What kind of accent does he have when he is playing Eric Praline (in the Dead Parrot sketch and the Fish Licence skit)?
John Cleese
We've "done" John Cleese and his accent before in this forum, but I will expand a wee bit seeing that you asked, and most probably repeat myself.
He was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, South West England, in 1939. His father was an insurance salesman, and at the time, believe it or not, the family name was Cheese. As WW2 was breaking out at the time, his Dad was expecting to be called up for military service, and to avoid the inevitability of being endowed with nicknames like "Cheddar" or "Gorgonzola" he changed the family name to "Cleese" by legal deed poll.
After being privately educated at a preparatory school and then at Clifton College, in Bristol, John Cleese went up to Cambridge University (Downham College) to study law, and while there he became involved with the famous Footlights troupe, a group of revue artistes, which included some of the guys who eventually formed the Monty pythoin Team, such as Graham Chapman and Eric Idle.
Cleese then went into show business instead of practising law, and for a while went over to America as an actor, and was quite successful there, making films for oe thing, which you no doubt know anyway.
He later returned to the UK, and the rest is history, pretty much.
His accent is nothing special, really - standard English English RP, pretty much like that of Southern England generally, and even beyond Southern England among many professional people who may well prefer not to use the more pronounced local accents, eg a lawyer in Liverpool or a locum in Leeds may well speak much like Cleese, more or less.
Accents and dialects in the UK is very much a complicated issue. It's like negotiationg the horrendous maze at Hampton Court Palace! :-)
Like that famous maze, though - great fun!
He was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, South West England, in 1939. His father was an insurance salesman, and at the time, believe it or not, the family name was Cheese. As WW2 was breaking out at the time, his Dad was expecting to be called up for military service, and to avoid the inevitability of being endowed with nicknames like "Cheddar" or "Gorgonzola" he changed the family name to "Cleese" by legal deed poll.
After being privately educated at a preparatory school and then at Clifton College, in Bristol, John Cleese went up to Cambridge University (Downham College) to study law, and while there he became involved with the famous Footlights troupe, a group of revue artistes, which included some of the guys who eventually formed the Monty pythoin Team, such as Graham Chapman and Eric Idle.
Cleese then went into show business instead of practising law, and for a while went over to America as an actor, and was quite successful there, making films for oe thing, which you no doubt know anyway.
He later returned to the UK, and the rest is history, pretty much.
His accent is nothing special, really - standard English English RP, pretty much like that of Southern England generally, and even beyond Southern England among many professional people who may well prefer not to use the more pronounced local accents, eg a lawyer in Liverpool or a locum in Leeds may well speak much like Cleese, more or less.
Accents and dialects in the UK is very much a complicated issue. It's like negotiationg the horrendous maze at Hampton Court Palace! :-)
Like that famous maze, though - great fun!
All due respects to the Monty Python team - a silly typo made in haste...busy day ahead and not even had breaklfast yet.
Thanks, but I know his real accent. I was interested in the fake accent he puts on for those two sketches.
Guest forgot this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmyHup4TpkU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmyHup4TpkU
You used the correct word - "fake". The accent used by Cleese was just that - fake, just like all of them in all the Monty Python sketches on YouTube....assumed "silly twit" accents used to add to the comic effect of the equally "silly twit" situations and in no way typical of any genuine English English accent, as far as I know anyway.
Cleese played the part of a pompous idiot and used a manner of speech to fit the part he was playing in a totally idiotic scenario in which he wanted to pay for a "fish licence", presumably because he had acquired a goldfish in a bowl or something similar.
Not even in loopy Britain are you required to do that.....a licence to fish, yes, but not to keep a shoal of guppies in a fish tank.
You don't have to obtain a licence to keep a dog or a cat either! A spitting cobra or a saw scaled viper, well, that's a totally different matter altogether, but not many people even in this country are that insane, and you'd have to really convince the local licensing authority in a big way about your genuine reasons to want to keep such venomous creatures anyway. I wonder what kind of accents the Monty Python team would make of that sort of scenario......dead parrot type ones I reckon.
Monty Python really has whiskers on now, but they are still being shown on a regular basis on certain TV channels......like Dad's Army, Are You Being Served?, Keeping Up Appearances and 'Allo! 'Allo!. They have all now passed into the Classics ratings.
'Allo! 'Allo! was really funny from an accents point of view.....French people talking English in exaggerated French accents indicating that they were really talking in French as they were all in this mythical French village during the German occupation of France in WW2.
The occupying Germans all spoke English in exaggerated German accents, while the British secret agents being hidden from the Germans by the French all spoke in highly exaggerated posh English English RP indicating that they were really speaking English genuinely, but this dishy but gormless English agent posing as a French gendarme spoke English in a very broken French accent indicating that he was actually talking French which was full of verbal and grammatical errors, and saying things like: "Good moaning! I was just pissing by the door of the cafe when I thought I would drip in!"
You can work out for yourselves what he meant to say.
Cleese played the part of a pompous idiot and used a manner of speech to fit the part he was playing in a totally idiotic scenario in which he wanted to pay for a "fish licence", presumably because he had acquired a goldfish in a bowl or something similar.
Not even in loopy Britain are you required to do that.....a licence to fish, yes, but not to keep a shoal of guppies in a fish tank.
You don't have to obtain a licence to keep a dog or a cat either! A spitting cobra or a saw scaled viper, well, that's a totally different matter altogether, but not many people even in this country are that insane, and you'd have to really convince the local licensing authority in a big way about your genuine reasons to want to keep such venomous creatures anyway. I wonder what kind of accents the Monty Python team would make of that sort of scenario......dead parrot type ones I reckon.
Monty Python really has whiskers on now, but they are still being shown on a regular basis on certain TV channels......like Dad's Army, Are You Being Served?, Keeping Up Appearances and 'Allo! 'Allo!. They have all now passed into the Classics ratings.
'Allo! 'Allo! was really funny from an accents point of view.....French people talking English in exaggerated French accents indicating that they were really talking in French as they were all in this mythical French village during the German occupation of France in WW2.
The occupying Germans all spoke English in exaggerated German accents, while the British secret agents being hidden from the Germans by the French all spoke in highly exaggerated posh English English RP indicating that they were really speaking English genuinely, but this dishy but gormless English agent posing as a French gendarme spoke English in a very broken French accent indicating that he was actually talking French which was full of verbal and grammatical errors, and saying things like: "Good moaning! I was just pissing by the door of the cafe when I thought I would drip in!"
You can work out for yourselves what he meant to say.
lol I liked the British pilots the best... "'ello!"
Using foreigns accents to denote foreign languages was genius...
Using foreigns accents to denote foreign languages was genius...