tedium. On the Divine Tedium of Marriage. Very heavy on the tedium. Yeah.

I keep reading, like, where's the divine part? I mean, this woman takes like a 300-page dump on her present husband. It was like, there are lines in it like, do I hate my husband? Oh, yes, absolutely. And this like very matter-of-factly says there's no married people, people who have married at least seven years who don't see marriage the way she is describing it. The husband is...

He's a bore to her. She goes on and on. In the morning before he's had his coffee, it's like a lump of dirty laundries on the couch. Really, this is how she's talking. This is the divine tedium. And then he sneezes. It sounds like a horn in your face. I mean, it's like, it is so bad. And like, there's a little bit later. Once in a while, I remember, he's the handsome professor I fell in love with, and I'm like,

Okay, so he's also boring, he's a pussy who complains endlessly about his bad knee, which he says is something she would have filed under not worth mentioning. It is like such a shiv. And like, I read this and thought, oh my God. But I guess that's what a bad marriage is. And I know so many guys are like, they just feel like they're always in the doghouse. Like they're not doing enough, giving enough emotionally,

And the lady who lets you just be you. Do you know the important thing is liking. One person I believe very much, a guy called Morris Nicol, who was trained in a sense by George Gurdjieff, and he said, you know, affection lasts. Love can, but genuine affection can continue indefinitely. And that's what I think the key is, is to find somebody you really like.

Yeah, I mean, there's some, I forget who it was, there's some quote like, love can either burn or it can warm you. It can't do both. You know, it is always... But we're all a bit crazy sometimes. And if you're with someone who loves you, he or she thinks, oh, he or she's a bit crazy today. I'll just have to manage them and get them through the next 24 hours.

Not they're a bad person. You know what I mean? They're just in an odd mood today. I just have to help them through it. And that's affection. I mean, maybe this is crazy. I never heard any other person say this, so maybe they'll kill me for this. But I've always heard that if you're in a relationship, you have to know how to fight. This is what all the shrinks say on television anyway. You have to know how to fight. I'm going to just say no. No.

I don't want to fight. And I'll know it's the right person, or maybe I have experiences where it's a mystery on this show, my life. But you never fight. Never. I don't want to know how to fight. There should not be fights. There should not be fights at all. If you can sit down...

And that's important, the sort of calmness of sitting down and just chatting at a nice distance, not too far apart, but reasonably intimate. And you just lay things out. This is what I do. This is what I feel. This is what I want. You know, people have difficulty saying what they want. And if they could just say gently what they want, it wouldn't be too hard a lot of the time to arrange that they get what they want, if it's reasonable.

You see what I mean? Yeah, but again, it's a different way of looking at it. Or find someone who just like, you don't really have these fights about what you want to do because you kind of have the same taste. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean, and then you shouldn't fight if, I don't know. I mean, fighting...

See, nobody ever forgets. You've got to be able to argue, but there's a difference between arguing and fighting, isn't there? Certainly disagreeing. Yeah. But you have to know that's it. I mean, that's the whole thing is how do you get past a disagreement without it being disagreeable? Yeah. And if it's about like what you're doing with each other, then it's too fundamental.

I mean, we have to be happy. Well, we have to like each other. I think this is the thing about affection is all important. And I think the trouble is we're very often drawn to people for romantic sexual feelings. And they're not necessarily terribly good in the long run.

I was saying this to someone who was a beautiful woman who was sitting there, and now I'm going to say it to you, which is a bit odd. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship. I always thought, I like you is hotter than I love you. Yes. Because I love you, it's, of course, deeper, and it's important. Who doesn't love love? I certainly love it. But there's a bit of obligation in there.

It's pure. I like you. And it's also something that, like, you would say at the beginning. Yeah. So it kind of is always... It's always the beginning if you still like them. Yeah. There's a quote for you. There's a song. One of my musical guests from this show. Go ahead, take it. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, I feel like...

A big secret, but you have to read this fucking review or whatever article about this book because... This is the extraordinary thing is that people can take something very negative and then behave as though it's a good thing.

What? Well, she's talking about a very negative relationship and then pretending somehow that what she's doing is everyone's experience. Am I not right? You're right. You're totally right. And I don't think she's talking about everybody. I certainly know people who have great marriages and they would be lost without their spouse. Yeah. But...

It also describes a lot of people that, you know, probably younger, you know, maybe it's just like something that we're not good at when we're younger. Oh, absolutely, because it's in the reason that we continue as a species is that we propagate each other because we go and make the two back beasts together and produce one of those things called a child. Right. Right? Right.

I happened, but I heard about it. You don't have children? Of course not!

Of course I don't have children. I never liked children. The Pope is not going to be pleased with you. Well, no, he hasn't been pleased with me for quite a while. I was raised Catholic, so I've had my moments with the Pope. I'll tell you the best thing I ever wrote in Parliamentary Python. It was an interview, a mock interview, with a guy called Vice Pope Eric. He'd elected on the same slate.

And somebody said, the Catholic Church isn't always in accord with Christ's teaching, is it? And he says, look, he says, if you're preaching a gospel of poverty...

and humility and tolerance, you need a very rich, powerful, authoritarian organization to do it. Right? That's Catholicism. Yes. What were you raised to?

Salted Church of England, but that used to be called the Tory Party at Prayer. Was that the Anglican? Yeah, it was very mild and not very intelligent, but not... Not aggressively stupid. That's right.

It was stupid, but not aggressively stupid. Thank you. John, you've got to give it up to America when it comes to aggressively stupid.

This podcast is brought to you by Max. Hey, that's my network. Larry David is back for one last round. Oh, don't miss the final season of the iconic HBO original series, Curb Your Enthusiasm, streaming now on Max. And it is funnier than ever. I can attest to that. I've seen every minute. And if you want to learn more about the show, join Susie Essman and Jeff Garlin as they host the History of Curb Your Enthusiasm podcast.

They will be re-watching and talking about every single Curb episode, from the original special to the series finale, sharing behind-the-scenes knowledge few others can reveal. Hear from special guests including Cheryl Hines, Richard Lewis, Bob Odenkirk, Richard Kind, Jerry Oteri, and the man himself, Larry David. Listen to the history of Curb Your Enthusiasm on Max or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm coming back to the scene of the crime where I did my last special, the Jackie Gleason Theater in Miami on March 23rd. Miami, always love it. Come out and see me. And then the next night on the 24th, I'll be in Clearwater, Florida. Ruth Eckerd Hall, love that building. April 20th at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts here in San Jose, California. And April 21st at the Eccles Theater in Salt Lake City, Utah. Come out and see it. You will laugh your ass off.

You know, I have a joke about the evangelists. I say, why do they prefer the Old Testament to the New Testament? The answer is because Christ isn't in it. Well, I've had arguments, arguments with people whether Jesus was a Jew. And I tried to. I mean, I said it. But it is good. If you can make people laugh.

They feel affection for you. Well, but you did more than that because Monty Python, I was 13 when it went on American television. Yeah, so I was at that very moment in my life when I was, you know, mixing newfound puberty with what I always wanted to be, a comedian.

So now it was like, oh, wow, girls, comedy. It should have been music. It would have been easier. Why would it have been easier? Girls? Are you kidding? Oh, they're more impressed by music. We were just talking about how many girls get irony.

Not as many guys do either. But yes, it's a much more cerebral thing to connect with somebody like that. But look, I was 13 years old. I was just a gland. That, by the way, you, that one where you're in, I think it's the history of the world scene where you're fucking in the classroom. Oh, yeah. Maybe the best sketch ever.

It is extraordinary, isn't it, that skit? That is just genius. My daughter was talking about it recently because it wasn't absolutely ideal. Because you are always at your best when you're exasperated. Yes. So for you to be fucking... Exasperation is very funny.

In the right hand. Being angry isn't. No, no. No, you're not angry. But being on the edge of anger is funny. You're always exasperated. You're just, that's what's so funny. I mean, you know, what did the Romans ever do for us? Oh, it's a wonderful sketch. Like, that's all. No, it's not me, Bill. The woke people.

