Eddie Izzard on Terry Jones: he was the guardian of the Monty Python spirit

I was quite young when Monty Python came down the airwaves into my brain. When the Python cassettes circulated at my boarding school, I didn’t know who was in charge of what but I gradually worked out that Terry Jones’s speciality was crazy women. He was so uninhibited. But I like him best as Sir Bedevere, the very wise knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The Pythons changed the face of world comedy – they just did, you can’t get around that. And Terry was the guardian of the Python spirit. He saved the tapes that were going to be wiped by the BBC for new recordings. And he was such an energy behind them, directing the main films the team produced, including Life of Brian, which is a masterpiece.

It’s great that he managed to do the Python live gigs in 2014. I went to seven out of the 10 shows and only missed the first three because I was on tour in America. I think the Pythons got bored with me coming backstage. One night, John Cleese was talking about making a mistake on a line but it didn’t matter to us fans – it was a thrill to see a sketch taken into a new direction. When you meet the Pythons you go: wow! I would have loved to hang out with them all the time but I think they would have hit me with a bat. They must think of me as a stalker.

Terry was fun and kind and curious: a good person to spend time with. He was fascinated by history. He and Michael Palin did The Complete and Utter History of Britain on television together, which was a huge influence on me. History isn’t topical, it never dates: you can just talk about history and it sits there and doesn’t move. It’s wonderful for comedy.

Related: Monty Python film director Terry Jones: full of fun and innocence – and a very naughty boy

I had a couple of scenes in Terry’s film Absolutely Anything in 2015 and it was great to be a small part of his legacy. He let me play around and go in different directions. It was a wonderful thing to be on the set and see him back in the saddle for what became his last film.