In 1980, he appeared alongside John Cleese in the BBC Television Shakespeare production of The Taming of the Shrew.

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But John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, and Michael Palin are all in, as is Terry Jones, who will be directing.

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Its ads replaced John Cleese, a cravat-wearing ex-Python, with the blokish Jamie Oliver, a chef for the average Brit.

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As John Cleese's character in Clockwise put it: "I can take the despair, it's the hope I can't stand".

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On other subjects, though, he was more loquacious - among them his pleasure at having erstwhile Monty Python member John Cleese as a co-star.

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The role of 007's gadget designer was played by Desmond Llewelyn in From Russia With Love and most recently by John Cleese, opposite Pierce Brosnan, in 2002's Die Another Day.

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He himself is unsure whether to be Jack Lemmon or John Cleese, but the sublime Michelle Williams holds the screen magnetically with her dewy-eyed channelling of the young Shirley MacLaine.

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As I watch him go, with his red nylon cape flapping out behind him, he looks more John Cleese than Julius Caesar, and it strikes me that many of our associations with ancient Rome are comic.

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He has just started on a story about how he only chose Cambridge in order to be in the Footlights, but was refused entry because his humour didn't chime with the tradition set by John Cleese et al ("there were lots of jokes about cricket matches, " he says), when he picks up a glass of cola and takes a drink.

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