I have not yet spotted that's a pro-imperialist sketch. Of course. Of course. Yes, but what makes it great comedy is that it's also true. Oh, totally true. And the truth is always shaded. It's not one-sided. And that's what we are... Why are we so impatient with the woke people?

because they don't see nuance or context. They don't get any of that kind of shit. It's all so black, literally black and white, a lot of it. Absolutely. And it's like, no, they didn't get a good education because the schools collapsed. So they don't think critically. But there's a lot of people in the American universities who are very pro the sort of work that you and I don't like. They're insane. They're insane.

They've got the kids marching for the terrorists. And it's because they think that people are either all good or all bad. Right. And the moment my mother, who was not a philosopher, said there's good and bad in everyone. And if you ever forget that, you're into trouble because the moment that people start thinking they're better than they really are,

Then they start doing the denial and projection and seeing all their negative stuff in the people they don't like. And then you've got a paranoid confrontation between the two. The kids haven't read anything longer than a TikTok. So they know everything by way of buzzwords. They learn these words like colonizer.

They don't know what colonizer, as if Israel colonized that place, which is, of course, where the Jews are from. Jerusalem. Hello. Hello. The Bible, you know, the one where Jesus was born a Christian. I mean, it's just, you can't. I mean, I was reading...

The New York Times on Sunday very often has on the back page of the week and review the, like a focus group with people, like 12 people. And I'm just reading this like thinking, oh, we're so fucked. They're just saying the dumbest shit.

And it's printed in the New York Times. I know. Well, I used to think that was a great newspaper. I don't anymore. I don't either. I mean, it's sad because it was like on my breakfast table when I was a kid. It was in my parents' house. It was what they call a newspaper record. It was. I mean, look, in many ways, it's still, I mean, certainly is more successful than ever.

And very good columnists. Great columnists, yes. Right. Half a dozen. Yeah. And they cover the places in the world nobody else has a reporter. That's right. But what is annoying about it is that it's not just, just give me the facts. There's way too much editorializing on the front page,

The way the articles that are just supposed to be the fact kind of articles are slanted one way. And I'm not even necessarily for the other side. No. I just want someone to tell me the whole truth. That's it. Not just like your version of it. Because you can lie by what you omit. Yeah. Yeah.

And they do. Both sides do. And they both sides do. And trying to get a really accurate picture of something has got harder and harder and harder. When I came to live in America, which I was here from about 1999 to 2008, I was saying even in those days, the hard thing now is getting any reliable information. Yeah. Yeah.

And of course, it's been going on for years. I mean, when we go and watch Shakespeare's Richard III, he wasn't a hunchback. That was Lancastrian propaganda. You see what I mean? So everyone's always been rewriting the present in order to change the future. You mean Shakespeare just gave him that hunchback? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Well, it worked. We're still talking about it. Absolutely.

So you live in England now? I live in hotel rooms. No. And I'm not joking. No, two years ago, I was in 46 weeks in hotel rooms.

Right now, I've been in Los Angeles, in Encino, for three or four months with my daughter because we've been writing a lot of stuff. And I make a point of not being in England during the winter because it's absolutely the point. It's like being in the First World War. You don't know if you're going to die before it ends. So I stay out of England, but I'm going back there soon. And I have a lovely, very silly, very funny wife in a tiny little flat with friends.

Four of the biggest fucking cats you ever saw. Cats. Maine Coons. They are magnificent. We're having a saddle made for one of them so that my wife can ride it around the flat, you know? No. So you do have four cats? We do have four cats. Okay. And they are the most wonderful creatures. They all have completely different personalities. And they are, of course, I'm afraid, preferable to children because much easier.

But you love your-- You don't have to educate them. Don't argue. No, I mean, but you love your kids. Look, I-- I love my children. Of course. And I've got two very, very interesting daughters. And that's right. But I always remember I had a philosopher friend. He was at Pomona. And he told me he'd been to listen to a great Indian mystic, a woman. And someone asked her-- it was a big tent, you know, lots of people. And they said, is it good to have children?

And she said, oh, yes, she said, they make us less selfish. That's it in a nutshell. Now, that is true. That I cannot deny about. I am not the guy, obviously, because I didn't have kids. But I see that in the people who I have. That is the one thing. I mean, it's almost because, well, it is an extension of yourself that I will never feel.

Somebody told me the Jews say this. I don't know if it's just the Jews. They say it's hard to be happier than your least happy child. I really think that's true. Yeah, it's hard, but some parents manage it.

Yes. I'll say that. Some parents soldier through that problem and do just fine. I mean, there's a lot of shitty parents. Oh, a lot of shitty parents. A lot of shitty parents. Much more. I always want to say to any young couple who are about to have a baby, I want to say this is the biggest change you will ever have in your life. Yes. No, again, I...

I understand there's something magical. There must be about having children. I mean, even celebrities do it. I can understand. And I understand why the poor people would have children, but celebrities? There's got to be something fucking awesome about it. And people basically, I mean, if you do it right, to a large degree, you are trading your life now for someone else's.

I mean, I was with a very old friend of mine who has four children, and he basically says one of them is always in trouble. These are kids in their 20s and 30s now, you know? Now, last time I talked to him, one of the sons was in trouble, but he's okay now, but now another one's in trouble. So it's a kind of... Are they well-to-do? Oh, yeah. I feel like that fucks up people, kids. Yeah? Well, when you, you know, if you're a, you know...

But I suppose this is true. You see, the trouble is, and this sounds like a line from a character in Monty Python, I only know basically middle-class people who are okay. I don't know any very rich people because they don't interest me. But I know a lot of middle-class people who are quite well-educated and have got enough money. That's the cross-section that I'm familiar with. But you think that with a working-class family with less money, there's probably more harmony?

That's the question? Yeah, it is a question. I mean, I don't know. You know, I've been poor. I was really poor from like 18 to 27. There was a decade there where I was living in one shithole after another and just doing enough to scrape by. I always wondered why we liked to be poor, and then I discovered after my third divorce what it was like, and it's not too bad.

Sorry, go on. No, no, no. I'm much more interested in that. I mean, it just...

Not the falling in love part. I think, yes, I think even the greatest love in the world, like we have to be realistic. I mean, people do divorce or someone dies and then they find love again. I don't think there's only one person in the universe, is what I'm saying, who would be really great for you. Sorry to say it. It's unromantic, but I think it's kind of true. Am I wrong? I think the trouble is we change.

And I think the easier people probably don't change so much. Who doesn't? Well, I think creative people tend to change more.

And as you change, sometimes you drift apart. Nice pat on the back for us, huh? Well, I think it's true. I mean, I think the thing about creative people is that they tend to be more in touch with their unconscious. And that's one of their problems. Because if too much of the unconscious comes up, Bill, we're in trouble. You've got to have about the right amount coming up. I'll throw that log on our ego fire as well. You think it should be? Being creative is not the most important thing in the world.

Do you think so? Being creative? Yeah. I think being creative is the most important thing in the world in engineering and science, not in our field. Our field is not important.

It's nice. But it's more than important. It's not vital. Because I told you the Sarajevo stuff. It's not vital. Fire. If we make people laugh on a regular basis, it helps them. You still can't cook the meat. Somebody had to invent fire, and somebody made these lights go on, and somebody made it that we're not fucking wiping our ass with bark, and it's raining, and we're not getting wet. Bark is great. Have you not used it?

Those are the people who I really respect, honestly. The Isaac Newtons and, you know, I mean, Steve Jobs. I think you're underrating the importance of humor, which is intertwined with relaxation and the calmer, healthier part of ourselves. I love it. I love it. It's my life. And, of course, my world would be devastated if I didn't laugh both professionally and also just with people.

but it's still not the most important thing. I mean, it's not more important than what?

Then shelter and food and electricity. Oh, yes, there's a few basic things like that. But you know about these blue zones? Yes, where people live to 100? Well, they live to 100. I'm moving there. No. Where are you going? It's how they live. You've got Sardinia. You've got Japan. You've got Linda Loma. That's the religious one. Yeah. Adventurists. Seventh-day Adventists, I think. Adventurists.

But they're all very different. Two of them drink a lot of red wine. Sardinia and Greece drink a lot of red wine. I thought it was beans. Two of them are sober. I thought the one thing they all had in common was they ate a lot of beans. Yeah, they all eat a lot of beans. Well. But they all have a sense of community. And that matters more than anything. And that's not a physical thing.

