Monty Python co-founder Terry Jones has died

Terry Jones, a founding member of the British comedy troupe Monty Python, has passed away aged 77.

Jones’ family released a statement confirming the Welsh entertainer died on the evening of January 21. “His wife Anna Soderstrom [was] by his side after a long, extremely brave but always good humoured battle with a rare form of dementia, FTD,” they said.

The family publicly revealed Jones’ struggle with frontotemporal dementia in 2016. He’s just the second of the six-strong Python collective to pass away; Graham Chapman died in 1989 at the age of 48.

Jones met Michael Palin at Oxford University in the early 1960s. The pair got jobs writing for the satirical television show The Frost Report in 1966. It’s here they met fellow writers and performers Eric Idle and John Cleese, which laid the foundation for their next TV project, Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

With the addition of Cleese’s uni pal Chapman and American animator Terry Gilliam – who Cleese met in New York while touring a Cambridge University production – Monty Python was born. BBC aired the groundbreaking Flying Circus for four seasons between 1969 and 1974. The program changed the face of television comedy thereafter with its surreal sketches and liberal deployment of absurdity.

Watch: Top 10 Monty Python’s Flying Circus Moments

The collective also developed a number of iconic films throughout the 1970s and early ’80s. 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1979’s Life of Brian and 1983’s The Meaning of Life are all considered comedy classics.

The crew dissolved at the end of the ’80s and Jones went on to author a number of books. These include children’s titles such as The Saga of Erik the Viking and Bert Fegg’s Nasty Book for Boys and Girls with Palin.

Jones also directed a number of films, most famously the 1996 live action adaptation of The Wind in the Willows. Palin, Idle and Cleese all appeared in the movie, as well as Steve Coogan and Stephen Fry. Jones’ most recent directorial credit is 2015’s Absolutely Anything, which stars Simon Pegg and Kate Beckinsale.

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