Comic knew it was him as he was waving a dead parrot...

John Cleese claims he has used a medium to communicate with his late Monty Python colleague Graham Chapman.

The 84-year-old said he hired a psychic to ‘explore his consciousness’ but found himself communicating with his former co-star, who died 35 years ago.

Cleese claims the medium referred to facts familiar she couldn’t possibly have known. Although they would be to Python fans… or anyone with access to the internet.

Speaking on the Club Random podcast, he recalled: ‘She said, "Who’s Graham?". I said, "He’s probably Graham Chapman". She says, "He’s going on about a pipe". I said, ‘Yes. He always smoked a pipe".

'Then she said, "He’s rolling up his trouser leg". And I said, "Oh, that’s a sketch we did about the Freemasons".’

When host Bill Maher asked if she could have seen the sketch, Cleese said unequivocally: ‘No’ as it has only been aired ‘once or twice’.

The sketch which first aired in 1970 has been viewed alomost 2million times on YouTube. However  the ‘psychic’ could have been making a reference to the Gumbys, the dim-witted characters in knitted tank-tops with handkerchiefs on their heads, who also had their trousers rolled up and are one of the most distinctive icons of Python’s work.

Cleese also recalled that in the medium’s vision, Chapman – died of cancer in 1989 aged 48 – was ‘waving a parrot’ at him.

‘I think I could do this job,’ said Maher, pointing out the obvious reference to the dead parrot sketch.

On Cleese’s next visit the psychic said Chapman was waving a monkey with a stripy tail. The comic has a species of ring-tailed lemur named after him, Cleese’s woolly lemur, but he said ‘there’s no way she would have known that’.

He said: ‘She said, "why’s he showing this to me? He says that it's named after you that mean that the lemur is called John?" and I said, "No, it means that that species of lemur is named after me. There’s no way she would have known that.’

The naming of the animal has been well-reported and is the first thing that comes up if you Google ‘John Cleese unusual facts’. Indeed Maher challenged: ‘Are you sure it wasn't in 25 Things you don't know about me in Us magazine? Because it's the kind of thing that might get in there.’

During the two-and-a-quarter hour podcast Cleese also gave another example of the psychic knowing something about his wife ‘with her parents opening birthday presents or Christmas presents, and she described one of the the presents’ – which he said she couldn’t have known.

‘I promise you until you experience it – until you hear the creep of the things that are coming back – you think there's no explanation in science for this,’ he said.

‘The scientists hate it so much. They pretend it doesn't happen, because they can't explain it.'

Published: 20 Mar 2024