That's a psychological thing. It's a sense of community. You're with people. You like them. You feel it. And if there's a disaster, everyone's going to come and help you out. And that's exactly what's missing in America. But wait, you don't have a house? You're always in a hotel?

Well, I've got a flat, but I gave it to my wife. So I don't have a residence, and I don't have a car. And that's okay? That's all right. It is, wow. See, I couldn't do that. I'm a real homebody. Well, absolutely. No, I wouldn't mind being a homebody, but I can't afford it. Look, I never made much money. If you think that's funny, guess what I got for the first episode of Monty Python?

You got 280 pounds. Yeah, a first. Yeah, everybody's first is a shit salary. No, you started at the top. And when was it ever on any of the big channels? It was on PBS. PBS? Listen. Jesus, I said the wrong thing. I'll give you the maths. When Bonnie Python used to go out on PBS in New York City...

For 13 shows, I used to get just over $14. I got one quarter of 1% of the original fee, and it came, I could get a good curry with what I got for 13 Monty Pythons going out. So in England, you didn't make the money you do in America.

So that really should be a good thing if you're having a lot of divorces because you have nothing to give away. It didn't work the other way around because California says that the woman is entitled to the standard of living to which she has become accustomed, but the husband isn't. He provided the new standard of living, but he's not entitled to it. Answer me this, Professor Riddle.

OK, if we live in a patriarchy, and we certainly have in the past, I would argue... In the past, it's getting better. Way better in that area. But in the past, we certainly did live in a patriarchy. Absolutely. Right. It's incomprehensible why. Well, what I mean is women have so much to contribute. Yes. The fact we've not been...

exploiting them by getting them to contribute their powers is so ridiculous. Oh, and it's only, you know, like, I mean, a lot of these gender and racial areas have only, like, sort of bubbled up into the consciousness of, like, the vast majority of the country very recently. That's the good bit about woke. That is.

And not that they're, I don't know if they're really responsible for it. I mean, that generation, they did not do the heavy lifting. No, they didn't. That's one of their issues, or issues I have with them, is they don't study the past. No. So they don't understand in perspective history.

what has been done, where we really are, what's important. And then they, again... There's no understanding of context. You'd think sometimes that the British invented slavery, you know? And I want to say to them, do you think the pyramids were built by volunteers? Right. Or were they independent contractors? Absolutely. I used to say it in my act, it's...

It's something people did all over the world. People of color were a big part of the apparatus of the trade. I mean, throughout history, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the British, all the way up to R. Kelly.

All the way up to? R. Kelly. He's this guy who-- never mind. But-- I don't know what that is. It's a joke that this Englishman didn't get. Yeah, R. Kelly-- I've got to explain. R. Kelly, he's a singer. Oh. He's-- who is in jail now. He had slaves? Well, he would say bitches.

To be fair, he would not. But yes, it was that kind of a situation. Underage. He was a sexy, sang very sexual songs. And he was Irish? Irish.

No. Kelly, yes. I'd love to see a sexual Irish song. No, no. I mean, that dancing that the Irish do, the body remains absolutely immobile and everything goes all around it. I mean, that is the most unsexual dance I've ever seen. The river dance? Oh, yeah. Is that what it's? Oh, extraordinary. Yeah.

It's an extraordinary piece of skill, athleticism, but anything less sexual could not be imagined. Do you have Irish blood in you like I do? No, I don't. I'm English, English, English, English, English. Really? Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, but what is English going back how far? Well, we're an immigrant society like everyone else. I mean, don't forget, we were slaves. I mean, the Romans were with us for 400 years.

Then we got rid of them eventually. Right. Then the French came in in 1066, the Normans, who were sort of... No, you missed the most important one after the British. The Germans. Oh, yeah. Anglo-Saxon. Yes. You're Anglo-Saxon. We're Saxony. We were Germans. Angles is a German tribe. Absolutely right. And the English language is Germanic English.

In structure. Absolutely. Germanic and Romantic, which is why we have a bigger dictionary than anyone else. When they came in 500 years after the Germans, that's where you get the vocabularies much more. And the Danes, don't forget. The Danes? The Danes. We were used to pay a thing called Danegelt, which was money to the Danes saying, please don't come and kill us. When were they there? The 700s? 700s?

So I guess they competed. You've got the Romans. You're absolutely right. After that, then we had the Danes. Then we had the Vikings from Norway. Then we had the French invaders. We finally got rid of the French. We got the Tudors who were Welsh. Then we got the Stuarts who were Scottish.

Then that line dried up, so then we had a couple of Dutch people and then Germans. We hardly ever... Germans. Yeah. But the whole point was we were slaves a lot of the time. We were slaves to the Normans. You see what I mean? Yes. For 350 years. Well, the main language in England at that time was French. Only the peasants spoke English. So we'd been slaves a lot, and I want to know if there are reparations, are we qualifying? No.

Reparations. For being slaves. Oh, it's a knotty issue because there is so many, some people say, well, what about black people here who are not African Americans? Right. They're African something else, you know, right?

They came here recently, you know, so, or, you know, California has offered reparations, or at least they've written about it, suggested in the legislature, I believe, and people have pointed out, well, California had no slaves. Yeah, I know. The whole thing is hugely complicated. Yeah. It's, you know, there are people who would say it is wrong just that we're talking about it because...

which is a really dangerous type of censorship. Yeah, but it's totalitarianism. You mustn't mention this because you'll be in trouble. Well, it's a way to shut people up by saying, no, you're not qualified to speak on it. Yes, that's right. As if two white people can't speak about, no. Because we don't have any lived experience. We're blind. We're just, it's like.

And I will freely admit, yes, we are blinder. Yes. But that doesn't mean we're completely blind. And also, there's two ways you can not see something accurately. One is to be too far from it, which, yes, we are. Another way is to be too close. Good. Then you can see nothing else. Then you can see nothing else. Yeah. Somerset Maugham once said that in order to know your own country, you have to live in another one.

And you sure know that, huh? Oh, yeah. Well, I've been coming here since 64, and I spent 15 to 20 years of my life here. You sound like you...

would be very sad not to have both in your life. Yeah, I think we need each other. You're talking about the countries. Yes, and the cultures. So you like it here when you are here. You like it here when you are here. I like parts of it. I'm very worried about what's happening at the moment. And I think what has happened here, which is the key to so much that's wrong, is the greed that has forced people not to behave democratically.

I'm talking for a start about lobbyists, who are people paid to subvert the will of the people. And I think that most of the people that I'm closest to are Americans. Really? And in England, the women. I'm closer to the women than I am the men, because the men have got this...

slightly uptight. You can't really talk to them at the deepest emotional level, whereas all my friends... You can't. And that means there's a certain limit to the kind of you can feel affection, but there's not the contact. You can come here and do it. Yeah. Because, you know. Well, I like this place, but I'm so worried about you guys.

What do you mean? Well, of course. You think we're not worried, too? Yeah, of course you are. All the people, all the Americans I know are really worried. I've been reading about what's going on in England. The former, I think, Home Secretary, Braverman, she said the Islamists are ruling the country now. The last 15 years have been the worst period in English history, I would say. Oh, come on. No. English history? Yes. What about the Danes? Oh.

Oh, well, we weren't really England then, you see. We were lots of little places like Wessex and Mercia. But I mean, if you go through our history, I don't know we've ever in the last 200 years had a government as bad and corrupt as the 15 years of Tories we've had. They've really almost destroyed the country. Wow. Because of Brexit? Partly because of Brexit, but also because the people who go into politics now are not as idealistic...

not as unselfish the people. We used to have top-class people in our politics, both the Labour and the Conservatives, and now we don't. We have a bunch of second-rate... So this is what you think of Rishi Sunak? Hmm? The current prime minister? Well, he's just inadequate. But... So...

He's hugely rich and married to one of the richest women in the world. I mean, is he really? So what's his motivation to vote? Desperately to hang on to power. That's his motivation. And he's got all these conservatives around him who are not, by and large, very nice people.

