Terry Jones

Terry Jones, who earned a spot in comedic lore as a member of the British troupe Monty Python and also had success as a director, screenwriter and author, died on Tuesday January 21 2020 at his home in the Highgate neighborhood of North London. He was 77. In addition to being a charter member of the celebrated British sketch troupe Monty Python, he was a director, a screenwriter and an authority on Chaucer. His ex-wife, Alison Telfer, confirmed the death. Mr. Jones announced in 2016 that he had primary progressive aphasia, a neurological disease that impairs the ability to communicate. Mr. Jones, four other Britons — Michael Palin, Eric Idle, John Cleese and Graham Chapman — and an American, Terry Gilliam, formed Monty Python in 1969. Their television sketch show, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” became a phenomenon, first in Britain and then in the United States when it was rebroadcast there in the mid-1970s. Mr. Jones and Mr. Gilliam jointly directed the first film after “Something Completely Different,” “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975), and teamed up again on “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life” (1983). Mr. Jones was the sole director of “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” (1979), the most successful financially. He also directed his own projects. Terence Graham Parry Jones was born in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, on Feb. 1, 1942. His father, Alick, was a banker by profession but was in the Royal Air Force at the time and stationed in Scotland. He was accepted at Oxford and agreed to attend. He joined the university’s Experimental Theater Club, known as E.T.C., spurning the more organized Oxford University Drama Society. In 1963 he performed in and helped write his first revue, “Loitering With Intent” (“because it was done in a tent,” he explained). Mr. Palin, a fellow Oxford student, contributed material to that show. The two also contributed to the 1964 edition of a show called “The Oxford Revue,” which was noticed by David Frost, who soon offered both Mr. Jones and Mr. Palin jobs writing for “The Frost Report,” a television sketch show that had its premiere in 1966 on the BBC. Mr. Chapman and Mr. Idle were also on the writing staff, and Mr. Cleese was in the cast. The next year Mr. Jones, Mr. Idle and Mr. Palin collaborated again on “Do Not Adjust Your Set,” a children’s TV show full of comedic sketches that foreshadowed the Python style. Mr. Gilliam eventually contributed some animation. In 1969, Monty Python’s Flying Circus” came about. There were camps and alliances within the Pythons. Mr. Jones generally wrote with Mr. Palin. He was said not to get along with Mr. Cleese. Mr. Jones married Alison Telfer in 1970; they separated around 2005 and later divorced. In 2012 Mr. Jones married Anna Soderstrom. She survives him. His survivors also include their daughter, Siri, and two children from his first marriage, Bill and Sally Jones.