Terry Jones

Born on February 1, 1942, in Colwyn Bay (Wales), Terence Graham Parry Jones studied English philology at the University of Oxford. In the campus theater group he met Michael Palin, with whom he would form the comedy group Monty Phython, which would also include  Graham Chapman , John Cleese , Eric Idle , and Terry Gilliam , the only American member. There are different and somewhat confusing explanations for the name, although they all agree that its only “meaning” was that they thought it sounded funny. 

They rose to stardom thanks to the television program Monty Python’s Flying Circus (Monty Python’s Traveling Circus), which premiered on the BBC on October 5, 1969, and ran for four seasons. The group’s influence on comedy has been compared to that of the Beatles on music. They revalidated their success on stage, and later in the cinema with The Fat Armed , which compiled sketches from the small screen program. Terry Jones himself co-directed with Terry Gilliam their first feature film, Knights of the Square Table., a parody of the Arthurian myth, where he played, among other characters, the knight Belvedere, who supported the theory that a witch weighs the same as a goose.

It was followed by the controversial The Life of Brian , where in addition to taking care of the production, she also played characters such as the mother of the protagonist. It was banned in Ireland and in parts of the UK. Jones is also behind the group’s last film, The Meaning of Life , where he was, among others, Mr. Creosote, an obese guy who ended up exploding after eating too much in a restaurant. After filming, Cleese decided to go solo.

After the breakup of the group, Jones continued to work as a director, screenwriter, and writer. He singles out the very cool comedy Erik the Viking , where he once again worked with Cleese. He came to sign some twenty children’s stories, and several serious essays on the Middle Ages, which were enormously successful. From his Guardian column, he distinguished himself as a relentless opponent of Tony Blair’s decision to participate in the Iraq War.

In 2014, the Pythons reunited for the last time, except for the late 1989 Chapman, for ten performances in London. In 43 seconds they sold close to 20,000 tickets for the performance. In September 2016 he was diagnosed with a strange variant of dementia, for which he withdrew from public life. Divorced from Alison Telfer, with whom he had had two children,  Terry Jones had another with Anna Soderstrom, who accompanied him until her death.