And they're desperate to hang on to power. And what is he doing? A lot of them are going to go to jail if the Labour Party come in for all the scandalous corruption we've had in the last 10 years. What is he doing? He's coming up with a new story every week to try and make the Tory case sound better. The polls are now worse for the Tories than they've probably ever been for any party at any time.

And just previous to that, well, one of the things that helped them is that at the beginning, the Labour leader was so completely hopeless.

That helped the Tories. And the original idea, some of Thatcher's original ideas were good. Yeah, what do you think of her? I thought at the very beginning of her reign, I thought she did some very important things. Right. She got carried away by ideologues and finished up nationalizing the utilities and the railways. The British had drifted too far to the left.

It needed a correction. Yes, it did. OK, there you go. After Callahan, we needed a Thatcher for a few years. But then what happens is people get taken over by ideologies.

And instead of just doing sensible things like saying, what is going to give the largest number of people a decent life, they put their ideologies into it, which never seem to work very well. I just like pragmatists who just say, how can we get some better housing? How can we make the streets better? I agree.

Can I give you an example of this week of what happened here in America? Oregon, but mostly Portland, a city that is very far left. Very far. Best bookshop in the world. Very likely. I like Portland, and I think I'm going there this year. But I mean, it's out there. So they had a program started three years ago, or 2020 maybe, just to complete decriminalization of all drugs.

Which I always thought was kind of a good idea, but I realized, you know, I can handle drugs. Lots of people can't, so I don't know. But whatever I think about that, which I'm still debating, it was just factually, we know, a massive failure. There was like X times more deaths. Because it turns out drug addicts, you know, they like drugs.

So they're going to use more drugs if you make it more available. So that's what they did. So there's an example of a liberal in theory. It was a good theory. Yeah. Well, communism is a good theory. Exactly. It's just a disastrous practice. Right.

And of course, because it does not conform to human nature. Absolutely right. Somebody said to me the other day, liberalism has failed.

And I said, bullshit. I said, human nature has failed. Right. You can't come up with a system of government that we human beings can't fuck up. Because it reflects us. It reflects us. Yes. Yeah. It always does. So all we got to do, and I think they understood this in the 18th century better than we do, we have to do the best with what we've got, which is human nature. Yeah. I mean, you can't.

Politicians love to say things like, if only we had a government as good as the people. No, I'm sorry, but that's exactly what we got.

And we don't really want to look in the mirror on that. But yeah, I mean... I saw a bit of film the other day of Adlai Stevenson, and he was talking. This is what, late 50s? Yeah, he ran twice against Eisenhower, lost both times, 52 and 56. That's right, lost to Eisenhower. Right, he lost to Eisenhower. And he was in an audience, and somebody got up and said, all we need to do is to get the intelligent people in this country to get together.

And I had life seasons around enough. But it's always been thus, I think. I mean, I don't think there was some golden age where, you know, there was this enlightened society. I think there was, you know, and also we're all... Sometimes it's a bit better for a bit. We're all unenlightened in our own way. Yes. You know, so...

To expect a system that really works. But the certain democratic principles is if you can get people to listen to each other, listen to each other, and just go on arguing, eventually...

eventually you get rid of something even as bad as slavery. Yeah. You know, eventually. It takes a long time because humans hate change. When I was writing that book with Robin Skinner, I came across a statistic that you will find very surprising. He showed me the chart that actuaries produce for insurance companies. You know, they've got to be very good about how long people are going to live there.

Perfect, it's the money. It's the money. Right. It's about the money. So they're going to get it right. So it's really accurate. Yes, yes. And then, you know, I think it's death of spouse is 100 points. Losing a job is 80, this kind of thing. A reduction, no, an increase in the number of rows you have with your wife every month costs you 36 points. A decrease in the amount of rows you have with your wife every month costs you 36 points.

It's an extraordinary fact. It's not change, good or bad, that stresses us. It's change. That's why fundamentally we're conservative with a small c. And there's so much change in the world at the moment. That's why it's so anxious, and that's why we're all forced into what happens when you're anxious, which is taking sides in black and white. Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense to me. I mean...

It is. And again, I can't like throw stones living in a glass house. I can think of, don't want to go into because they bother me, but moments in my life when I shrank from the challenge out of fear. More when I was younger, you know, when you're

more vulnerable and scared. Yes. I mean, I was, the big one was I was this close to leaving college because college sucked when I first got there. Where were you? Cornell. Oh, did you know? I put it on the back of your book. Did you? I wrote it in the blurb. Oh, that's right. If I had been. Yeah. I was a phony professor there for years. I had a wonderful time. I wrote, John Cleese is everything I love about England today.

which is good because, frankly, there's not much else. Something like that. But yes, I was amazed. Yes, Cornell, I spent four years, yeah. In that climate? Yes, cold and... Dreary? Dreary, and when I went, very few women, none of which I knew how to get. So it was just... And you nearly... Shitty. ...skipped college.

I was so close to putting my tail between my legs and going home. And my whole life probably would have been working at the A&P now. You know? Because you have to go through the fire, go through the change. And so what happened?

I stayed and was miserable. And, you know, finally things got better. Like I finally had some friends at least junior year, senior year, even had a girlfriend. You know, I mean, that to me is the hardest part of your life is that when you're out of, see, you're a baby to 18, that's school. You know, you're sort of in this one guardianship. You're living at home and

Then you're like an infant again in life, but you're an infant as an adult. No idea how anything works. It's the infancy of your adulthood. It's the same thing. You're powerless compared to everybody else. Yeah. You know, you just, you're scared. Everything's scared. And you don't know how anything works. You don't know how, no. And you're the lowest on the totem pole everywhere. Yeah, yeah. It's very, that's the period when I was like, not suicidal, but like depressed sometimes. You know, like really like,

the funky depression because, you know, you, in my case, you worried, am I going to be a success? Right? Didn't you? Yeah. I mean, how old were you when Monty Python hit? You weren't a kid, do you? What? You weren't a kid when Monty Python hit, right? I was, that was 69 and I was coming up 30. Yeah, see? But you see what happened, because I knew Frost at Cambridge.

Frosty kind of... Who's Frosty? David Frost. Oh, David Frost. He kind of picked me out. My first year at Cambridge was his last, and he kept an eye on me. And all of a sudden he called me when I was in New York wondering what to do with my life in 1965. And he said, do you want to come and be in my television show? So he plucked me out of complete obscurity and put me in with a couple of very good people. You know, Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett.

They were very good comedians. And that was, from then on, I was known on English television. It was extraordinary. What show was that? It was called The Frost Report. OK. And then he did a thing called The Frost Program. I was his sidekick for a couple of years. Oh, really? And then I did a show for his company with Marty Feldman. Marty Feldman. With Brooke Taylor and Chapman. And then after that, we got onto Python. And I was about 30. But what were you saying about age? When I was a kid...

Like, when I was that era, like, I don't know when that show came to America, but David Frost was a big thing in this country. And I remember reading about how he would take the Concord between, like, because he had a show in England, too. He was doing two shows. He was doing one in New York and one in England. Across the pond every week. Yeah.

Every week, Concordia, three and a half hours. And I was like, da-da-da-da-da. I mean, this is the kind of guy. Do you know what he used to do? And he had sideburns and a British accent. And I was like, this guy must be. Do you know what he used to do, what he used to read? Always press cuttings. Read what? That's all he ever read was his press cuttings. You mean his clippings? Yeah. About himself? About himself. Right?

Really? Sitting there with piles of them reading one of the Concord Beats very backwards and forwards. I was very fond of him, but he was, people once said he wasn't very liked in England because he was too like an American. The answer was he was almost purely extrovert. And by and large, Americans are more extrovert, the English are more introvert. Used to be. I don't know what it is now. In my tween mind, which is when he was in my life,

Right. I was looking for male role models. And again, everything is influenced by the coming of puberty. Now it's like I'm looking at women differently. I'm looking at men differently. I'm like, you know, Johnny Carson, dapper, cool. But yeah, of course, something what can I relate to? Verbal, funny. Yes. You know, I'm not a guitar player. So like David Frost...

was like, yeah. He was huge. I was like, yeah, I can do that. He was unbelievably famous in England for a period of about three or four years. But dapper. It was like when you're a kid, you want to be a grown man, right? And that's like, OK, this is a grown-up. Like, he's doing a very grown-up thing. Yeah, that's right. You know, but he's still like, you know, and he kept it. And ever so slowly, you realize that almost no one is a grown-up, right? No.

