Wired.com presents the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. And here is your host, David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello and welcome to episode 124 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Today we'll be speaking with legendary writer and comedian John Cleese, who helped create the

classic geek films Monte Python and the Holy Grail and Monte Python's Life of Brian.

He also wrote and starred in the TV show Fawlty Towers, and the feature film A Fish Called

Wanda, and has appeared more recently in various Harry Potter, James Bond, and Shrek films.

His new memoir, So Anyway, is out now.

And now here's our interview with John Cleese.

All right, so we're here with John Cleese. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, thank you for having me on the show.

Okay, so the name of this show is Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

So obviously we're big Douglas Adams fans. And it's in your book

you talk about how you and Graham Chapman may have inspired Douglas Adams to put the number 42

into Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Could you tell us about that?

Well, I was curious about it because the only time we've ever used the number as a punchline for a sketch was a sketch that Gural Chappley wrote in 1962, which was a parody of a Church of England's sermon, which finished with the punchline 42 and I was amused later to discover that Douglas Adams and said it was a secret to the universe and he knew Graham.

And I think it's just coincidence, but it's really something that people are interested in, so maybe they'll do a bit of research for me.

I mean, so did you know Douglas Adams or you big fan of his? Yes I met

Douglas two or three times and I was introduced to him I remember on one occasion and

about four days later I noticed how tall he was I went to a party and Graham was there remember and suddenly Doug disappeared and we had a long chat but what surprised

me was that he was towering above me.

Now I'm six four and a half and I was quite surprised that he seemed to have grown, but I noticed after we'd be

chatted as a duck, he was wearing foliage high heels.

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