John Cleese - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, the only child of Muriel Evelyn (née Cross; 1899–2002), and Reginald Francis Cleese (1893-1972), who worked in insurance sales. His family's surname was previously "Cheese", but his father changed it to "Cleese" in 1915, upon joining the Army.

Cleese was educated at St Peter's Preparatory School, where he was a star pupil, receiving a prize for English studies and doing well at sports, including cricket and boxing. At 13, he received an exhibition to Clifton College, an English public school in Bristol. He was tall as a child and was well over 6 ft when he arrived there. While at the school, he is said to have defaced the school grounds for a prank by painting footprints to suggest that the school's statue of Field Marshal Earl Haig had got down from his plinth and gone to the toilet. Cleese played cricket for the First XI team and, after initial indifference, he did well academically, passing 8 O-Levels and 3 A-Levels in mathematics, physics, and chemistry.

After leaving school, he went back to his prep school to teach science, English, geography, history, and Latin (he drew on his Latin teaching experience later for a scene in Life of Brian, in which he corrects Brian's badly written Latin graffiti) before taking up a place he had won at Downing College, Cambridge, where he read, or studied, Law and joined the Cambridge Footlights.

At the Footlights theatrical club, he met his future writing partner Graham Chapman. Cleese wrote extra material for the 1961 Footlights Revue I Thought I Saw It Move, and was Registrar for the Footlights Club during 1962, as well as being one of the cast members for the 1962 Footlights Revue Double Take!

Cleese graduated from Cambridge in 1963 with a 2:1. Despite his successes on The Frost Report, his father would send him cuttings from the Daily Telegraph offering management jobs in places like Marks and Spencer.