No, I knew he was smashing. Dalai Lama, I think, is a great one. Dalai Lama. Right? Not many of them. Dalai Lama has a couple of really hard-ass quotes. Like, he's got one on immigration that you'd swear was Trump.

What? I can't remember it exactly, but it's the Dalai Lama. And it's something like, if there is no work for them, they should go back to their own country or something very like... And you won't believe this, but I interviewed him once. The Dalai Lama? Yeah, and I have to tell you, he's not used to being interrupted. Oh, I'm sure. So he goes on a little bit. But when I asked him about homosexuality, he said...

No, just like that. I was astonished. No, don't ask her. No, don't do it. No, don't do it. Don't do it. Oh, absolutely, completely against it. But I still think there's a small number of grown-ups, but they're a tiny, tiny proportion, and they're certainly not in politics. Look, I have friends who are Buddhists. I'm sure you do too. And look, even though I made that movie Religious, and I'm

Do not think religion is good because it's stupid and also dangerous. I'm very respectful of all my religious friends, and I was raised Catholic. I get the whole drill. But it does bug me when the Buddhists say we're not a religion. Really?

Well, that's just a technical thing about a definition. Don't see there's a God. When the head dude says, no fucking in the naughty place, that you're a religion. There's my rule on whether you're a religion or not. The trouble is that you start out a religion with someone who's probably a bit special.

And then it gets taken-- well, I've been a little more advanced, a little more spiritually advanced. And then what happens is it gets taken over by the people who aren't. Yes. Right?

It's like a... Them again. Them again. Fucking bridge and tunnel crowd always sneaking into our fucking ashram where we're commuting with the great... Well, what Robin Skinner said when he founded the Institute of Family Therapy, he said the first generation were people who cared enormously about these ideas and wanted to expand the ideas. And they sat at the feet of the people who knew about it and then they learned and they were into it. By the time you get...

to the fourth generation. The people are coming because there's a good dental plan. You see what I mean? Oh, I do. So you get the Roman Catholic Church's teaching, this wonderful teaching of Christ.

which we only get a tiny bit of because there's a bit in Matthew which no one ever talks about when one of the disciples says to him, Jesus, why don't you tell the multitudes the stuff that you tell us? It's the most interesting verse in the whole of the New Testament. He says, why don't you tell them what you tell us? And we don't know what he was telling the disciples. And that's just a very partial thing.

partial revelation. And what do we imagine that is? I imagine it's some kind of esoteric mind training. Really? Which I believe in. That Jesus partook in? Well, I scraped the surface of it, but I don't have the dedication. But I think it is people. I think people who, like the Buddhists, contemplate

compassion. I think they finish up more. I knew an incarnate llama quite well, and I just knew he was on a different level from me. Really? We were sort of friends in as much as somebody at a lower level can be a friend of someone at a higher level. But you really thought he was at a higher level? Oh, I don't know the slightest doubt about it. He led an almost completely unselfish life.

of a kind that I don't think we could imagine. And it was Sogyal Rinpoche, and he wrote the... Or he wrote with one or two helpers the Tibetan book, Living and Dying. And I always thought he was an extraordinary person. And I met one or two others, like the guy who was in charge of the...

a good thing years ago, a fellow called Lord Pentland. There are people around who are a bit special and operating at a higher level than we are. And they were born that way, or they got that way? They were drawn to it, which is a general... And you get there through meditation? They got there through a particular thing called spiritual exercises.

which are all traditions habit you know and you're you do it no but if it's a great one too lazy okay oh there's things there's cricket on the television i don't have time for but

I wasn't proving myself when I was watching him play cricket. But this Swami Mumma Mama that you just described, who's on this other level. Yeah. In fact, he doesn't even need a chair when he's sick. Shut up. He wasn't like that. He was just a very special, very loving man. If you had devoted your life to it like he did, do you think you could be on his level? And do you think you'd be happier? And how would your wife feel about it?

Well, I wouldn't have a wife. Right. There's one good reason to do it. I don't have that dedication. I've always been a total dilettante. I wrote two books with Sicard on psychology with a famous therapist. Now, what other comedian has ever wasted his time? I'd made no money out of him at all. Because you're a comedian who's a true intellectual. That's a rare thing. I'd like to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brain power. Oh, stop.

I have the apt mindedness. I've got that licked. No. I mean, it's all through your work, but it's just, I know it. I know that I'm quite intelligent. And sometimes I can put... You're going to be interested in different things. Yeah, exactly. And if you're a generalist, then that means you can't give specific, precise examples like a scholar can't.

But I do think I've got a few interesting things to say, and I don't think it's impossible to try and say them on Twitter. So I'm going to give Substack a chance. Oh, great. Do you? I do. Oh! On Substack? No, I don't write on it, but I read it. Yeah. It's a different level, isn't it?

It's freer. Freer. And it's like people ask me, what are you reading? Are you down on the Times? Well, like we say, there's good and bad there at the New York Times. But I feel like there's a group of writers and people who are

I don't want to say the word think like us, but yeah, kind of think like us. So they understand what science is. Socially liberal, but not woke stupid. Yes, that's right. Fiscally sane, but never cruel. Yes. Is that really that hard? It is apparently. And I feel like, what? Apparently it is. Apparently it is. And it's just amazing how many people want to just

Maybe it's your fear thing. They just want to go to the team. Everything is decided by what does the team say? What does the hive say? And I don't want to be part of the hive. Most people are very, very scared of not going along with the majority. You remember those Solomon Asch experiments in the 50s about obedience?

One of his, we had an experiment. Like with the prison guard thing? Well, that was one, but there was another one that was much more interesting, which was he just got a group of people and he said, we want to show you some very simple pictures. I think in those days it was on a sort of easel. And we want you to tell, do you think this line is longer than that line? Right. And there were about six people in the room and five of them were plants. With only one guy. Right.

who was a genuine subject. So they were studying him. And the others all looked at the picture of the line being stronger, one line longer than the other, and they all said that the shorter line was longer. And the first time the guy said, no, I think the other line is longer. He was right. Right.

By the second time, he was really doubting. By the third time, he was agreeing with the others and saying that the shorter line was longer. Now, the point was there was no pressure on him.

There was no physical threat. There was nobody saying anything other than, just tell us what you think. But by the third attempt, he had come in conformed with everyone else. That's a very strong force. You know, I'm sure doing the books you've done on psychology, you come across not just this example, but so many examples of the human mind being so not up to the job in some way. And you wonder, how are we still here?

Is it some kind of miracle? Because you might, 75 years since both Russia and America had the atom bomb, 75 years. I don't want to jinx it tonight. But, you know, and only more countries are getting it. I mean, the trouble is we're more and more powerful with our technology.

And in the old days, we could only harm a certain number of people at a certain time. Now we can wipe out the planet, which is what we've been saying. We could wipe out the planet since 1950. Yes. Yeah. And somehow that held because there was mutualist destruction mad, right? Yeah. Except now some people have the bomb. What if they don't care about dying? That's the worry. You know, they once asked Obama...

what kept him up at night. And he kind of avoided the question. And when they pressed, he said, Pakistan, because they have nuclear weapons and they could easily be taken over by a radical Islamic group. Yes. I mean, that's not racism, woke assholes. That's just the truth. You know, again, the problem with wokeism, like people having to, as I just did, like

Note that, no, we're allowed to have this adult conversation about real things and talk real shit about real countries and real problems. And that ideology is a real problem still in the world. Well, any fundamentalist... Yes. Doesn't matter what the religion is. Correct. It's the fundamentalists who are the literal-minded. But there's just more of those fundamentalists than there are any... Because it's easier. Well, there's more of...

The Christians are not as fundamentalist. They were 500 years ago. But the evangelists are pretty evangelistic. Yeah, but they're not violent. No? They're not violent. They might be at some point, but they're not like... But are there not polls now showing that they think that it is legitimate to use violence for political purposes? More and more people say it is. Yes.

