Name: Terry Jones on Letterman, December 3, 1982
Uploaded: 2020-01-22T17:17:48.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Terry Jones on Letterman, December 3, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-01-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Terry Jones on Letterman, December 3, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-01-22. Transcript available.

Hi, and welcome back to the program. We have a fine program indeed. Let's get
to it, shall we?
My first guest tonight came to the attention of American audiences as one of
the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus,
the one who happened to play the organ nude and appear in drag.
He has also directed The Life of Brian and the forthcoming The Meaning of Life,
and he is the author of this book, An Intriguing Bit of Work.
This is a book entitled Fairy Tales, and that's just what it is.
Welcome, please, Mr. Terry Jones.
There you are. Nice to see you.
Unbelievable, isn't it, ladies and gentlemen?
My heaven.
Rolling over and waving my paw.
Very nice.
And now, peek-a-boo.
There you go. Darned impressive.
Darned impressive.
A stupid dog can do like an icon, eh?
Let me, before we get into the meat of this, as they say, before they get into
the meat of it,
tell me about your experience flying from, was it London last night?
Oh, London, yes, yes, gosh, it was last night, was it?
Was it? I don't know.
Yeah, well, we were just taking off, it was half an hour, we were on the plane,
leaving London airport, you know,
and suddenly this voice comes over, very calm, you know, English, suave,
captain's voice comes over and says,
Um, somebody just found a note in the men's room, um, whatever wrote it, please
come and have a word with me, please.
And so we all sat there thinking, uh, what is it?
About half an hour later, he says, very cool voice, nobody panics, nobody panics,
you know, very cool voice says,
Um, well, we're going to have to land at Shannon airport, after all.
Uh, just nothing much, just nothing, there's something wrong with the plane.
Everybody sits there, absolutely icy cold, nobody moves, another flick of an
eyelid, we land.
Five hours later, we take off again, and the, uh, after we've been going for a
bit, the, uh, captain, very cool voice,
comes out again and says, um, I expect you were wondering, uh, what all that
was about.
Well, we, uh, we had a note, you know, saying there was a bomb on board, panic,
everybody panics.
Oh, yeah, that's ugly, that's, that's probably my worst, uh, worst nightmare.
Uh, what, but, uh, weren't people just edgy and nasty, uh, up to that point?
Absolutely nothing happened.
Well, did they get the guy and, uh, beat him up, or?
Well, they say, he said he actually wrote the letter, the guy who found it
actually wrote the letter, so, um.
Did you get a look at the guy?
No.
Well, Terry, he's here tonight, would you bring him up?
Oh, great!
Uh, boy, that's just a, a darned ugly experience, I would think.
Uh, now tell me about the book of fairy tales.
It actually is fairy tales, isn't it?
It's actually fairy tales.
They're kind of fairy tales you've never heard before, I hope.
How did, how did this come about?
What sort of a project is this to fall into?
Well, I was reading fairy tales to my daughter, Sally, who was then about five,
and I was reading her Grimm's and Hans Anderson and things like that,
and I kind of found they were a bit long and a bit sort of, uh, a bit nasty,
some of them.
I mean, you know, things like the, um, have you ever read Grimm's version of
Snow White?
I mean, at the end of it, the, uh, fairy godmother, the, um, the, the wicked
auntie,
has, has to put on, um, red hot iron slippers and dance until she's dead, you
know.
You know, it's bedtime, you know, you're reading this to your five-year-old
daughter.
You say, what?
I can't read that.
Red hot iron slippers and dance till she's dead.
That's right.
Oh, Daddy, read me that again, would you please?
I'd enjoy that.
So I thought I'd write my own, and, uh...
Dear, would you mind, uh, uh, reading just, uh, the beginning of one of them?
The Silly King.
The Silly King, yes.
Yeah.
Well, you can find it.
It's your book.
You certainly know where it ought to be.
I know, the book's got words in it.
Oh, yeah, this is called, this is, this is the Silly King, yes.
What's the, the first couple of paragraphs there?
Okay.
Um, are you all sitting comfortably?
Good, then we'll begin.
King Herbert the Twelfth had ruled wisely and well for many years,
but eventually he grew very old,
and although his subjects continued to love him dearly,
they all had to admit that as he'd grown older,
he had started to do very silly things.
