Happy Birthday John Cleese

Comedy legend John Cleese (born this day in 1939) has distinguished himself as a writer and performer on television and in movies for the past forty years. Beginning with The Frost Report in 1966, Cleese was among a generation of comedy writers whose rage against authority and bourgeois ideals would bring about a cultural revolution on British television. Cleese often played loud and/or aggressive characters whether as authority figures or those in conflict with them.

Following his groundbreaking work in At Last the 1948 Show in 1967-8, Cleese co-wrote and co-starred in three of four seasons of Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969–74).

Not content, Cleese went on to write and star in what is possibly the most perfect sitcom ever written - Fawlty Towers - with his then-wife and costar Connie Booth. Consisting of only 12 episodes (a rumoured 13th episode appears to have vanished), Fawlty Towers lampoons what Cleese himself called 'the brittle politeness of the English'. The show was based on Cleese's experiences with Donald Sinclair, owner of the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay.
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