Damn. Terry Jones - director, writer, Chaucer scholar, Spam Lady, co-founder of the surreal, mordant, gleefully weird Monty Python and "the beating heart of it all” - has died at 77 of dementia. Jones wrote and directed much of the group's lunatic material and also performed, often inexplicably in drag. In ardent tributes, fans thanked him for a "gloriously misspent youth," praised the "untrammelled joy and delight" he gave, and panned his death as "the only thing he ever did that wasn’t funny."