Good news for fans of actor/writer John Cleese. There are actually two of him: comedic Cleese and corporate Cleese.
The former barrister (he holds a law degree from Cambridge) has used his business sense to do some serious money-making. In 1972, he and two British TV producers teamed up to form Video Arts, a company that would make (a) training films for business and (b) great wealth for themselves. With a catalog of almost 100 videos, many of them starring or written by Cleese, the company claims to be the largest of its kind in the world and counts its annual gross receipts in the tens of millions of dollars.
That's not to say he's lost his sense of humor. The Chicago Tribune reports that at a recent self-help meeting in Chicago, Cleese made this Monty Python-esque observation:
"I want to suggest to you today," Cleese said at the outset, "that unless we have a tolerant attitude toward mistakes - I might almost say, 'a positive attitude toward them' - we shall be behaving irrationally, unscientifically and unsuccessfully."
This brief tidbit came frome the Ledger-Enquirer, Columbus, Georgia, sometime around 1989.If anyone has articles or newpaper bits concerining the Pythons that need a home, home on the Web, then by all means please do email me, Supahz.