lights Club”. After touring the revue “A Clump of Plinths”, Cleese graduated and began
writing and performing for the radio show “I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again” and “The
Frost Report” began the same year. He and Graham Chapman teamed up then
moved on to “At Last the 1948 Show” while Cleese continued with “ISIRTA”. When
Cleese and Chapman were offered their own sketch show in 1969, they brought in
some of the writer-comics they’d enjoyed working with on other programs and
“Monty Python’s Flying Circus” was born. The show’s groundbreaking absurdity was a
sensation and launched the whole team into major stardom. Cleese did some more
sketches fifteen years later in “The Meaning of Life” and a series of training videos.
Catherine Tate
Tate has spread herself around a bit since she began her career in the early 1990s,
playing the gamut of comic and dramatic roles, on stage and screen, from “The Bill” to
“The Harry Hill Show” to Shakespeare. But it’s repeating the same lines over and over
in her own TV show that has made her a star and gotten her dubbed “Queen of the
Catchphrase”. After studying drama at the University of London, Tate appeared in
minor roles in TV dramas but began doing stand up in the mid-nineties and changed
to television comedy with roles in sketch shows and sitcoms including “Men Behaving
Badly”. Starring in the late night sketch show “Barking” with David Walliams and
McKenzie Crook led to her own live shows and more TV sketch work including “Big
Train” and “Attention Scum!”, eventuating in “The Catherine Tate Show” from 2004
to 2007. She seems to have left sketch behind since then, focusing on major roles in
productions such as “Doctor Who”, and the American version of “The Office”, but
given the many and varied styles she’s worked in you can’t rule anything out.
Rowan Atkinson
Applying equal genius to both verbal and physical comedy, from “Not the Nine O’Clock
News” in 1979, to “Mr Bean”, to his last “Johnny English” film, Atkinson has built a
huge global fanbase. After performing in Oxford University revues in the mid-1970s,
Atkinson quickly progressed through radio sketch work to the legendary “Not the Nine
O’Clock News”, specialising in vicars, schoolmasters and other middle to upperclass
types. His subsequent sketch work has mainly been live, unless you include “Mr Bean”.
An occasionally sinister cross between Jacques Tati and Harry Langdon, he’s a remarkable example of a great comic’s range, coming straight after the acid wit of Edmund
Blackadder.