John Cleese falls in love with a Barbie doll

Back in the early '60s, before Terry Gilliam was an acclaimed movie director, before he was a member of the Monty Python comedy group, he was a young artist working as Harvey Kurtzman's assistant at Help Magazine in New York. It was then that he met John Cleese, a lanky English comedian in town to perform in a Broadway sketch comedy show. Gilliam gave Cleese a job as the star of Christopher's Punctured Romance, a photo-comic about an unhappy, suburban businessman who falls in love with his daughter's Barbie doll.

Cleese was unforgettable in the role, and a few years later, after Gilliam had moved to England, he called Cleese to see if he knew anybody looking for an artist. Cleese helped Gilliam land a job as animator for Do Not Adjust Your Set, a surreal children's series starring Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. Not long after that, Idle, Jones, Palin, Gilliam, Cleese and Cleese's writing partner Graham Chapman would form the Python troupe, and change comedy forever.

Even now, four decades after it was originally published, Christopher's Punctured Romance is still shocking and hilarious. You can read the whole thing at Doug Pratt's blog.


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