Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today, we are attempting
something truly ambitious. We're trying to unpack
a career so contradictory, so vast, that it often
feels like we're talking about half a dozen different
people. It really does. We're diving into the
life and work of Terrence Graham Perry Jones,
the Welsh actor, comedian, director, historian.
The list just goes on. He really was a true polymath.
I mean, born in 1942, lived to 2020. And in that
time, he just filled so many different roles.
And most people, you know, they know him as one
of the six founding members of Monty Python.
Oh, absolutely. He's that guy. The man who loved
playing those screeching middle -aged women.
Right. The Pepper Potts. But the whole mission
of this deep dive is to synthesize all those
wildly different roles. Exactly. We need to understand
the intellectual architecture of the man who
on one hand pioneered this completely surreal
non sequitur comedy. Yeah, the silliest of the
silly. And on the other was a highly respected,
meticulous medieval scholar and an innovative
film director on top of it all. That initial
snapshot everyone has is so specific, though.
It's Terry Jones in a dress as one of those.
Rat bag old women, as the BBC called them. Or
the grannies from hell. Grannies from hell. I
love that. It's just anarchy. But he was active
across all these fields for five decades, from
1966 all the way to 2016. That length of time
alone, it just speaks to this relentless intellectual
engine, doesn't it? It does. And he earned respect
far beyond just comedy. Oh, for sure. You see
that benchmark right at the end of his active
career. In 2016, he got a Lifetime Achievement
Award at the BAFTA Simru Awards. And that wasn't
just a Python award, was it? No, not at all.
It was specifically for his outstanding contribution
to television and film. It recognized the full
scope, directing, writing, performing. It was
clear he transcended the label of just a comedian
decades before. Okay, so let's unpack that, the
intellectual foundation. Because I think once
you get that, the way Python was structured starts
to make a whole lot more sense. We absolutely
have to start with his formative years. Terry
Jones was born on February 1st, 1942 in Colon
Bay, Wales. And his father was in the service.
Yes. His father, Alec George Perry Jones, was
a bank clerk who served in the Royal Air Force
during World War II. And that really defined
his early childhood. How so? Well, his dad was
posted to India as a flight lieutenant just a
week after Terry was born. So that whole early
period was marked by separation. So his first
real memories of his father would have been after
the war, after years apart. Exactly. The family
reunited when the war was over and they moved
to Claygate in Surrey when Jones was about four
and a half. And he was a good student. Oh, he
excelled. He went to Escher COE primary and then
the Royal Grammar School in Guildford. He was
highly regarded there. He was even school captain
in his final year, 1960 -61. Which leads him
to Oxford. And this is where it all seems to
come together. English, history, and comedy.
It's the perfect nexus. He went to St. Edmund
Hall, Oxford, and he was officially there to
read English. But as he put it, he strayed into
history. And that's where the medieval fascination
started. That's it. It began right there from
reading Chaucer for his English course. That
deep fascination just took hold and never let
go. And it wasn't just a hobby. He graduated
with a very solid 2 .1. And of course, crucially,
Oxford is where he meets Michael Palin. The most
important collaboration of his life, without
a doubt. They met and started doing comedy together
in the Oxford Review. Jones was a year ahead,
but they just clicked. What was it that made
them work so well together? palin recalled that
jones was just you know a nice bloke no airs
and graces But the key was their shared vision.
They both wanted to do character -driven comedy,
not just simple set -up punchline jokes. They
were already thinking about a different kind
of structure. A more absurd, narrative -breaking
style. And that vision immediately got them work
on the professional circuit that was defining
British comedy in the late 60s. Right, they were
part of that whole scene. Absolutely. Their pre
-Python work is so foundational. They wrote for
shows like Twice a Fortnight, The Frost Report.
They even co -created the complete and utter
history of Britain. in 1969. And Do Not Adjust
Your Set was a big one, right? Huge. It ran from
67 to 69. And that's where they worked with Eric
Idle and David Jason. You can see all the pieces
of Python coming together. So by the time the
whole group, Jones, Palin, Chapman, Cleese, Idle,
Gilliam formed Monty Python's Flying Circus,
Jones's ideas about structure were already fully
formed. And this is the key insight. His biggest
contribution wasn't playing the pepper pots.
