John Cleese says he met up with an old friend, 35 years after the friend's death.
The Fawlty Towers actor, 84, was sent a message from his deceased friend, comedian Graham Chapman, who died from cancer in 1989.
Cleese and Chapman famously acted together on Monty Python projects, including Life of Brian, the Holy Grail and The Meaning Of Life.
Now the Basil Fawlty actor revealed he visited a psychic to help ‘explore his consciousness,’ and was surprised to receive a message from his old friend.
He said the psychic asked him who Graham was as she was getting something from the other side, and he knew instantly it was Chapman, especially when she said he was about a pipe.
‘I said, “yes, he always smoked a pipe.”‘
The psychic then started making references to an extremely rare Monty Python sketch that Cleese was sure she would never have seen as it was only broadcast ‘once or twice’.
‘She said, “he’s rolling up his trouser leg,” and I said, “”yes”oh, that’s a sketch we did about the Freemasons.”‘
‘I know she didn’t see it, it was broadcast once or twice,’ he told Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast.
He added: ‘Until you experience it, until you hear the things that are coming back… there is no explanation in science for this. Scientists hate it so much because there is no explanation for it.’
Formed in 1969, the Monty Python comedy group was made up of Chapman and Cleese along with Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin; Jones died in 2020 at the age of 77.
They saw huge success with their BBC sketch show Monty Python’s Flying Circus, as well as in live shows, films, books and radio, including winning a Bafta in 1988 for Flying Circus.
The group’s friendship has dwindled in recent years, after appearing in 2014 for the special comedy show Monty Pythoin Live: One DOwn, Five To Go at London’s O2 Arena.
Cleese told the Radio Times magazine they ‘don’t speak to each other very often, there’s no ex-Pythons WhatsApp group or anything.’
‘But we are in touch, and their reactions to Helen’s death, from all of them, were very touching, very immediate and very sincere. I really appreciated that.’ Cleese’s wife, Helen, died in 2023.
However in February 2024, Idle said it had been seven yers since he had seen Cleese and he was ‘happy’ about it.
Cleese then wrote on X that they had ‘always loathed and despised each other, but it’s only recently the truth has begun to emerge,’ leaving fans confused as to whether he was being sincere or ‘doing a bit’.
