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wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBR Idea Cast from Harvard Business Review.

I'm Audie Ignatius, editor-in-chief,

and today I'm speaking with the renowned comedian and actor John Cleese.

John, thank you for joining us.

Thanks, sir, I've seen you quoted as saying that if not for Monty Python you would have become an accountant or a lawyer settled down and then shot yourself.

That suggests a pretty bleak reality for the rest of us. Any words of advice?

No, I think I was like the most comedians do I was exaggerating for comic reasons.

What I do think is true is that I would have found it relatively

difficult to do a completely routine job. Now in your career you've had periods

that involved a lot of close collaboration with other creatives

and other periods of very focused individual expression. I'm interested

which do you prefer? I think it depends on the subject matter. For example at the moment I'm writing my autobiography

and I don't think there would be any point at all in trying to write that with anyone else.

Traditionally, comedy writers have very often worked in pairs and I like that because I believe that when you collaborate with someone else on something that's fundamentally

creative then you get to places with them that you would never get to on your

own because the way that an idea builds as it

careens backwards and forwards between two good collaborative writers is so unpredictable and sometimes almost depends on people

...