INTERVIEW
JOHN CLEESE: ACTOR, COMEDIAN, WRITER, FILM PRODUCER AND RIGHTBRAIN FREEDOM FIGHTER
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lthough nothing John Cleese does will ever fully eclipse the fame he acquired for Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers, his talks to businesses about creativity are legendary – treasured by those who’ve attended them, and in big demand with those who have yet to do so. He started delivering them rather earlier than many people now realise. It all began in the 1970s, when his company video Arts was making that renowned string of motivational corporate training ilms, the likes of Meetings Bloody Meetings and The Balance Sheet Barrier. Cleese’s partner in that outit, Antony Jay (future co-writer of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister) suggested that, to ill in the potentially embarrassing gaps at the start of the initial client screenings, while the equipment was being set up, Cleese should say a few words. which he did, and kept on doing whenever required until 1996, when he sold the company, at which point he
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thought that would probably be the end of it. but people kept asking him back, so he kept on talking. And, rather to his surprise, he’s still doing it 20 years later, currently about eight times a year, between other engagements. SPECIAL EFFECTS Cleese stresses that his areas of expertise are business and psychology, not inance. Even bearing in mind the Caribbean heat, Speakglobal thinks it detects a shudder accompanying the reference to inance down the phone line. So does this conform to the stereotype that creatives are not much good with the money? Cleese doesn’t completely disagree with this. Neither, however, does he completely buy into the “left brain/ right brain” norm. but there again, he doesn’t dismiss it out of hand either: as with so many imperfect theories, people are much quicker to deride the bits that don’t work than to think about the bits that make sense. SPEAKGLOBAL | ISSUE 6