Carol Cleveland

"I was a great Lucille Ball fan. I did actually want to be Lucille Ball. Or Marilyn Monroe. I didn't care which."

"When [the Pythons] discovered that I had a flair for comedy, the roles got more interesting. Michael … was always the one [to recommend me]; I think if it hadn't been for Michael, I probably always would have just been the glamour stooge."

"… I had to read [the script for the first episode of Flying Circus] several times in order to try and make some sense of it. The sketches ended strangely or sometimes didn't seem to end at all! Others had an odd beginning too. It certainly wasn't the sort of humour I was used to and I wasn't quite sure what to make of it all."

"One day, when we were doing a read-through, the boys realised they had forgotten to cast another male to be in a jungle sketch. Rather than make an urgent phone call, Michael suggested that I do it instead. It turned out to be one of my most enjoyable sketches, because it was so silly! I'm dressed exactly as they are, in khaki shorts and a pith helmet, with a huge moustache and speaking in a very low gravelly voice. There was no disguising I'm a female though, as I still have my lipstick and false eyelashes on. After that they often put me in men's roles!"

"Carol … was the unsung heroine because she was so spot on. We never had to tell her how to play a scene, she just had a Python way of thinking about it."

"We didn't know who she was when we started the series. John Howard Davies cast her and we all liked her, so from then on, we used her for all but the more upper-class roles. We simply liked what she did; she was very easy to get along with, she could be very silly when required and she didn't have an excessive sense of dignity."