Remembering Terry Jones

Renowned comedy sketch writer and performer Terry Jones passed away last week in his home in London. A member of the legendary Monty Python’s Flying Circus comedy troupe,  Jones had suffered for the past few years from primary progressive aphasia, a form of frontotemporal dementia that impairs the ability to speak and communicate. He was 77 years old.

Born in born in Colwyn Bay, North Wales on February 1, 1942, Terry was first introduced to absurd comedy as a child through the iconic 1950’s radio program, The Goon Show. But it wasn’t until he reached Oxford University that he thought of being a comic performer. He joined the university’s Experimental Theater Club, known as E.T.C., where also met his most enduring collaborator and life-long friend Michael Palin.

The two wrote and performed in revues at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and got jobs out of college writing for shows such as the satirical The Frost Report. Here they crossed paths with Cambridge alums Eric Idle, Graham Chapman and John Cleese and eventually with the addition of American Terry Gilliam formed Monty Python’s Flying Circus in 1969.

During the Pythons’ years on television, Mr. Jones appeared in many memorable sketches as a cheeky (pardon the pun) nude organist, the Spanish Inquisitor Cardinal Biggles, the Spam waitress and composer Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson.