So, Anyway...: The Autobiography

When you encounter a culture totally uncontaminated by logic, it eventually undermines your reliance on reason. For example, Johnny Lynn walked into a department store in search of cufflinks. ‘Where do I find cufflinks?’ he asked. ‘Try the tobacco counter.’ ‘No,’ said Johnny, indicating the cuffs on his shirt, ‘cufflinks.’ ‘Yis. Try the tobacco cou

The one and only sketch Graham and I wrote for the show that, judging from internet viewings, has stood the test of time concerns two airline pilots who become so bored on a long-haul flight that they decide to amuse themselves by making ambiguous announcements to frighten their passengers: Captain (John Cleese): (over intercom) ‘Hello, this is you

politeness and inability to shake off people who were being a pest, had developed an annoying habit since his arrival. Every morning, after we arrived at the beach, he would wander off on his own, chatting to people at random, until he came across someone – always a man – whom he judged to be outstandingly boring. He would talk to them until he had

As for me, although my contribution to the show was small, and sometimes absolutely minute, being involved in it proved an extraordinarily valuable experience. The three-times-a-week live performing of material, sometimes written only six hours before, forced upon me a different mindset from the one I’d had in The Frost Report. There I could aim to

was still performing at the Lyric and about six weeks before the end of the run I had what should have been a wonderful experience. One night I did, as near as dammit, a perfect show. I

This was quite manageable. The trouble was . . . I was conscientious. I could have arranged, around my studies, an interesting and even slightly adventurous life, but I didn’t. I kick myself now when I think how other undergraduates took their Cambridge life by the scruff of its neck and spent their time doing what really mattered to them. (Stephen

could see (though not as clearly as I do now) that one of my biggest problems was me. Because I wanted everyone to like me and to approve of me, I tried to be nice to everyone all the time and this proved a remarkably efficient way of losing control over my life. Connie noticed this very quickly. After we’d been in London a few months, she gave me

used to think that the world was basically sane with patches of madness here and there which would recede as rationality and good jokes pushed their boundaries ever inwards. Now I have the opposite view entirely. But one of the patches of sanity that I treasure is my memory of St Peter’s, where people seemed to be doing a useful job in a conscienti

A quite spacious bookshop. A customer enters and approaches the counter, behind which stands an assistant. Assistant: Good morning, sir. Mr Pest: Good morning. Can you help me? Do you have a copy of Thirty Days in the Samarkand Desert with a Spoon by A. E. J. Elliott? Assistant: Um . . . well, we haven’t got it in stock, sir. Mr Pest: Never mind. H