Mr. Creosote is a fictional character who appears in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. He is a monstrously obese, rude restaurant patron who is served a vast amount of food and alcohol whilst vomiting repeatedly. After being persuaded to eat an after-dinner mint – “It’s only wafer-thin” – he explodes in a very graphic way. The sequence opens the film’s segment titled “Part VI: The Autumn Years”.
The character is played by Terry Jones, who directed the film. According to Jones, John Cleese, who played the Maître d’hôtel, struggled to keep a straight face saying “wafer-thin mint” and also struggled to get out of shot without bursting into laughter.
In the sequence, Mr. Creosote dines at a French restaurant. The entrance of this morbidly obese middle-aged man is accompanied by ominous music. One of the fish in the aquarium exclaims “Oh shit—it’s Mr. Creosote!” as he passes, causing all the fish to swim for cover. The scene opens with a short dialogue between Mr. Creosote (who speaks with a coarse accent) and the maître d’ (who speaks with a fake exaggerated French accent), played by John Cleese:
Maître d’: “Ah, good afternoon, sir; and how are we today?”
Mr. Creosote: “Better.”
Maître d’: “Better?”
Mr. Creosote: “Better get a bucket, I’m gonna throw up.”
Creosote is then led to his table, and once seated starts projectile-vomiting, generally failing to hit the provided bucket. The floor quickly becomes covered in vomitus, and so do the cleaning woman and the maître d’s trousers. Creosote listens patiently while the menu’s highlights are read out to him by the maître d’, and after vomiting on the menu held open in front of him, he orders :
Mr. Creosote: “I’ll have the lot.”
Maître d’: “A wise choice monsieur!”