but now I began to notice odd moments that suggested he was not the brightest lighthouse on the coastline. For instance, he once got very cross durin… - John Cleese

When you get to my age, and I'm 66 now, you realize that the world is a madhouse and that most people are operating in fantasy anyway. So once you realise that, it doesn't bother you much.

but the insanity of punishing someone physically for getting an answer wrong. It is terrifying how much of this deeply unkind, utterly pointless, in fact, mind-bogglingly COUNTERPRODUCTIVE kind of behaviour was meted out to children over the centuries by half-witted, power-crazed zombies like this heinous old bat — a large proportion of such psychopaths allegedly acting in the name of an all-loving God

So if I may give a word of advice to any young writer who, despite the odds, wants to take a shot at being funny, it is this: Steal. Steal an idea that you know is good, and try to reproduce it in a setting that you know and understand. It will become sufficiently different from the original because you are writing it, and by basing it on something good, you will be learning some of the rules of good writing as you go along. Great artists may merely be “influenced by” other artists, but comics “steal” and then conceal their loot.