John Cleese, pal Eric Idle bring a touch of comedy magic to Spokane’s INB

John Cleese and Eric Idle are two of the men responsible for some of the funniest bits in comedy.

“The Ministry of Silly Walks.” “The Cheese Shop.” “Nudge-Nudge.” “Upper Class Twit of the Year.” “Dead Parrot.” “Eric the Half a Bee.”

Never mind the entirety of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “Monty Python’s Life of Brian.”

The two writers and performers were part of the famed British comedy troupe Monty Python – along with Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam. They are on the road this fall, telling stories and jokes, taking audience questions, sharing clips and whatever strikes their fancy. They are in Spokane on Friday at the INB Performing Arts Center.

“I would describe (the show) as a bit of a mess,” Cleese said in a recent phone interview from London. “We start out after a few jokes on the audience basically talking about how we met, because we met in 1963 … then we trace how our paths crossed and recrossed and crossed and recrossed all the way through Python and then the various things we did after the TV series, including the Python films and things like ‘Fawlty Towers,’ his ‘Rutland Weekend Television’ and ‘The Rutles.’

“We just go right the way through and finish up, well I think we should finish up about the fact that we both died so it seemed like a good time to do a tour together,” Cleese added, essentially creating a joke as he speaks, imagining how they could deliver eulogies for each other. “This is the point. I think this is really funny and I’d forgotten about it, so I’m going to suggest it to Eric.”

Cleese said no two shows are quite the same.

“Because we’re both naturally writers, we keep changing things and saying, ‘Let’s change this, let’s drop that story, or let’s put an extra clip in there,” he said. “And so the thing is never quite the same from one night to another, especially when we get to questions from the audience, which can vary hugely.”

The idea came about a couple years ago, when Cleese was doing an appearance in Southern California for his autobiography, “So, Anyway.” Rather than get up on stage by himself, he called up Idle, whom he hadn’t seen in awhile, and asked if Idle would like to “interview” Cleese about the book. The show proved to be blast.

“It’s just Eric and me wittering on and him asking me one or two questions about the book,” Cleese said. “Afterward, we said that was fun, but neither of us could remember a word of what we’d said. It was that relaxed.

“Three months later, I was thinking to myself, ‘That went so well, why don’t we do it for money?’ ” Cleese added. Idle was having the same thought, and a tour was born.

They’ve also both found that being on stage together is much easier than going solo.

“I don’t understand it,” Cleese said. “Maybe it’s safety in numbers, or maybe it’s knowing there’s at least one person there who thinks you’re funny.”

They started off in 2015 with series of shows in Florida.

“After the first night, I thought, ‘This is ridiculously easy and lots of fun,’ ” he said. Then they did a series of dates in Australia earlier this year, and now they’re on a swing through the Western U.S. and Canada.

“Eric and I have always found it very easy to work together,” Cleese said. “One or two of the Pythons I used to argue with, but Eric and I, if there was something to sort out … we could always do it in 20 minutes.”

“Monty Python’s Flying Circus” aired on BBC television from 1969 to 1974, although five of the six Python members (all but Gilliam) worked on “The Frost Report” in 1966-67. (American-born Gilliam, who met Cleese in New York City when the latter was on tour with the Cambridge Footlights Revue, worked on the children’s show “Do Not Adjust Your Set” with Idle, Jones and Palin.)

The success of “Flying Circus” led to live performances, feature films and eventually solo careers for all of them. The show was funny, surreal and very silly, a trait that Cleese said is what makes the comedy so timeless.

In 2014, the surviving Pythons (Chapman died in 1989) gathered for a series of 10 stage shows in London’s O2 Arena. It had been 15 years since the BBC last aired “Flying Circus” episodes, so it was during the O2 run that a new generation of English comedy fans got exposure to Python’s comedy.

“The young people who were going with their parents, who had never seen it before, who were suddenly saying, ‘This is hilarious. We love this. Why haven’t we seen this?’ ” Cleese said. “There’s something about the sheer silliness of it that’s never been captured by anyone else. And because it’s silly, it doesn’t seem to date.”