Why John Cleese almost had a funnier name
He’s an icon of comedy around the world. Wherever you go, people almost certainly know the name John Cleese. If they don’t, then there’s at least a slightly better chance that they’ve heard of Monty Python, the iconic comedy team co-founded by Cleese in the mid-1960s. Cleese was the tallest and most striking of the crew, and with a distinguished television career that predates the Pythons, Cleese was often looked at as the group’s biggest export.
“He was already a known star on television, whereas we were kind of children’s television stars,” Eric Idle later recalled in the documentary series Monty Python’s Almost the Truth. “So John was always very well known. He was always the face of Python.” Michael Palin agreed: “I think when people think of Python, they always think of John at the centre of it.”
With such a strong amount of recognisability, it’s strange to think that John Cleese might not have been remembered in quite the same way. In fact, if it hadn’t been for a change that his father made 25 years before Cleese was born, the A Fish Called Wanda star could have been known as something completely different.
“My dad was born Reginald Francis Cheese,” Cleese shared in the first episode of the documentary series Monty Python’s Almost the Truth. “His dad was John Edwin Cheese. He stayed a Cheese until 1915, when he joined the army and changed his name to ‘Cleese’. And I don’t know why because when I went to school, I was always called ‘Ol’ Cheese’. It made no difference at all.”
Cleese had a bit of a bone to pick with his dad for the name change, especially when it came to his later career as a comedian. “I’m tempted to change it back to Cheese because I think it’s a splendid name,” Cleese added. “And my American friends call me ‘Jack’. I could be ‘Jack Cheese’, which is a great name for a comedian.”
While it is indeed a funny (and quite silly) name, Cleese has stuck with his surname for too long to change it now. Instead, Cleese will always have to live with the regret and torment of his father’s actions from before he existed. How the Fawlty Towers creator will ever cope is unimaginable, but we’ll just have to find out for ourselves.
