When the phenomenally popular Monty Python's Flying Circus folded its television tent more than a decade and a half ago, John Cleese, arguably its most visible member, went on to even more video success, solo, as spokesman for a variety of good-natured products and as his own creation, Basil Fawlty, the overbearing proprietor of the hilarious, forever-repeating series Fawlty Towers. Now 48, Cleese has limited his TV activity to commercials and the odd appearance in order to concentrate on other projects, including the film A Fish Called Wanda, which he wrote and in which he stars with Jamie Lee Curtis and fellow Python Michael Palin.

During a recent, rare visit to Southern California, the most well-known Python allowed himself to be cornered in his hotel suite by freelance writer Dick Lochte. "The phone never stopped ringing," Lochte recalls. "Friends dropped by, including his current co-star Jamie Lee Curtis. A waiter arrived with lunch but had forgotten the entree. And as the action ebbed and flowed, Cleese remained surprisingly unruffled. The man who was once the apoplectic owner of a dead parrot, the Minister of Silly Walks and the irrational Basil Fawlty seemed at peace with the surroundings and with himself."

Q 1

PLAYBOY: What's the story behind the name of your film A Fish Called Wanda?

John Cleese: I felt it was time I did something for fish. They're so special, but people just don't appreciate them. They take them for granted, and it's not fair. Fish are so underrated these days. Especially sand dabs. All of them, really. I could go on and on about it. I do, actually. People say to me, "Don't go on about fish today, please, Jack." And I say, "Just tell me one thing: Can you breathe under water?" And, of course, I have them there. Then I say, "Do you know anyone who can breathe under water?" All these so-called great men--Napoleon, Caesar, Alexander the Great, George Bush--could any of them breathe under water? I mean, the Gautama Buddha himself couldn't and he had astounding control over his bodily functions. And with the greatest of respect, even our Savior, Jesus Christ, who could walk on the stuff, couldn't inhale it. Yet every single fucking fish can. And what credit do we give them? It makes me sick. I tell you, if I could breathe under water, I'd be a proud man. I bet if people were to begin breathing under water, they'd be having award ceremonies within 12 months.

As for the Wanda part, that's because of a stripper I saw at the Crazy Horse in Paris. She was a truly wonderful human being and I shall never forget her. I wouldn't be surprised if she could breathe under water.

Q 2

PLAYBOY: Is the barrister you play in the film like the lawyer you hoped to become when you attended Cambridge?

John Cleese: No. He's much more upper-class. In England, barristers--the ones who wear wigs and gowns and stand up in court and get all the limelight--come from the upper-middle class. I was only lower-middle class. People from that class become solicitors, the kind of lawyers who sit in offices and delay the buying and selling of houses. So I was studying law at Cambridge with a view of going into a firm like that and--after eight years, say--killing myself. I was saved from this fate by the BBC. At the end of my three years at Cambridge, they saw me in a Footlights Club revue and offered me a job in jokes.

Q 3

PLAYBOY: The Footlights Club produced Peter Cook, David Frost and several Pythons. How did you get in?

John Cleese: The very first day in Cambridge, you went to this big building that housed a thing called the Societies Fair. And you wandered round it, and everybody from the chorale to the Rugby Club and the Paranormal Society would drum up members. For some reason, I was always drawn toward comedy. I can even remember when I was about nine, staying home from school one day and writing a script--which is a very bizarre thing to do, when I look back on it. So I went up to the Footlights Club desk and said, "I have a sort of interest." And they said, "Oh, good. What do you do? Can you sing?" And I'm the worst singer in western Europe. I mean horrendous. I was in Half a Sixpence on Broadway in 1965 on the condition that I mime. Literally. So I said, "No, I don't sing." And they said, "No problem. Do you dance?" Now, to ask a public school boy whether he dances is plain silly. I got embarrassed and said no. And they said, "Well, what do you do?" And I blushed bright red and said, "I try to make people laugh." And I fled from the stand. Six months passed before a friend of mine said, "Do you want to come along to Footlights and do something?" And I went along and did something and it went down quite well. So I was in the club.

Q 4

PLAYBOY: Do you remember the first time you made people laugh?

John Cleese: In large numbers, yes. It was at Clifton College, when I was 18. I had never liked my housemaster, and he was retiring that year. In the big speeches at mid-term, everybody had been saying how wonderful he was, so at the school entertainment at the end of that term, I did a very wicked parody of the speeches, being as rude about my housemaster as was humanly possible and finishing up by wishing him every success in his renewed attempt at a happy marriage. At which point the classics professor actually fell off his chair laughing. It sounds pretty mean in retrospect, but it all came out of a kind of joy that I was leaving the school and didn't have to stick to the rules anymore. Also, of course, I am mean. And there was something about that particular evening that I haven't recalled for 30 years, but as I talk to you now, I remember a kind of excitement, a kind of power. It was the feeling that you get sometimes when you make a large number of people laugh. But there's a feeling of control in it, too. I once performed at a pop concert with Terry Jones and Michael Palin in front of more than 35,000 people, and when you got a laugh, you began to see why Hitler liked his Nuremberg gigs.

Q 5

PLAYBOY: Rock stars are always either bragging or grousing about the way their female fans besiege them wherever they go. Are there hordes of beautiful women who get turned on by comedy?

John Cleese: Hmmm. Once, and only once, that I can remember, I did nearly get picked up by a girl at the stage door of the Hippodrome Theatre in Bristol after a Python stage show. This was in 1973. It was the only time I'd ever had someone wait for me with carnal intent. It's rather ironic that she was the only woman I'd ever met who was larger than I was. I'm 6'5" and weigh 210 pounds, and she made me feel positively dainty. I was very frightened. And that was it, I'm afraid. Otherwise, the fans in America--the Python fans, that is--have always followed the same pattern. They write you the most delightfully witty letters, and you exchange correspondence with them for two or three years. And when you finally meet, they always weigh more than 200 pounds and come from New Jersey. Which doesn't make them any less witty, but it does dissipate fantasies rather fast.