- Born
- Died
- Birth nameTerence Graham Parry Jones
- Nickname
- Jonesy
- Height5′ 8″ (1.73 m)
- Terry Jones was born in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, the son of Dilys Louisa (Newnes), a homemaker, and Alick George Parry Jones, a bank clerk. His older brother is production designer Nigel Jones. His grandparents were involved in the entertainment business, having managed the local Amateur Operatic Society and staged Gilbert and Sullivan concerts. Jones studied at St. Edmund Hall College, Oxford University, read English but graduated with a degree in History. He was variously captain of boxing, captain of the Rugby Team and School Captain. At about this time, he befriended Michael Palin. Both performed comedy together as part of the Oxford Revue. In 1965, he again partnered Palin in The Late Show (1966) and worked in the dual capacity of writer/actor on Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967) with Palin, Eric Idle and David Jason. Another noteworthy television credit was Complete and Utter History of Britain (1969) (again with Palin) in which fun was poked at famous historical personae, Jones essaying Oliver Cromwell, Sir Walter Raleigh and Henry VIII (among others).
Needless to say that Jones found his greatest success as a founding member of the anarchic and irreverent Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), along with Palin, Idle, Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Terry Gilliam. Jones not only provided much of the written comic input, but also portrayed many of the classic characters: the implausibly obese Mr. Creosote in The Meaning of Life (1983) (who explodes after one more little wafer), the inept Detective Superintendent Harry "Snapper" Organs in the Piranha Brothers sketch (a take on the Kray Twins), the tobacconist in the Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook sketch and numerous assorted shrill-voiced, slovenly 'rat-bag women' (Mrs. Equator comes to mind).
The Pythons were unconventional, controversial, certainly groundbreaking and invariably inspired, at their best in their unrelenting satirical attacks on established British institutions, ruling hierarchies and the class structure. Jones later said "The thing is we never thought Python was a success when it was actually happening, it was only with the benefit of hindsight". In addition to writing and acting, Jones also co-directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) (with Terry Gilliam) and took solo directing credit for Life of Brian (1979) and The Meaning of Life. Post-Python, he rejoined Palin as co-writer for some of the very best episodes of Ripping Yarns (1976), including Whinfrey's Last Case, Tompkinson's Schooldays, Murder at Moorstone Manor, The Curse of the Claw and The Testing of Eric Oldthwaite. Jones later scripted Labyrinth (1986) from a story by Jim Henson and Dennis Lee and wrote, as well as directed, Erik the Viking (1989) and Absolutely Anything (2015), a science fiction comedy with Simon Pegg and Kate Beckinsale.
On a more serious note, Jones sidelined as a newspaper columnist and was an outspoken social and political commentator (a staunch critic of the Iraq War). His lifelong fascination with medieval and ancient history (and Geoffrey Chaucer in particular) led to presenting a series of television documentaries (Medieval Lives (2004) and Barbarians (2006))) as well as publishing several well researched, if sometimes controversial, books including Chaucer's Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary and Who Murdered Chaucer?: A Medieval Mystery.
Jones died at the age of 77 on 21 January 2020 from complications of dementia, at his home in Highgate, North London.- IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis
- SpousesAnna Söderström(2012 - January 21, 2020) (his death, 1 child)Alison Telfer(June 20, 1970 - 2012) (divorced, 2 children)
- ChildrenSiri Jones
- ParentsAlick George Parry JonesDilys Louisa (Newnes) Jones
- RelativesNigel Jones(Sibling)
- Dark brown hair and eyes, short stocky build
- Often played women in Monty Python, using a screechy old harridan voice.
- Has directed three of the four films that have been banned in Ireland: Life of Brian (1979), The Meaning of Life (1983), & Personal Services (1987).
- Has a degree in Modern History from Oxford University.
- Co-wrote an opera, with Luis Tinoco, that premiered in Lisbon, Portugal on January 12, 2008. Jones turned his collection of short stories into a libretto for the production, which he is also directing. It is about machines trying to take over the world and involves cars, motorbikes, washers, dryers, parking meters and gigantic vacuum cleaners, all singing opera on stage.
- Has a mild speech impediment - he has trouble pronouncing the letter "r".
- Has been diagnosed with Primary Progressive Aphasia, a type of dementia. This disease erodes the brains ability to use language and eventually speech becomes impossible.
- [on the death of Graham Chapman, who died on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the "Monty Python" comedy troupe]: I thought it was in terribly bad taste for him to die when he did. The worst case of party-pooping I've ever seen.
- The problem with the media is [news organizations] are primarily owned by corporations, and corporations are pro-establishment... Newspapers and television start using the vocabulary of politicians, and that's the way bias creeps in.
- Comedy is a dangerous business. If people find something funny you're okay. But the moment you do something that's meant to be funny and someone doesn't find it funny, they become angry. It's almost as if they resent the fact that you tried to make them laugh and failed. Nobody comes out of a mediocre performance of Hamlet seething with rage because it didn't make them cry. But just listen to people coming out of a comedy that didn't make them laugh.
- (On being recognised as a "famous face"): "In a way it makes the world smaller, it makes it like a village. It's really how I felt the world always ought to be, where you feel you know people and people are interested in you. So, it's like a retreat into childhood really, where when you're a baby everybody's interested in you and it's rather the same thing."
- One of the things we tried to do with the show was to try and do something that was so unpredictable that it had no shape and you could never say what the kind of humor was. And I think that the fact that "Pythonesque" is now a word in the Oxford English Dictionary shows the extent to which we failed.
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