It was structural. When you look at what made
Python so radical, it was Jones who insisted
on dismantling the whole idea of a sketch show.
We really need to spend a moment on this because
it's probably the single biggest leap forward
in sketch comedy history. It really is. Most
comedy back then was so rigid. You had a setup,
you had the sketch, and then you had the big
punchline at the end. And Jones just said, no.
He actively shunned the punchline. It was an
act of really intellectual anarchy applied to
format. Why, though? What was the thinking behind
it? Jones understood that the punchline gives
the audience a sense of closure, of comfort.
It's predictable by taking it away by having
a stop or morph into a Terry Gilliam cartoon.
Or have a giant foot come down. Exactly. The
humor becomes more unsettling, more surreal,
and crucially, you never knew what was coming
next. He ensured the sketches just flowed from
one absurdity to another by completely defying
your expectation of a neat ending. You know,
it's so compelling when you think of him as the
historian he was becoming. How do you mean? Well...
A historian who loves Chaucer and medieval texts
is used to fragmented narratives, to stories
that don't have neat conclusions. He basically
applied the structure of historical manuscripts
to television comedy. That is a brilliant connection.
I'd never thought of it that way, but it's perfect.
He was demanding that the audience work a bit,
whether it was to understand why a sketch ended
a certain way or why the Middle Ages were actually
sophisticated. The transition itself became the
joke. The non sequitur was elevated from just
a random line to a formal artistic device. It
turned the very structure of the show into a
statement about the absurdity of Well, everything.
And that desire for control over the structure,
that naturally leads him to want to control the
visuals, too. It leads him behind the camera.
Absolutely. He had to translate that structural
anarchy into a visual language. And that brought
him to his directorial debut, co -directing Monty
Python and the Holy Grail in 1975 with Terry
Gilliam. A legendary film, but also... famously
chaotic to make, right? That co -direction was
a source of tension. It was. And you can see
it in the film. You have this incredible mix
of Gilliam's highly stylized, almost grotesque
visual sense. The look of the Black Knight, the
castle interiors. Mixed with Jones's focus on
character and narrative. It's an explosive combination,
but it's not purely a Terry Jones film. It was
The Next Ones, where he had sole control that
his own style really emerged. So he was the sole
director on Life of Brian and The Meaning of
Life. What changes when Jones is the only one
in charge? He took the reins for Life of Brian
in 79 and The Meaning of Life in 83. As a sole
director, he really got the command he needed
to create his own visual style. It was less fantastical
than Gilliam's, more grounded in a kind of absurd
reality. So if the structural innovation was
dropping the punchline, what was his visual signature?
It was this real focus on performance and using
the camera to enhance the visual comedy. He used
a lot of wide shots to capture the full scope
of the absurdity happening on screen. Like the
every sperm is sacred number and meaning of life.
A perfect example. It's this huge elaborate musical
number, but he frames it with this almost documentary
style detachment, which just makes the whole
thing even funnier. He lets the deadpan humor
come from the visuals and the performances. And
he certainly didn't shy away from controversy
with it. choices he ran towards it i mean it's
a fascinating bit of history that three films
he directed were all famously banned in ireland
for years three i knew about life of brian obviously
yep the meaning of life life of brian and a non
-python film he did later personal services all
banned the humor was challenging enough that
authorities literally felt it was a danger so
moving past python he had this really solid if
a bit eclectic directing career Very eclectic.
He did the black comedy Personal Services in
1987, the adventure comedy Eric the Viking in
89, and then a real passion project, The Wind
in the Willows in 1996. Which he also starred
in as Mr. Toad. He was a fantastic Mr. Toad.
But all those films share that Jernesian trait
of taking a grand concept, a Norse myth, a beloved
classic, and filtering it through his very specific
lens of absurd character -driven comedy. And
his final film credit brought him right back
to the pythons in a way. It did, absolutely.
Anything in 2015, it was a very nostalgic project,
really. It starred Simon Pegg and Kate Beckinsale.
And Robin Williams in one of his last roles.
A voice role from Robin Williams, yes. And crucially,
it featured the voices of the five remaining
pythons as a group of aliens. It felt like a
tribute to that kind of high -concept comedy
he'd mastered. His very last directing job wasn't
a film, though. It was on stage. That's right.
