I Didn't Want To Be Big Mr.

When We Graduated [ From Cambridge], We Were Grabbed Right Into Television. I Was Grabbed Straight Into The Practice Of Writing Comedy. It Was All Writing And Performing. You Wrote Something In Order For You To Perform It.

You Could Feel The Place Going Crazy Because We Hadn't Been On Stage Together For Maybe 35 Years And The Audience Could Just Feel Us In The Darkness Come On And They Went Nuts. It Made The Little Hairs Stand Up On The Back Of My Neck And We Sang Sit On My Face, Which I Thought Was Wonderfully Appropriate For George's Memorial, And Then We Bowed And We Showed Our Bare Asses.

Monty Python Paid Me £20,000 To Write, Direct And Assemble Them - The Cheapskates! I Told Them I'd Never Earned Less In A Year Since Leaving Cambridge. The First Show Sold Out In 43 Seconds And We Ended Up Performing Ten In Total. We Had No Idea There Would Be Such Demand.

We Learnt A Lot Because We Got In With Real Choreographers Who Tell You What They Need From A Song, Because A Song Has To Advance The Story. Then Real Directors Like Mike Nichols Tell You Where You Can Have 'b Themes' And 'c Themes', And We Go Oh Yes, B Themes And C Themes! So We Were Taught In The Finest School Amongst The Finest People. And Also By The School Of Experience.

Even If You've Written Something For Print, I Think It's Good To Try [it] Out On Someone Because It Changes. You Can Think It's Hilarious And They Can Tell You It's Not.