"Study these rules, and imitate the English." wrote Hungarian-born Gyorge “George” Mikes in his timeless satire of the complexity of "being" British, "There can be only one result: if you don't succeed in imitating them, you become ridiculous; if you do, you become even more ridiculous."

To love comedian John Cleese is to appreciate his reverence for psychology and his willingness to showcase the hypocrisy and complexity of human nature, especially as it pertains to being British.

 John Cleese in the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch for Monty Python.

I'm a fan of John Cleese's (born October 27, 1939) humor and characters. Beyond his brilliant comedic timing and physical ingenuity, Cleese appreciates human contradiction. His most famous character, Basil Fawlty of Fawlty Towers, a sitcom written by Cleese and co-star Connie Booth, was a study of the comedy of anger.   Most of So, Anyway... focuses on Cleese's creative beginnings in Monty Python. I focus a bit more on Fawlty Towers simply because the show—and especially the main character—is more fully representative of Cleese.  
I also prefer it.

 Basil Fawlty, Cleese's character in Fawlty Towers, delivers "a damn good thrashing." The pinnacle of ineffectual anger.

Basil's anger is almost always underpinned by fear: fear of a hotel inspector's lousy report, fear of having poisoned a guest, fear of a healthy inspector seeing a rat, fear of offending German guests; fear of revealing that the chef is unfit to cook on Gourmet Night; fear of making a fool of himself in front of the friends invited to his wedding anniversary; fear of his wife discovering he's been betting on horses... Need I go on?

Basil Fawlty inspires pity through his feckless inability to accept and manage everyday life. It is a pity that poet Wilfred Owen saw it as the root of our deepest care and empathy. An empathy that is often a source of perceived vulnerability in British culture. Minding one's own business is "one of the basic English virtues," wrote George Mikes in How to Be a Brit.

John Cleese recalls the direction of Python was set by Terry Gilliam's absurd animations, what Cleese refers to as a "stream of consciousness approach." John Cleese filming "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" in Scotland, 8th May 1974. Photo by Daily Record/Mirrorpix via Getty Images

Cleese firmly grasps the buttoned-up British persona and how funny it can be when it shatters. Admitting to having seen psychologists most of his life, Cleese doesn't shy from excoriating self-examination.

I noticed years ago that when people (myself included) are anxious, they tend to busy themselves with irrelevant activities because these distract from and, therefore, reduce their actual experience of anxiety. To stay perfectly still is to feel the fear at its maximum intensity, so instead you scuttle around doing things as though you are, in some mysterious way, short of time.

So, Anyway... includes an excellent retrospection on Cleese's unbalanced mother and how her emotional instability—mainly fear and anger—affected his development.   How we see our mothers is, often, very closely tied to how we see ourselves. Not in direct correlation rather these images are bound together and our mothers fail to be individuals.  
I explore this lack of personhood more in What We Write About When We Write About Our Mothers. Or read more from Rebecca Solnit, Roald Dahl, and Maya Angelou for thoughtful considerations of their mothers.

 A young Cleese with his mother and "best friend."

She had no information about anything that was not going to affect her life directly in the future, and that, consequently, she possessed no general knowledge. And the reason for this was not that she was unintelligent, but that she lived her life in such a constant state of high anxiety, bordering on incipient panic, that she could only focus on the things that might directly affect her.

Cleese remembers his father differently: an incredibly kind, but emotionally battered man. Cleese also remembers a fond childhood: "I now realize how glad I am that I grew up in the small West Country villages, surrounded by verdant green foliage and emerald hues."

"I went for my regular Sunday evening walk with Dad, during which I would discuss all my worries about the approaching week, and he would reassure me and give me the courage to go over the top Monday morning." Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

Of his long experience writing comedy, Cleese gives us this head-nodding truth:

There are not many jobs where you can produce absolutely nothing in the course of eight hours, and the uncertainty that produces is very scary. You never hear of accountant's block or bricklayer's block, but when you try to do something creative there can be no guarantee anything will happen.

British entertainer Stephen Fry said that when he was young (Fry is about twenty years Cleese's junior), John Cleese had rock star status. It is easy to underestimate how influential Cleese and his cohort have been to British comedic culture, and yet...well, I smiled when Cleese admitted he's an introvert.

Of course, he is.  Cleese's autobiography So, Anyway... is human and intimate. Not surprisingly, much like Fry's.