In 2016, a West End play called Jeepers Creepers,
all about the life of the comic Marty Feldman.
It's so fitting, isn't it? His final directing
effort was a tribute to another master of visual
absurdity. And he was always writing. even when
not directing. He was often the guy who laid
the groundwork for other creators. The most famous
example is probably Jim Henson's Labyrinth. I
had no idea he worked on that. He wrote an early
draft of the screenplay. Now, the final film
had a lot of rewrites from other people, but
you can feel his DNA in there. That strange,
dark, funny, imaginative world. It's just incredible
to think he was also jumping into the world of
opera. Moving from writing for Muppets to writing
librettos. It's that intellectual curiosity again.
In 2008, he wrote the libretto for and directed
an opera called Evil Machines. It premiered in
Lisbon. And he was commissioned for another one
after that, The Doctor's Tale. It wasn't just
that he did it, it's the sheer variety. I mean,
at one point he announced he was working on a
heavy metal version of the Nutcracker. With Jim
Steinman, the man behind Meatloaf. Yes. And that's
the perfect encapsulation of Terry Dodds, taking
something so classical and rigid like the Nutcracker
Ballet and smashing it together with something
so over the top and anarchic. He was always looking
for that conceptual challenge. Okay, this is
where the deep dive gets really deep. We have
to talk about the part of his life that seems
to fundamentally contradict the silly comedian.
Kerry Jones, the serious, meticulous, and often
fiercely revisionist scholar. Python biographer
George Perry summed it up perfectly. He said
if you tried to talk to Jones about anything...
From fossil fuels to Rupert Bear. Or medieval
mercenaries. You'd quickly find yourself hopelessly
out of your depth, floored by his knowledge.
His curiosity wasn't just superficial, it was
rigorous. And his reputation as a medieval historian
wasn't just a quirky side project. He was genuinely
respected. He used his academic mind to actively
dismantle popular misconceptions about the era.
He was a revisionist by nature. His scholarship
often involved these radical reinterpretations.
His first major academic book from 1980 was hugely
influential, Chaucer's Night, The Portrait of
a Medieval Mercenary. Now, this book really made
waves in academic circles, didn't it? What was
the core argument? Well, for centuries, the accepted
interpretation of the knight in the Canterbury
Tales was that he was this paragon of Christian
chivalric virtue, the ideal knight. Jones just
didn't buy it. He went back and, almost like
a detective, forensically examined the historical
records of the 15 battles the knight claims to
have fought in. And what did that reveal? Jones
argued that if you actually look at where he
fought, the portrait that emerges is much darker.
He argued the knight was basically a professional
mercenary. a killer for hire driven by profit,
not piety. It completely upended the romantic
view by applying cold, hard historical rigor
to a literary text. That is the essence of his
disruptive impulse, isn't it? Taking an established,
beloved narrative and just flipping it on his
head by examining the fine print. It's the unifying
theme of his entire life. He did it again in
2003 with a book called Who Murdered Chaucer?
He and his co -authors argue that Chaucer didn't
just die peacefully, but was actually persecuted
to death by Thomas Arundel after Richard II was
deposed. Treating his death like a political
assassination. Exactly. Demanding a more complex,
politically charged reading of the period. And
he knew this stuff was too important to just
keep in academic books. He brought it to a massive
audience through his TV documentaries. His TV
work was central to that mission, right? Yeah.
To overturn those lazy historical stereotypes.
Absolutely. famous one was Terry Jones's Medieval
Lives from 2004. In that series, he argued so
forcefully against the whole idea of the Dark
Ages. So how did he counter that idea? He showed
that the Middle Ages were incredibly dynamic
and sophisticated. He talked about achievements
in science, architecture. He challenged the myth
of everyone being dirty by pointing to the existence
of public baths. He was so passionate about showing
the period was driven by curiosity and invention,
not just superstition. And that work was recognized
as Serious historical writing, not just entertainment.