That's the Sarajevo thing I was saying before about Sarajevo. It could happen. Yeah. It absolutely could happen. Because when people get to the point where we basically are now, where you see the other political party or the other, really it's just two tribes, you know, the red and the blue, whatever you want to call it, liberals, conservatives, we know who we are. People know who they're voting for already. All right. When you get to the point where each party is

Each group thinks the other one is an existential threat. Absolutely. They both learn that word and love it. Yeah. That if this person, if this group gets in and you see the derangement because like Biden's been in office three years and

Really? Is anything really that different? The fucking economy didn't crash. I mean, there's actually nothing that big to complain about. No. I don't think he's done a bad job. He has not at all. Look, I desperately want him not to run again, but I think he did fine. Were there things that could have been better? Of course. But to be apoplectic about it, it's almost like a...

Facts don't matter. They have been narrated before. Well, you can't say facts anymore, because if you say a fact that is contrary to some woke ways of thinking, then the totalitarian woke people will come in. A guy I was talking to recently told me there'd be more academics sacked in recent years than there were during the McCarthyite era.

Yeah, I can believe that. And that's how powerful that wing of the woke party, which is totally totalitarian. I did a TV series with some interviews that nobody knows about. It's actually, if I may plug it, it's on YouTube. And they're 45-minute programs, and some of them I think are very good. One's on woke, one's on religion, one's on... What is it on? Where can I get it? It was called Dinosaur Hour.

And it was on a right-wing channel because they came to me and they said, you can do anything you like. Where can I see it? On YouTube. YouTube. Oh, OK. Of course. And the one on woke is very good. But there's also one on religion, which is very interesting. Just...

Type in John. Just type in the dinosaur. The dinosaur. And you'll see me there being interviewing, but not celebrities by and large, just interviewing very well-informed people.

And some of the ideas coming across there in a way. People saying lovely things like this is the sort of stuff we should see more on television, but hardly anyone saw it because it was on this right-wing channel, which is very unpopular. It probably deserves to be unpopular, too. Oh, no. What a treat. There's nothing wrong with right-wing, provided it's intelligent. Read Bill Kristol.

write one of the great conservative intellectuals on Trump. That's the sort of Republican I will talk to any time, if he talked to me. I know him. He's done my show. I can put you guys together. I mean, I'm sure he'll be extremely flattered. But I mean, Warren is a highly intelligent, totally decent person, and one disagrees with him. Okay. Sure, I like Bill.

I mean, there's a lot of conservatives who I respect greatly and have, George Will, who I adore. Oh, yes, yes. And I don't always agree, but when he finally came on in real time, the first thing I said to him is, you make me be honest about my liberalism. Yes. Because I would read things that were like, he is a meticulous researcher. Right. And he never prints anything that isn't true. Right.

So it's just that side that you weren't getting from the other. And you'd be like, oh, wow, I didn't know that part of it.

That's true. And he also is an amazing... That's a good phrase. I didn't know that part of it. Because everyone writing is exposing one line of thought and leaving out the important stuff. Everything's like a trial with the two lawyers. Yes. Not caring what the truth is. Lawyers don't care about the truth. They care about what they can get the jury to vote with them for when the voting comes about. Very good analogy. Yes. Yep.

And, you know, a party fails when the people say, well, you're not really acting like my lawyer. You know, that's like a big, the immigration thing is for a lot of people. And look, I love immigrants and we need to have more immigrants. But I mean, not more, not more, but like immigrants, but not in the way we're doing it. No one would disagree with that. But yeah.

I forgot what I was going to say. Anyway, I think we just got onto something very, very interesting because it is, well, it's an extraordinarily important time

And we don't know what's going to happen. But I think if Trump is elected, he will go ahead and do what he says, which is he basically destroy America as a liberal democracy. Well, he certainly makes no bones about... Yeah. By the way, he was ranting about me. Oh, was he? He does it all the time. Oh, how wonderful. It is wonderful. Oh, that's a badge of honor. He always...

is amazing. He hates me. And I think the last line of it was something like, don't watch...

a show he constantly watches. And then, like he said, he always accidentally watches it. And then, Bill Maher, low ratings. He's the worst. He's the worst. And he failed at CNN. I'm not even on CNN yet. We're just doing an experiment. Well, the extraordinary thing is not that a society produced somebody like Trump. And you know the real giveaway is

He doesn't have a pet. A pet. And he doesn't laugh. And he doesn't laugh. What sort of psycho would you let in your life of any capacity, let alone leader, who didn't laugh and didn't have a pet? I'll tell you, someone who's even less mentally healthy than him. Right? Right.

But if that happens, that happens, and I'm looking for-- I want to get out of it now, because I think England is hopeless in my lifetime. I've got maybe 10 years more. Do you have dual citizenship? No, no, I just-- I'm a British citizen, but I live in hotel rooms. And they allowed you-- I mean, you're an icon, so they're not going to say you can't be in our country, but like, you could-- Well, I have to have a work visa and all that kind of thing. But you get an unlimited amount of days?

No, I'm allowed to come here. They're pretty good about me. I've been coming here since 64, so I think they know I'm not a terrorist. I mean, tell the people at security on airlines to give me the pat down. You know what I like doing? Pretending I'm really enjoying it.

Ask him to do it again. Pretending. Right, John. So you've been going here since 1964. Yeah, 1964. I came here with a show that ran on Broadway for three weeks. What was that? It was called Cambridge Circus. Got great reviews.

And Walter Kerr loved it. Walter Kerr. But the New York Times didn't, and so they killed it stone dead. And then I messed around here for a year wondering what I was going to do with my life, and then Frost called, and then I went off and became a TV. But it's funny, it's the writing that I love.

The acting is kind of something that in a limited range I can do very well. But I never feel I've done a proper day's work. If I've written something, I feel like a kid. I hand in my writing. I did something. Yeah, I get it. The writing I prefer. I'd like to do that. It's just the writing isn't very well paid. So when you wrote your movies, was it six people in a room writing it? No. No.

We discovered very early on, or I discovered very early on, that it's okay to brainstorm in a group, but you have to have a maximum of three, and ideally two people who go away and actually put down the definitive version on a piece of paper. So who wrote Holy Grail? Graham Chapman and I wrote about 40% of it. Michael and Terry wrote about 40% of it.

Eric wrote the Brave Sir Robinson. And then there was some animation from Terry Gilliam. What about Life of Brian?

Again, pretty much the same. The greatest movie ever made. Wasn't it wonderful? I don't know. I shouldn't say it, but I do love it. I'm turning it into a stage play. I'm turning, adapting it to a stage play. Talk about ahead of its time. The gag about Loretta. I want to be a woman now, Reg, and I want to have babies. And it's like...

That itself is a study. Extraordinary. From 1979 to 2024, something goes from gag, like laugh out loud, funny, so ridiculous, to how dare you not do that. And look, I understand. But you see, when we had a read-through of an original script in New York with some really fine performers, and I said afterwards, I said, okay, guys, I'm glad you liked it. Give me some advice. They said, you've got to cut that scene.

where whatever Eric's character says. Well, I said, why? And they said, we won't get away with it. I said, you mean all the people who've been laughing at it for 40 years are going to suddenly say we shouldn't be laughing at it anymore and are going to buy tickets?

It's very hard to get a finger on what it's all about. And you've said on your show many times that if you stand up to these totalitarians, they don't have anywhere to go except to get you fired. And that's why people like us need to speak out because we're not frightened about getting... It costs me, my social media lady advises me, it's cost me a lot of money

that I put stuff out there of the kind that you and I do because all the manufacturers are worried they're going to lose some business. I'm never going to be selling Pontiacs. I just don't think there's in the car. No endorsements. No endorsements. That's the price we paid, but I'd rather be authentic. Not even close. First of all, in the long run...

We wouldn't still be working where we want to work because the audience wouldn't be there if we had sold out. So maybe we didn't actually lose it. We didn't really lose any money at all. It doesn't matter because the main thing is if you can...

not be frightened of being fired, then you have to speak out for what you believe in. Yeah. You know? Well, I was fired, and I am frightened of it. But, you know, it's okay to be... I thought you were back on television again. I was fired in 2002. I mean, 2001, after 9-11, that show, Politically Incorrect. But I always live in fear of firing, but it's like in war...

