doing a fair amount of work at the BBC, doing what I call – I think this is my own definition – a ‘glamour stooge’, working alongside people like Ronnie Corbett, Ronnie Barker, and Spike Milligan.
When the Pythons were starting, I hadn’t met any of the fellas at all, though I knew a little of their work. They’d written five episodes of the original thirteen, and they were looking for a female. Somebody at the Beeb suggested my name and John Howard Davies saw me and cast me. I hadn’t realized at that stage that my contract wouldn’t go further than four episodes; I only discovered that when my agent got in touch with the Beeb. By this stage we’d got going and I got on extremely well with the guys, they thought I fitted in beautifully. I think they were more than happy with my contribution, and when Michael came up to me when we were doing episode three and said, ‘Oh, we have got something great for you coming up,’ – because already they felt that they weren’t quite utilizing my talents enough and they wanted to give me something more to do than just giggle and smile, as I did in the ‘Marriage Guidance Counsellor’ sketch – I said, ‘Well, it sounds great but I’m not in episode six.’ And he said, ‘What? What?’ And he went over and spoke to the others, John came over and said, ‘What’s this?’
So they said, ‘Absolutely no way – we want you with us for the rest of the series.’ So that’s what happened. I really owe it to the fellas that I became the Monty Python girl because they put their foot down.1
By now Ian MacNaughton was doing the directing. Ian wanted to have different ladies in each episode and he wanted to be responsible for the casting, so the fellas put their foot down and said, ‘Uh-uh.’ They came to the agreement that if Ian wanted someone to just literally stand there and say nothing and just look pretty, fine, he could cast that, but if there was any sort of acting involved, the fellas wanted me. And that was the agreement they came to and that was how I came to be in the series.
How was working with the Pythons different from working on other comedy programmes?
CLEVELAND: Working with Spike Milligan was almost traumatic – an amazing experience but exhausting because you never knew what this man was going to do next. But the other people I worked with were all fairly sane – I mean, very funny but it was all fairly sane stuff, you knew what was going on; there wasn’t quite such a lunacy with those. With the Pythons I really didn’t know what to expect. It’s just a wonderful combination of looniness and great wit and intelligence and foresight. When I first joined them, I didn’t honestly quite know what to make of it to begin with. I remember the first two or three days of rehearsal thinking, ‘I don’t know if this is going to take off,’ because they were sort of all over the place. It was fairly manic.
We didn’t actually do a lot of rehearsal. If anything, it was under-rehearsed to keep it fresh and fun. Lots of people say to me, ‘How much of that was improvised?’ Because it came over so fresh, they felt a lot of it was being improvised. And I say, ‘Well, none of it; none of it was improvised. It was all scripted, everything.’
Carol Cleveland, steadfast straight woman to the group, in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.
There wasn’t a lot that went on in the first few days of rehearsal; because they had written it themselves, they knew exactly what they wanted, so they knew just what was going to happen. Once they knew exactly what they were doing, in order to keep it fresh, we’d just stop rehearsing and the rest of the time was mucking about. Once we’d done our little bit of rehearsal we’d go, ‘Right, that’s good now, we don’t want to sort of louse it up,’ we’d do something like play football. So all of the furniture would be moved aside and we set up a couple of goals at each end and we’d have a football match. I was always a goalie! And we had a great time at rehearsals mucking about, I have to say, much to the amusement of passers-by. When we were in the BBC Centre rehearsal rooms (which are great, big, vast rooms), all the doors have little peek-through windows, and it was wonderful – as people pass by, you’d see them come back and take a double take, and not know what to make of it. They thought we were rehearsing a football sketch that went on day after day after day.
What allowed you to work so well with the group as their foil?
CLEVELAND: Well, certainly I was very prepared to have a go. There was very little they could ask me to do that I would ever say ‘no’ to. I was willing and able, and I’d throw myself into it with great gusto. I guess there’s a fair amount of lunacy in me, there must have been to get into things the way I did, and I think that was very appealing to them. I could do the sort of ‘glamour dollie bird’ bit and put that across very well but at the same time send myself up on that. I was quite happy to go over the top with anything and I think that was the other thing that they liked. And obviously they felt I had quite a good comedy flair and I looked good as well, which was a combination they wanted.
It still irritates me that I meet Python fans and their recollections seem to be of me without any clothes on! I never took my clothes off in Python, not entirely. There was a lot of me in underwear and showgirl outfits and bathing suits and lingerie, but never without any clothes. The nearest I came to that was when we were filming ‘Scott of the Sahara’. In that I’m being chased by a man-eating roll-top desk, having my clothes ripped off bit by bit by cacti. I’m running towards the camera on each occasion, and on the last one my bra comes off and I’m still meant to be running towards the camera and I was feeling a little bit shy about all sorts of things, and certainly the fact that we were filming on a crowded beach and there were masses of people milling about, so I did feel a little bit inhibited about that. I wasn’t happy about running towards the camera with my bra coming off so in fact they did change it. The last shot is of me topless running away with my back to the camera as I pass John sitting at his desk facing the camera. But that was the only time I think I ever resisted. And the funny thing is that I suppose if they asked me to do it now, I’d say, ‘Yeah, great, I’ll do it!’ But it’s too late now, they won’t ask me!
Was there difficulty in that there were Python wives and girlfriends who also appeared in the shows but not as frequently as you?
CLEVELAND: I suppose if I had been a wife or a girlfriend I wouldn’t have got the job! Connie Cleese appeared occasionally, and Eric’s then-wife Lynn Ashley appeared, but only occasionally. Neither of them would have actually wanted to be involved, I think; it was only because they were wives that they were brought in.
I don’t think I would have got the job if I had been heavily involved [with one of them]. And I remember very early on Terry Gilliam did ask me out on a date – when I think how things might have turned out if I’d said ‘yes’! I said ‘no’ for two reasons: first of all because I actually had a boyfriend who was an extremely jealous Italian, but I think I would have said no anyway because business and pleasure don’t mix. As it turns out Terry dated a make-up girl on the show, Maggie, and they’re now married and very happy.
What were your impressions of the Pythons?
CLEVELAND: Individually they were all as they were collectively: brilliant, clever, fun, very nice men. The only one I never really felt close to was Eric. All the others treated me like one of the boys, and I never quite felt that with Eric. Eric always seemed a little distant, rather aloof. He in my opinion was the most serious of the lot, and the most businesslike. He was the one that always had his head together as far as the financial side of Python was concerned. If anyone started getting a little bit too wacky he would be the one to say, ‘Well,