Oh, definitely. He got an Emmy nomination in
the U .S. for Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction
Programming for that series. Think about that
for a second. The man famous for the Nudge Nudge
sketch is getting Emmy nominations for Serious
Historical Writing. It's the duality. He continued
that mission with Terry Jones's Barbarians in
2006. Right, where he flipped the script on the
Roman Empire. He did. He presented the cultural
achievements of the so -called barbarian peoples
in a really positive light and argued that the
traditional Roman accounts were basically propaganda.
So he was treating Roman history the same way
he treated Chaucer's Night. precisely he argued
the sack of rome in 410 wasn't just savagery
it was a consequence of roman imperial policy
he showed these groups goths vandals had complex
societies that were just erased by the dominant
roman story and the list of his documentaries
is just immense crusades ancient inventions the
surprising history of sex and love the hidden
history of egypt the hidden history of rome He
was just relentlessly curious. He even did documentaries
on math and technology like The Story of One.
So we have the serious historian, but the comedy
writer was still going strong, especially with
Michael Palin. That bond never broke. They wrote
the anthology series Ripping Yarns together,
which was a brilliant parody of old -fashioned
boys' adventure stories. And they wrote a play
together, too. They did, a one -act play called
Underwood's Finest Hour. The premise of that
play is so... Perfectly British and absurd. It's
the definition of it. It's about an obstetrician
who's trying to deliver a baby, but he's completely
distracted because he's listening to a crucial
test match on the radio. The juxtaposition of
life and death. with the slow pace of cricket,
that's pure Jones and Palin. It's their genius.
And he also translated that wit for a younger
audience. He was a very successful children's
author. With titles like Fantastic Stories and
The Beast with a Thousand Teeth. And my personal
favorite, a poetry collection called The Curse
of the Vampire Socks. It just sounds like a Python
sketch. He even brought that medieval parody
into children's animation. with Blazing Dragons,
which ran in the late 90s. And again, a classic
Jones twist. It parodied Arthurian legends, but
the dragons were the sophisticated, civilized
heroes. And the humans were the villains. Exactly.
Always challenging the archetype. We also have
to mention his work in the Douglas Adams universe.
Yes, he wrote the novel Douglas Adams' Starship
Titanic. Based on the computer game, it was a
perfect match of styles, that cosmic absurdity.
And a really interesting detail about his publishing
life. He was actually fundamental to a whole
new publishing model. This is crucial. It shows
how forward -thinking he was. In 2011, his book
Evil Machines was the very first book published
by Unbound. The crowdfunding publisher. Right.
He provided so much support for that model as
it was getting started. He wasn't just disrupting
art. He was willing to disrupt the business of
art, too. So whether it's tearing down punchlines
or historical propaganda, he was always the intellectual
disruptor. And that translated directly into
his political voice. He did not shy away from
using his platform, that's for sure. In a 1984
interview, he was asked about his politics and
he said, if I had any political convictions,
I would say that I am an anarchist. Anarchism.
That seems to fly in the face of the rigorous
structure he applied to his historical work.
How did he define it? He clarified it. For him,
anarchism wasn't chaos. It was a belief in government
from the bottom up. fundamentally anti -authoritarian.
Which links directly back to his historical work.
It does. He was challenging the top -down narratives
of the Romans, the authoritarian interpretations.
His history, like his politics, demanded autonomy
for the individual. And he used his writing to
campaign against geopolitical decisions he saw
as flawed. He was one of the most visible public
opponents of the Iraq War. He wrote these scathing
columns for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The
Observer, just condemning the war. And he particularly
mocked the war on terror. His quote on that is
a perfect piece of intellectual satire. It is.
He said declaring a war on terror was like declaring
war on an abstract noun. A classic Jones critique.
exposing the absurdity of the language itself.
He saw the language of politics as just as deserving
of satirical dismantling as anything else. And
those columns were collected in a book, Terry
Jones's War on the War on Terror. He also weighed
in on the Scottish independence referendum in
2014. He did. He was one of 200 public figures
who signed a letter to the Guardian hoping Scotland
would vote to remain part of the UK. He was always
engaged. Now, before we get to his final years,
we have to touch on some of the wonderful niche
details, like his surprising connection to beer.
This is a great one. He was a member of CAMRA,
the campaign for real ale. And to prove his commitment,
he co -founded his own microbrewery in Herpertshire,
the Penrose Brewery. And the building is still
a pub, right? It is. It's now called the Python's
Arms, a perfect little footnote to his life.
