Terry Jones was a Welsh actor and comedian. He was a part of the comedy team Monty Python.
Let’s find out some trivia and facts about his life and career.
- His full name is Terence Graham Parry Jones
- He was born on February 1, 1942
- He died on January 21, 2020
- He was a Welsh actor, writer, comedian, screenwriter, film director and historian
- He was a member of the Monty Python comedy team
- He graduated from Oxford University with a degree in English
- Jones and writing partner Michael Palin wrote and performed for several high-profile British comedy programmes
- They met at Oxford University
- The comedy programmes they wrote include Do Not Adjust Your Set and The Frost Report
- Before creating Monty Python’s Flying Circus with Cambridge graduates Eric Idle, John Cleese, and Graham Chapman, and American animator/filmmaker Terry Gilliam
- Jones was largely responsible for the programme’s innovative, surreal structure
- In the program sketches flowed from one to the next without the use of punchlines
- He made his directorial debut with the team’s first film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- The film was co-directed by him and Gilliam
- He also directed the subsequent Python films, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life
- Jones co-created and co-wrote with Palin the anthology series Ripping Yarns
- He also wrote an early draft of Jim Henson’s 1986 film Labyrinth
- Though little of his work remained in the final cut
- Jones was a well-respected medieval historian, having written several books and presented television documentaries about the period, as well as a prolific children’s book author
- In 2016, Jones received a Lifetime Achievement award at the BAFTA Cymru Awards for his outstanding contribution to television and film
- After living for several years with a degenerative aphasia, he gradually lost the ability to speak and died on 21 January 2020
- Jones was born in the seaside town of Colwyn Bay, on the north coast of Wales
- He was the son of Dilys Louisa (Newnes), a homemaker, and Alick George Parry Jones, a bank clerk
- The family home was named Bodchwil
- His father was stationed with the RAF in India
- When Jones was four-and-a-half, the family moved to Surrey, England
- Jones attended Esher COE primary school
- Followed by the Royal Grammar School in Guildford
- There he was school captain in the 1960-61 academic year
- He read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, but “strayed into history”
- He became interested in the medieval period through reading Chaucer as part of his English degree
- He graduated with a 2:1
- While there, he performed comedy with future Monty Python castmate Michael Palin in the Oxford Revue
- Jones was a year ahead of Palin at Oxford
- Jones married Alison Telfer in 1970
- They had two children together, Sally (born 1974), and Bill (born 1976)
- They had an open marriage
- In 2009, Jones left her for Anna Söderström
- Who was 41 years his junior
- They had been in a relationship for five years
- In September 2009, a daughter, Siri, was born to Söderström and Jones
- In 2015, Jones was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia
- It is a form of frontotemporal dementia that impairs the ability to speak and communicate
- He had first given cause for concern during the Monty Python reunion show Monty Python Live (Mostly) in July 2014 because of difficulties learning his lines
- By September 2016, he was no longer able to give interviews
- By April 2017, Jones had lost the ability to say more than a few words of agreement
- Jones died on 21 January 2020 from complications of dementia at his home in North London
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