The Redemption of John Cleese

Sure, he was always funny. He performed on Broadway in a revue show straight out of college, wrote for the BBC, and was making quite a nice living as a comedian.
But if you get a look at the work he did before Monty Python's Flying Circus-- the work available on DVD-- you catch only the faintest glimmer of what was to come. He wrote some excellent sketches for "At Last, the 1948 Show" with Graham Chapman, and even had moments of inspired absurdity-- note the "I am a Gorilla" sketch he did for that show-- and lest we forget, the "Luxury" sketch was written for that show. ("But you tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you.")
But a glance at his TV special, a year before MPFC, and you realize how close John Cleese came to being nothing more than a stodgy, smug social critic, hemmed in by logical, "brainy" humor. "How to Irritate People" is interesting from a comedic anthropological perspective. We can see various Python sketches in their infancy, as well as "1948" sketches in their dotage. (I guess the BBC is much more lax with intellectual property rights than we are here in the states.) But the sketches, removed from the free-for-all craziness of Monty Python, fail to really take off, and Cleese's opening monologue, theoretically contextualizing the sketches to come, feels like a bad night at a comedy club. "Don't you hate bad customer service at the bank?" John Cleese came this close to being the British Alan King, only without the bombast.
Then came Monty Python.

From the beginning of the Python explosion, John Cleese seemed to come to life with exciting, bold, physical choices that were scarcely evident in his earlier material. Even the throwback sketches, wherein he'd play a reserved Brit, were punctuated with snorty laughs and sudden bursts of irreverence.  From whence did this sudden inspiration emerge? Did Cleese just happen to find his Inner Viking?
In a biography of Cleese, (I don't have it to hand,) the author recounted how, during the writing sessions, Cleese would laugh uproariously at the material of the other members of the troupe. It was suggested that he did this to curry favor for his own material. I don't think that's entirely true. His performance would indicate otherwise. The random silliness of the work of Palin, Jones and Gilliam seemed to free Cleese to be the mad man he was destined to become. Although Cleese does not typically write such fanciful, delirious sketches, it's clear that these sketches fed him in ways his prior collaborations did not, and in ways he couldn't feed himself, at the time. The contributions of the others resonated with him, and made him brilliant.
Furthermore, he took what he gleaned from the others and applied it to his future work. Basil Fawlty goose-stepping around, or the strip-tease in "A Fish Called Wanda" suggest that having unlocked his inner mime, John Cleese was never looking back.
It seems to me that, though the most visible of the Circusians pre-Python, John Cleese was searching for his comic consummation, and he found it with Monty Python's Flying Circus. None of the other members grew so rapidly or completely, (or in the correct direction.) Without MPFC, John Cleese might have faded in obscurity with countless other worthy writers, and the world would be a less silly place.
Thank you, Monty Python, for giving John Cleese the kiss of inspiration that he needed! I am very, very, very, very, very grateful! And so, I bet, is he!