And despite being this huge international talent,
he actually didn't appear in that many projects
outside of his own. No, he rarely did. There
were a few exceptions, like a cameo in Terry
Gilliam's Jabberwocky and a great little role
as a drunken vicar in The Young Ones. Which was
the perfect show for him, really. Absolutely.
The same anarchic structural absurdity. He also
did narration for a CBBC series called The Legend
of Dick and Dom. And he even performed music.
He did. He performed with the Carnival Band and
is on one of their CDs. The spectrum of his artistic
endeavors was just boundless. Okay, let's turn
to his personal life. health struggles that sadly
defined his final years. He was married twice.
He married Alison Telfer in 1970, and they had
two children. They were known to have an open
marriage, which was quite unconventional for
the time, but very reflective of his free -thinking
nature. But that marriage ended. It did. In 2009,
he left Telfer for Anna Soderstrom, who was 41
years his junior. And they started a new family.
They did. They had a daughter together in 2009
and got married in 2012. And before his final
struggle with dementia, he'd already had a major
health scare. In 2006, he was diagnosed with
colon cancer. He underwent surgery and chemo
and was declared cancer -free. And his public
comment on it was just pure, dark, python humor.
What did he say? He commented that his illness
was not nearly bad enough to sell many newspapers,
and the prognosis is even more disappointing.
He found the humor even in his own mortality.
But the last few years of his life were tragically
marked by a disease that attacked the very core
of his identity. In 2015, he was diagnosed with
primary progressive aphasia. It's a specific
form of frontotemporal dementia. And the tragic
irony is that it specifically impairs the ability
to speak, write, and communicate. the very skills
that defined his entire career. Everything he
relied on, whether it was arguing a historical
point, or delivering a line in a sketch. And
the first public signs of this were during the
Big Python reunion tour in 2014. That's right.
During the Monty Python Live, mostly, shows at
the O2 Arena, his colleagues in the audience
noticed he was having real trouble learning and
remembering his lines. And that was his last
performance with them. Tragically, yes. His last
public performance with the group. What's so
moving is how he faced that diagnosis. With incredible
bravery. He became a high profile campaigner
for dementia research. He went public to raise
awareness. And in a final selfless act of scholarship,
he donated his brain to dementia research. And
that profound ability to communicate, it just
deteriorated so quickly. By September 2016, he
couldn't give interviews anymore. By April 2017,
the loss was almost total. He could only say
a few words. He passed away in January 2020.
At the age of 77, from complications of dementia,
he was remembered with a humanist funeral ceremony.
It's an incredibly poignant end to the story.
A master of complex language and absurdity, losing
the very tool he used to organize and express
his brilliant thoughts. It really underscores
that central duality we've been talking about.
He was the genius behind the anarchy of Python,
the man who broke narrative. Who then spent his
other life applying rigorous critical thinking
to history, arguing for the complexity of periods
others just dismissed as dark. And his recognition
wasn't just in film or academia. He got three
Grammy nominations for Python albums. And he
even has an asteroid named after him. He does.
9622 Terry Jones. A cosmic nod to a man whose
humor was often literally out of this world.
So the final takeaway here as we connect all
these threads, it has to be that shared impulse
to challenge everything. He built his comedy
career on... tearing down conventions rejecting
the easy punch line and then he spent his serious
career using that same intellectual energy to
repair and re -examine historical propaganda
whether it was about chaucer or the barbarians
he used comedy to disrupt our immediate expectations
and he used history to disrupt our long -held
beliefs exactly so what does it tell us about
the human mind then that one of the greatest
absurdists a master of the non sequitur, was
also one of the most dedicated truth seekers,
challenging popular views with such rigor, whether
the result was a scholarly book or a man in a
dress yelling about spam. It suggests that the
true engine of curiosity, the deepest intellectual
impulse, isn't about conforming. It's about questioning.
It's about rejecting the easy conclusion, the
punchline, and demanding complexity instead.
Terry Jones showed us that the same brain that
dreams up the most chaotic, wonderful nonsense
is often the one most dedicated to finding structure
and revealing hidden truths. And that, I think,
is the most profound lesson of his exceptional,
complex and ultimately tragic life.