Honest, frank and brilliantly funny, this is the story of how a tall, shy youth from Weston-Super-Mare went on to become a comedy giant. En route, John Cleese describes his nerve-wracking first public appearance, at St Peter's Preparatory School at the age of 8 and 5/6ths; his endlessly peripatetic home life with parents who seemed incapable of staying in any house for longer than six months; his first experiences in the world of work as a teacher who knew next to nothing about the subjects he was expected to teach; his hamster-owning days at Cambridge and his first encounter with the man who would be his writing partner, Graham Chapman. And so on to his dizzying ascent via script-writing for David Frost, Marty Feldman and others to the heights of Monty Python. Each step of the way is recalled wittily and candidly, with John Cleese taking a pause from time to time to record his thoughts on topics as diverse as the nature of comedy, the short-comings of the English, and the importance of knowing the names of the capitals of all the countries of the world. It's a masterly performance by a master performer.
