John Cleese waiting to begin when Cleese's offer arrived. Palin agreed to work with Cleese and Chapman in the meantime, bringing with him Gilliam, Jones, and Idle. "Monty Python's Flying Circus" ran for four seasons from October 1969 to December 1974 on BBC Television, though Cleese quit the show after the third. Cleese's two primary characterisations were as a sophisticated and a stressed-out loony. He portrayed the former as a series of announcers, TV show hosts, and government officials (for example, "The Ministry of Silly Walks"). The latter is perhaps best represented in the "Cheese Shop" and by Cleese's Mr Praline character,
John Cleese most disgracefully immoral people I've ever come across in a Western civilisation". In 1992, the UK Health Education Authority (subsequently the Health Development Agency, now merged into the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) recruited Cleese—an ex-smoker—to star in a series of anti-smoking public service announcements (PSAs) on British television, which took the form of sketches rife with morbid humor about smoking and were designed to encourage adult smokers to quit. In a controlled study of regions of central and northern England, one region received no intervention, the PSAs were broadcast in two regions, and one region received both