You know, if two soldiers are talking and the sergeant says, you scared, corporal? No, sir. Well, you should be. You should be scared when you go to war. And you should be scared when you're doing a show. You should be scared of being good. Yes. Scared of being bad. Scared of being bad. Yeah. Right.

Humiliating. You literally die in front of millions. And you know the funny thing is, all comedians, most of my daughters, Camilla, she's a stand-up comedian, we always laugh about the fact that if there's one person there sitting in the audience, you cannot take your eye off them. It happened to me recently. Yeah? Yeah. Front row. And I'm like, just the things that go through your head, like, why? Why?

Are you in the front row? That's the question. I don't know. This was different. Sometimes I know what it is. It's a liberal lady has dragged her super conservative husband to the show. And so he's like, I don't want to see Bill Maher, but the old battle axe wants to go see her boyfriend, Bill Maher.

So he's like this, you know. And then I can always loosen him up because I do a lot of material that's anti-woke. And it's like, oh, okay, this guy's not so bad. And then I go back to bashing Trump and telling him what a fucking traitor you are if you don't believe in democracy and blah, blah. And then it's like, er. But this guy was like a millennial. And I don't know what his problem was. Didn't say, just like,

And I was thinking, but is this like a thing to try to get me off my game? Because you didn't. And you can't forget them. No, I forget it. I saw it. I saw it a second time. I saw it a third time. I was like, OK. I got a laugh once when there was somebody like that in the front row. And I suddenly stopped in the middle of the show. And I said, look, I know you're not enjoying this.

I'm really sorry. I wish you were enjoying it. Right. But you're not. Right. And I don't mind you sitting there with your arms crossed. Wow. Right? And a very straight face.

But do you have to sit in the front row? Right. Because they're always in the front row. You said that? Yeah. That's awesome. And what did he say? I can't remember. I think he kind of nodded and said, so, well, I'm enjoying bits of it. I said to him, why don't you leave? I said, you'd be happy. I'd be happy. No.

No, I'd like to. Well, I mean, I both love that, and I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. That's the way I'd. Probably. No, it was weakness on my part. But, you know, if someone's in the front row doing that. No, I agree. Either he's not friendly. No, you said what I wanted to say. Or he's an engineer. That could be another reason why he's sitting there like that.

But the thing is, if you don't then make it funny, then you just, you know. Yeah, but if you do it in a certain way, I mean, one guy did leave at my invitation, but I asked for a round of applause, and he got a very warm round of applause as he walked out of the theatre because we were sort of saying, it's all right, you'll like it.

You've gotten somewhere where you're going to have a better time. Nothing wrong with that, you know? I remember in Catch a Rising Star in the early 80s when someone would leave, like, unceremoniously, we would pretend to be on the PA system. Will all homosexuals please leave the auditorium? Will all homosexuals? And that, in that era, was not a... Uh-oh.

It was not a hate crime. It was just a joke. Just a joke. It was something boys did. Yes. And I don't think anybody died, and I love my gay friends, but, you know. You should have had Graham Chapman on because he would have hated work. I mean, I worked with Graham for years. See the dead one? The dead one? The dead one. Gay and dead.

Oh, he was gay? He was gay from... He's Brian. Yeah, wonderful as Brian. He was King Arthur, too. Oh, he was wonderful. He was an extraordinary actor. He was gay as anything, and he couldn't stand that wokery stuff. I hope that... I don't know where you are with your bandmates, but like...

there is such a emotional element to the bands that we grew up with when we were young and again monty python i was 13. it was very similar it was like comedy as a rock band it was kind of like again this volcano for me because it was two things i liked and um you don't want to think of the bands

as fighting. It's like mommy and daddy, you know? I want Simon and Garfunkel to love each other. It's just this thing because I don't want John and Paul to be fighting. No. But the trouble is, well, we don't understand two things. One is that we're like brothers. I hope so. What I mean is we stand up for each other if anyone attacks us.

but we still have all sorts of the rivalries and difficulties that brothers would have. The other thing is that a team is, a great team is full of people with different skills. Right. Not the same skill. Oh, absolutely. And what happens with people with different skills is that over the course of their life, they diverge, right? Michael Palin goes off and makes those, excuse me, travel programs.

I found them riveting too. You did. They're actually... I love him. Yes. Oh, he's lovely. And those programs are sponsored by the American Insomniac Society. Hosted SNL was great. Yeah. No, he's very good. But then...

Eric's the musical one. Terry Gilliam's the visual one. Jonesy could do everything. So you had everybody doing different things. He did the Russells, which was excellent. So good. But his great strength was music, and that didn't happen until late on in Python because the first three series had very little music.

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving. That's not as good as the Galaxy song. That is the Galaxy song. That is the Galaxy song. Oh, so it is. Sorry, I'm sorry you were doing... No. And some of the statistics... That's a wonderful song. It's brilliant. And the numbers are not that far off.

Although they've changed a little since he wrote it. I read recently that they now think there are two trillion galaxies. Galaxies. Each with... I don't know. I mean, ours has 400 billion stars.

What do you think about the Big Bang Theory? Not the show, the actual theory. I don't pretend to understand it. All of that? I've never been as interested in space as I am in... But you know roughly what it is? No. No? It's inconceivable. It's...

The figures are inconceivable. It obsesses me. The idea of a light year. All of that fit into a marble. I mean, how far is a light year? Light goes around the planet, what is it, six and a half times? No, it's in the song, and I can tell you what it is. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Yes. And light year is a measure of distance.

It's the distance light goes in a year at that speed. That's, you know... I mean, it doesn't interest me. What interests me is what's the meaning or purpose of it all. So you didn't watch the Jennifer Lawrence movie where they're on the trip to the other planet and he wakes up... I don't watch space things. They don't interest me. All right, listen to this plot. They're going to the other planet because they fucked Earth, right? But the trip takes 90 years because it would.

Right. To actually get to if we found a planet we could live on. But it would be 90 years away. So they put them in the pods or they're just suspended for 90 years. So they'll be wake up and they'll be people to populate the new planet. But they have to sleep for 90 years.

So they're all-- and of course-- What happens if they leave something behind? So the computer is running the ship, right? Everyone's asleep. And then one of the pod fails, and a guy wakes up. And he's like-- you know, he's alone on the ship for like-- you know, he lasts about three weeks. And he's like, I'm making one of these bitches up. And you know, he finds the cute girl and opens her pod. That's the movie. Do you want to see it now?

Okay, I've been convinced I'm interested in space. I'm interested in what goes on down here and what a complete fucking disaster it is. Okay, but it is mind-boggling and there's something sometimes stimulating about boggling your mind. Well, I boggle it in the other direction because, for example, you might be amused to know I have a psychic who was found by my wife.

Lovely woman, lives an hour outside London, and I was talking to her today on the phone, and she knows things that you can't possibly know about me and my life. Right. I don't know how she knows them.

The thing with the animal. No. It's just, I don't believe that we scrape the surface of knowing what's going on. I think the trouble with the scientists is they don't like anything that they can't explain. So they sweep it under the carpet. My analogy was always that we have five senses, which is like,

It's like we're a radio station that can, we're a radio that can pick up five stations. - That's right. - But there are some other stations that are broadcasting and it looks like some people can pick up one of those far away stations like Atlanta on a clear night, like a little better than other people can. I don't know, I mean, but-- - That's the point, people have different talents and just so some people can throw a basketball,

more accurately than almost anyone else can. There are other people who can pick stuff up that no one else knows about. But how do we explain the psychic talent? How do we explain that someone knows? I don't think we can because we don't understand them. But it must mean that there's some brain connection going on that we can't measure. I think the consciousness is some extraordinary thing that exists out there.

and that our brains don't generate consciousness. Our brains are like a television set. We don't produce the program in the television set. The television set allows us to access the program that's out there. See what I mean? And I think that this transmission theory it's called, I think that's what it's about. I think the stuff out there, I think when you get these, what used to be called idiosavants,

who can do extraordinary things with prime numbers. They can't calculate those. Somehow those are already out there, and they have minds that can connect with what's out there. And that, for me, is far more interesting than anything to a space. And the conversation I had today with this psychic, where two of my oldest friends appeared, and I appeared to talk to them.

