John Cleese to retire

I hope he isn't ill. Maybe he read that mean post Captain Infinity
wrote about him a few months back.

Captain Infinity...

John Cleese's contribution to comedy

Cleese will be heard next year in animated sequel Shrek the Third
John Cleese, who has announced he is to give up writing and performing,
has been both a literal and figurative giant of British comedy for four
decades.

Ubiquitous...

Born John Marwood Cleese in October 1939, his talent for mirth-making
revealed itself at an early age.

As a pupil at Clifton College in Bristol, he used painted footsteps to
suggest that the school's statue of Field Marshal Haig had left his
plinth to relieve himself.

His teachers failed to see the funny side, however, expelling him for
his insolence.

At Cambridge he joined the prestigious Footlights society, where he met
his future writing partner Graham Chapman.

The comedy troupe took him to Broadway, where he met future Monty
Python member Terry Gilliam and actress Connie Booth, whom he married
in 1968.

On returning to England, Cleese began performing in the BBC radio show
I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again alongside Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham
Garden and Bill Oddie - later to form The Goodies.

Satirical landmark

However, it was when he and Chapman began writing and performing in The
Frost Report that their careers took off.

It was while working on this satirical landmark that Cleese met Eric
Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.

Cleese (centre) was the best-known member of the Python troupe
Together they created Monty Python's Flying Circus, the hugely
influential sketch show that ran from 1969 to 1974.

Cleese's performances in the Ministry of Silly Walks and Dead Parrot
sketches cemented his reputation as one of Britain's most popular comic
stars.

However, that did not stop him becoming the first Python to jump ship -
though he would return for the films Life Of Brian, The Holy Grail and
The Meaning Of Life.

Post-Python, Cleese's next project was the sitcom Fawlty Towers,
co-written with then-wife Connie Booth.

Centred around the antics of ill-tempered hotelier Basil Fawlty, the
show had a shaky start but is now widely regarded as one of the UK's
finest sitcoms.

When the series ended in 1979 Cleese concentrated on film work,
achieving his greatest success in 1988's A Fish Called Wanda.

'Comedy professor'

A crowd-pleasing mix of romantic comedy and heist caper, the film
landed him a Bafta for best actor and an Oscar nomination for best
screenplay.

In recent years he appeared in the James Bond films The World Is Not
Enough and Die Another Day, playing gadget master Q's assistant and
subsequent replacement.

Hen-pecked hotelier Basil Fawlty remains his most iconic creation
He was also seen in two Harry Potter films as Nearly Headless Nick and
heard as King Harold in Shrek 2.

But his increasing involvement in documentaries, politics, teaching and
self-help books saw him move away from comic projects.

And some of those he did participate in - among them Wednesday 9:30
(8:30 Central), a 2002 sitcom that was cancelled after five episodes -
did not enjoy the same success as his earlier work.

In 2003 Cleese was awarded =A313,500 damages against London's Evening
Standard newspaper, claiming it had branded him a "humiliated failure".

The 66-year-old's decision to become a "comedy professor" suggests he
has now had his fill of television comedy.

Yet with vocal appearances in Shrek the Third and Charlotte's Web to
come, not to mention writing duties on Aardman Animations' upcoming
Crood Awakening, it is unlikely we have seen the last of him.