One day, for example, King Herbert went out of his palace
and walked down the street with a dog tied to each leg.
Another time, he took off all his clothes
and sat in the fountain in the principal square,
singing selections of popular songs and shouting,
Radishes, at the top of his voice.
Nobody, however, liked to mention how silly their king had become.
Even when he hung from the spire of the great cathedral,
dressed as a parsnip and throwing Turkish dictionaries at the crowd below,
no one had the heart to complain.
In private, they'd shake their heads and say,
poor old Herbert, whatever will he do next?
But in public, everyone pretended that the king was as grave and as wise
as he'd always been.
And it goes on like that.
That's the silly king.
That's the silly king.
Very nice.
A little picture of the silly king.
Very impressive.
In that picture, he's hitting people with a habit.
Another habit.
What can you tell us about the new film, The Meaning of Life?
The Meaning of Life?
Well, it's extremely dirty, actually.
Filthy.
Filthy, yes.
They are some of the dirtiest things I've ever seen on film.
I can't actually demonstrate them,
but I think if we get one of the dogs,
they could probably show you what I meant.
It's kind of, it's not a lot of lie, I can say, really.
It's, I mean, it tells you all about human life, really,
from the birth to the grave.
The title of the film is The Meaning of Life.
Modest little title, we thought.
But it is specifically, I should say,
it's specifically aimed at fish, basically.
I mean, we sort of realise, you know,
if you look at the North Sea,
I mean, there are unbelievable shoals of herring in the North Sea,
and we reckon if we could open that up as an audience,
we, you know, that's a huge audience.
A whole new market.
That's right.
Yeah, just encourage these folks to go to the theatre.
Yeah.
Well, good luck to you on that adventure.
I've just had it and caught, you know.
You're living in, you live in London,
but you're actually from Wales, right?
Do you sound like a Welshman now?
No, no, no, I don't.
I mean, it's funny, I suddenly realised about a few years ago
that people used to sort of get a bit sort of upset by me,
you know, I get so, you know, I'd be like this,
you know, getting very excited and things,
and people going, you know, shying away,
and eventually I suddenly realised it was my accent.
I moved from Wales when I was about five,
and went to live in England,
and I picked up this terrible English accent
that I've got now,
and if you get excited with a Welsh accent,
you see, you go up at the end of the line,
you see, so if you get excited,
everybody knows you're just getting really excited
about something.
But if you do it with an English accent,
you go down at the end of every line,
and everybody thinks you're telling them off,
or being, you know, sort of,
I'm getting very excited.
So I've toned myself down, you know.
Yeah.
Now, what is the native language of Welsh?
It is Welsh.
Yes, it is Welsh.
Oh.
You know, ironically enough, yes.
Now, what does that sound like?
Oh, I can't really, I don't speak any Welsh,
but it's very sort of,
it's very sort of guttural.
Guttural, yeah.
It's, um...
Is it a real language,
or just noises people make for the fun of it?
Oh, no, it's a real...
Well, it's a bit of both, you know.
I mean, it's a real language.
Nasty feelings on the part of the...
Yeah, I think so, on the part of the Welsh, yes.
No chance of an uprising?
Well, there is a Welsh national army,
but it doesn't get very far.
They do burn down...
A lot of English people have holiday homes in Wales,
and so they do tend to burn them down.
So, um...
There is a slogan,
the cobalt would have a slogan,
and come home to a warm fire,
you know, have a holiday home in Wales.
Another thing that I think is fascinating
is you own your own brewery.
Mm, yes.
Now, how do you do that?
Is it a large brewery?
No, no, it's a tiny brewery.
You know, yes, you could almost drink
the entire contents of it in a couple of years.
I just suddenly decided to start a brewery
about sort of six years ago.
I suddenly thought nobody's done it
for a couple of hundred years.
It'd be a nice thing to do.
I couldn't see why not.
Yeah, well, continued success with the brewery,
and also, of course,
the new publication,
Fairy Tales and the Meaning of Life,
many, many projects.
Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you.
Terry Jones, ladies and gentlemen.
We'll be right back.
The Paul and the Boys are going to play.
Carlo DeVito is here.
And Marty Short from SCTV,
right after this.
Thank you.