A Chapman came out. What do you mean, appeared? She said, who's Graham? I said, is he Graham Chapman? She says, she's going on about a pipe. I said, yes, he always smoked a pipe. Then she said, he's rolling up his trouser leg.

And I said, oh, that's a sketch we did about the Freemasons. But couldn't she have seen that sketch? She saw it, no. Why? Because I know she didn't. But it was broadcast. It was broadcast once or twice. And what was the other thing? Well, the other thing, an example she couldn't have known was that she was talking to my wife who discovered about a thing that had happened when my wife was with her parents opening up

birthday presents or Christmas presents, as you describe what are the presents. And I promise you, until you experience it, until you hear the things that are coming back, you think there's no explanation in science for this. But the scientists hate it so much they pretend it doesn't happen because they can't explain it. There are debunkers, we'll say, but I'm going to be agnostic on this one.

Because there are things that just are so inexplicable. That's right. I don't want anyone to say, oh, I believe that. I want people to say, have an open mind and look at it and see what you think of the evidence, because some of the evidence is extraordinary. There's a guy who does an act. I mean, it is an act. It's on a stage. In fact, he performs as part of Barbra Streisand's

You know, when she does a live performance. I've seen him. And he does mentalist things that, yes, I don't know how it would... People in the audience who... And he writes it down, you know, like, just think of the thing. And you can tell when someone is a plant and it would just...

So that, like, is very hard to explain. Well, I'll give you another example. Very hard to explain. Because the first time she said to me, who's Graham? And I said, he's the guy I used to... I know, but everyone knows him who watches Monty Python. Yeah, but now let me tell you this. She said the first time he's waving a parrot at me. We wrote that sketch, the dead parrot. The second time she said... I think I can do this job. The second time...

She said to me, "He's waving something like a monkey." And I said, "A monkey?" And she said, "Well, it's got a sort of stripy tail." And I said, "Oh, that's a ring-tailed monkey." I have a species of monkey, of lemur named after me. You do? Yeah. Why?

Because a Swiss biologist who discovered the new species asked if he could name it. It's called Cleese's woolly lemur. I'm a fan. It actually exists on Madagascar. I'm a fan.

He was a fan. Yeah, he was a fan, but he was a biologist. He said, can you name it? But nobody knows. Yeah, look at me like, why are you asking me why I have a money name? Let me tell you the key thing, which was that she said, well, he's showing this to me. And I said, yes. And he says that it's named after you. Does that mean that the lemur is called John? And I said...

No, it means that that species of lemur is named after me. It's Clezis woolly lemur. There's no way she would have known that. That is obscure. I'll give you that. Are you sure it wasn't in 25 Things You Don't Know About Me and Us magazine? Because it's the kind of thing that might get in there. I'm just fucking with you. Yeah, but you see, all I want people to do is to say, I don't mind looking at this.

I don't believe it. No, no. I don't disbelieve it. I want them to be interested, and they're not interested. Let me tell you this. There was a brilliant guy in London who had a meeting with Dawkins and Rupert Sheldrake. And when they met to discuss these ESP, these inexplicable things, he said,

And Dawkins said, I don't believe a word of it, and Rupert Sheldon said, but I sent you a lot of the stuff, a lot of the evidence, and Dawkins said I didn't bother to read it because I know it's rubbish. That is a deeply unscientific view. I agree. And I like him, and he's a friend. I like him. Yeah. I'm a witness to his will. No, no, he can... Really? Yeah. No, he can be...

I mean, he is exactly who he is, the English professor. Yeah.

But he's the English professor with a very zealous point of view. Yeah, yes, yes. And science should be about skepticism. Well, it is. I mean, he's primarily not about that issue. He wrote the one book, The God Delusion, great book. It's a whole book. Yeah, there's a whole book, but he's got 12 other books. He's an evolutionary biologist. That's what he does. That's what he cares about. He's a true science nerd. He wouldn't know a joke if you hit him in the head with it.

Well, at least he didn't when he was sitting here. I mean, I've been out with him. He's a sweet guy, but he is a professor, and he is a serious person, and that is not what he wanted to have his life defined by. Of course not, but it's his zeal. It's his zeal that's got him into this position. Well, look, I don't believe in God, but I do...

There are phenomena. Again, there are people who will be terribly disappointed hearing me say this, but I've said it before. I know a lot of people, rather, I've heard stories from people who I trust who were not drunk, they're not crazy, and they had some...

ghost story to lack of a better phrase. Some were, and I'm like, and I grilled them as hard as I could. And then it's not about their religious. It's not, it's not a religious thing. It's just something made a chair move or whatever it was.

It was an experience, what they think is an experience. It was an experience or something they saw, and they're like, were you dreaming? Like, no, no, no, I wasn't. I looked at that. I wasn't dreaming. And we all know when we're in a situation where it could be dreamy. You don't, like, drop off asleep immediately at the top of a stairway or something. You know, if that's where you saw it, you're going, well, fell asleep in two seconds getting up the stairway? No, no.

And so drunk. No, I know when I'm drunk. Yeah. You know, so I don't know. I'm not going to close the door on anything. Bill, I love it because you said I don't know. And I don't know for sure, but I have heard people tell me things, very bright people, very often academics,

And I've had one or two very mild experiences myself. And I think this stuff is fascinating, but you don't want, most scientists don't want to talk about it because they don't like to admit they don't know. Does it make you fearful or hopeful about dying? Hopeful.

Well, I had a conversation, as I said today, with two of my old friends and one of my ex-wives. Again, it just seemed almost as though I was talking to them and stuff that nobody else could really know. Nobody could really know it. And the things that have happened in the last few days that nobody knows wouldn't be in the paper. Are you on good terms with all your exes? With? All your exes? Yeah, particularly the dead one.

Worst joke I ever made on stage. I went out one day, and I was feeling mischievous. And also, she had died. Barbara had died. And I said, I'm a little sad today. They go, oh. I said, yeah, I've said one of my ex-wives died a few days ago. Oh, I said, and it was the wrong one.

Really? Yes. There's a naughty schoolboy in me that I can't quite keep under control, and I think I shouldn't. A naughty schoolboy who's made you rich and beloved. I'm sorry you lost all your money. No, made me poor and beloved. Made my ex-wife rich. Well, that was your thing. You got into the... See, that's why I never got married. I never understood why...

It was necessary to involve the federal and state governments in my love life. Ah, very good. You know, do you remember Mark Twain's definition of a marriage? No. Friendship recognized by the police. Yes. Isn't that beautiful? Somebody else did right. Go on.

Somebody else defined marriage as a brother-sisterly relationship with occasional outbursts of incest. That's very good. Mark Twain said...

Wagner's music is much better than it sounds. Magnificent joke. Stands on its own. There's never been a joke like that. I have a book. I've had it forever. It's called The Algonquin Wits. Oh, yes. And it's just all those pithy epigrams and witty epitaphs for a waiter. Remember that? God finally caught his eye.

That's awesome. Yeah. All the ones from Dorothy Parker and Robin Rebens. And, of course, some of them are apocryphal. We don't know. Some press agent could have written some of those. That's the sad thing. There's always the Churchill stories that, you know, I knew about him. I'm drunk when I eat your pussy, you know, whatever his thing was. In the morning, I shall be sober. Yeah, that whole, you know, did he say it?

I know, and you never know. But the thing is, when you hear that, it's good laughter. Oh. But wit, which you have blessed us with all these years. But I've also loved slapstick.

I saw a clip the other day, Peter Farrelly's thing about the Three Stooges. I laughed myself. All they were doing was hitting each other. I almost fell off the sofa. English comedy was always like high and low. Yes. Shakespeare, right? Yeah. Like fart joke and then, you know.

To be or not to be. But then, you know, a dick joke. I mean, there's dick jokes and fart jokes, and there's like the low, and I think that tradition continued. I mean, some British comedy honestly really makes me roll my eyes. Oh, yeah. What? Anyhow. And then there's Monty Python. I kept you for two hours. I can't believe it, but I can't believe neither one of us had to pee. Clive.

Give me a lot to think about. Do you? I. So? I suppose I have to go home now. Yeah.