John Cleese

Your average comedian can earn serious money these days. Your very good one can earn a fortune. Michael McIntyre's latest tour, for example, netted him £21m. But there's more than one way for a stand-up to rake in the cash.

As we'll see in BBC2's new documentary series Funny Business, corporate gigs and telly commercials are huge earners. You want Jason Manford? That'll be 25 grand.

With contributions from the likes of Jo Brand, John Cleese and Rhod Gilbert, the programme also poses the inevitable awkward question. Namely, is a comic selling their soul by doing this stuff? Some people clearly think so. Carmarthen's Rhod Gilbert points out that the only ad he's ever been willing to do is for Visit Wales.

Mind you, I personally reckon he sells it better, sloganwise, in a clip from Live At The Apollo: "Wales is all right! It's not s**t anymore! We've done it up!"

Anyone who works in an office will have had the experience: an awards bash for people in your sector, a hotel ballroom, rubbery roast chicken - and up on stage a half-known name from the comedy circuit making ill-informed cracks about your business and looking as if he can't wait to collect his cheque.

It needn't be such torture; in fact, some comedians make an art form (and a packet) out of such well-lubricated corporate gigs, as this three-part series discovers. Among those recalling the pitfalls when comedy and commerce collide are John Cleese, Rhod Gilbert and Jo Brand, while RT's own Eddie Mair narrates.

'We've all become Thatcher's children,' reckons jobbing comic Hal Cruttenden, who merrily makes something like two grand a gig on the corporate circuit. Mark Thomas, naturally, begs to differ. And that's the beauty of this opening episode of a three-part documentary: it takes a very timely look at the business of comedy - bigger than it's ever been, surely - from all sides. It's also very funny, especially when established comedians, who undoubtedly deserve credit for even discussing the issue, grapple with their consciences as they explain themselves for doing what some might regard as selling out. A corporate gig is good practice for working a tough audience, says Jo Brand; doing adverts (or 'content-driven engagement platforms', as one suit now calls them) buys writing time, protests John Cleese; Rhod Gilbert, meanwhile, has bailed out of them altogether, his nerves and self-image unable to take it any more. The astronomical fees may simply reflect supply and demand, but it doesn't make the reality any more edifying. Engrossing, nonetheless.

A Python's twist to 'Twas the Night Before Christmas'

It was five short years ago in 2007 when one, John Cleese, set his Pythonesque sights on the traditional reading of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Q&A: John Cleese

'The worst thing anyone's ever said to me? "Are you Michael Palin?"'

Maureen Lipman takes a swipe at John Cleese

Maureen Lipman suggests John Cleese has the mental age of a 17 year-old following the news that he has married for the fourth time.

John Cleese marries for the fourth time

With three failed marriages behind him - the last one forcing him to hand over more than £12million of his fortune - another trip down the aisle might have seemed the furthest thing from his mind. The 72-year-old John Cleese has married girlfriend Jennifer Wade, 31 years his junior, on the Caribbean island of Mustique.

It's been more than 40 years since the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus aired on BBC One and we never looked at comedy - let alone spam, parrots or lumberjacks - in the same way again. This documentary marks the first time the surviving Pythons have come together for a project since 1983's The Meaning of Life]. Directed by Alan Parker, it features interviews with Terry Jones, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Eric Idle, as well as archive chat from late Graham Chapman. All tell the story of how they met at Oxbridge and The Frost Report, created trail-blazing television, made the transition into movies and ultimately became a British institution. Which, like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expected.

In Absolutely Fabulous, Edina wailed: "There's so much new stuff happening, I just can't keep up." She could have been talking about the comedy itself for this was a tired revival, proving yet again that John Cleese was right to institute a rule for sitcoms you could call the 12 Steps - two series of six then goodbye.

Archive correspondence: John Cleese vs The Sun

John Cleese's reaction to an inaccurate newspaper report in The Sun, in the form of a fruitless chain of correspondence between him and the newspaper's editor, Kenneth Donlan.