John Cleese; is he funny?

WAS funny? Not so much with Python but was with Fawlty Towers.

Cleese was funny, once upon a time. But why is it that most comedians from TV shows always end up in the shittiest movies? Or become "serious" - hi, Jim; stop acting, would ya? Bill Murray's the only one that's bucked the trend. Of course, Bill Murray's classic, without a doubt.

And why Ally gives me lip about Mira when she's touting Nic Cage as GRATE boggles my mind.

But it's still a good series. It gets praised a lot of the time for its character work but all the above, not to mention Likely Lads, are much better on character comedy - Fawlty Towers though is one of the few sitcoms that works as farce. There's not been much demand for sitcom-as-farce recently (Father Ted is a recent example) after Allo Allo and Terry And June pretty much killed it in the 80s so maybe thats why its reputation seems to be sinking a bit now.

(Christ, I'm turning into Ally's bitch. I'll shut up now.)

My first encounters with Mr. Cleese were Muppet-related, actually -- hosted an episode of the show and has a brief, quietly funny role in the second movie -- and then there was his hilarious turn as Robin Hood in Time Bandits. A couple of years after that I first started watching Python, and there we are. Fish Called Wanda is genius, but I was never bothered to see Gentle Creatures or whatever it was called.

My favorite Cleese story happened in 1989, when in fact he stopped by UCLA to pick up the Jack Benny award, given out every year to 'a comic legend' or something of the sort. That they've given it out to a few hacks along the way is unfortunate, but hey, Cleese got it that year and I was attending UCLA at the time, so off I went to the award ceremony and question and answer session. Had some great tales and funny stories, the best being this extemporaneous riff on Alexander the Great. Reason: somebody had asked if the Pythons were getting back together to do a bio of said historical figure (uh, no), and that was enough! "He was taught by Aristotle! Can you imagine what that would have been like? 'Master Aristotle, what are we learning today?' 'Oh, zoology, biology, history, geography, psychology...'"

I find the idea of Ally thinking Cleese is the second best man who ever lived funnier than the majority of his actual work. But 'Clockwise' and 'Fawlty Towers' were good.

FT is farce in a stricter technical sense, tho, isn't it (Feydeau => Rix): not just cheeky slapstick idiocy, but people running in and out of dfft doors the whole time, and hiding in cupboards

David: Sooner or later, I turn everyone into my bitch. You might as well go for it now.

And his last series on the Beeb, that human face thing, I know the BBC fucked him over on it, but God! I just found it embarrassing.

http://images.dailyexpress.co.uk/img/covers/257x330front/2011-09-02.jpg

The irony being that Cleese has been here recently scrounging up some cash to pay his alimony (or some other BS).

Short Q&A, including:

What song would you like played at your funeral?
Tchaikovsky's 1812, sung by Barry Manilow.

Just saw that he was in a series Charles McKeown wrote this year. Is it any good? Reviews are quite poor.

Saw him 'perform' last night and the answer to the question in the thread title is emphatically, painfully "no"

he's nearly 80. Chaplin wasn't funny then either.

Even accounting for his age, his long routines about how annoying it is that "the blacks and mexicans" want to be called 'people of color' but you can't say 'colored people' anymore, or about how hotel maids need to learn to speak english, made for one of the most queasily uncomfortable shows I've ever sat through. Afterward my GF confessed that she initially thought he was doing an 'old clueless racist guy' character bit, and then began to have the sinking realization that no, this was his actual material. Super depressing.

hooo boy

is this the Basil Fawlty tour?

was this dinner theater in Youngstown?

I only saw a couple of episodes, but the sitcom he did with Alison Steadman a couple of years ago wasn’t the long awaited return to form.

Xp Alfred Close, it was a fancy theater in my upstate ny town. it was billed as a one-man show/monologue thing, presented as a kind of ted talk format with slides, lots of him talking about popular social science books that he'd recently read, really strange. We were expecting something super halfassed like you usually get with old showbiz lions doing shows like this & would have been fine with that, just kind of wanted to see him live before he croaks, but was not expecting all the racial stuff. (He also did another weird digression about how evolution alone cant explain consciousness that was very hard to parse but seemed like was going to get into creationist stuff?) Also lots of pandering anti-Trump jokes, but then he seemed totally unaware that his routine about how Mexicans are invading the US could have been lifted straight from a MAGA rally. Just a really bizarre night.

He’s been like it for ages

the early funny stuff was largely written by others but he did have a good bodyshape for physical comedy once upon a time

fawlty towers was a documentary

I use to piss myself watching this bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwqJzCG9qr0

"He also did another weird digression about how evolution alone cant explain consciousness that was very hard to parse but seemed like was going to get into creationist stuff?"

lolled at reading this, so I guess that makes it a form of comedy - but i don't think i'd listening to it 1st hand would have had the same effect

Haha yes true, i did spend the whole show confused and baffled with no idea of where things were going to go next from moment to surreal moment, so in that sense it could be located within a grand python tradition

so, the trend I'm seeing in these answers would be "is funny? no. was funny? yes.".

It’s been, what, 30 years since he was even a bit funny? Closer to 40?

A Fish Called Wanda was his last successful fling at funny. Calculate from there.

Neil Innes to thread.

^ was gonna say, Idle was a total dick to Neil Innes

Yes, let's not kid ourselves, Idle was always a dick and still is. Palin and Jones were the nice guys and Chapman was drunk.

I see this hasn't been mentioned yet:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/miriam-margolyes-john-cleese-younger-b1916456.html

John Cleese is set to revive his classic 1970s comedy Fawlty Towers.

In a shock move that will likely divide fans of the original, Cleese will write and star in the show alongside his daughter Camilla Cleese. Matthew George (Wind River, A Private War), plus Rob Reiner, Michele Reiner and Derrick Rossi are executive producing the series for Castle Rock Television, which is developing the project.

The new Fawlty Towers is set to explore how Cleese’s cynical, over-the-top and misanthropic Basil Fawlty navigates the modern world. With plot details largely under wraps, the series will explore the relationship between Basil and a daughter he has just discovered he had, as the two tempt fate, and team up to run a boutique hotel.

oof that’s gonna be bad

He is currently making a documentary about cancel culture for Channel 4 and plans to host a show for right-leaning UK network GB News that will champion free speech.

a daughter he has just discovered he had

This shows such a lack of understanding of the character of Basil Fawlty that it surely proves Connie Booth was the creative force behind the original series.

it surely reaffirms the long-proven fact that etc

Well, yes.

weird that rob reiner is producing it given his history with liberal causes

Americans aren't interested in the political views of British people.

Rob Reiner also has a history with Archie Bunker, so maybe that’s the spirit in which he’s producing this.

I have nothing at all to do with this production or adaptation,. Apparently Cleese has cut the song. Of course. https://t.co/OS1X9b5w2k

— Eric Idle (@EricIdle) May 19, 2023

I guess this answers the question posted in the thread title: cleese now aggressively anti-funny

surely Cleese must be cutting out Idle's Stan/Loretta scene as well.

Nah, probably extending it and having the characters address the audience with "this is what the wokerati actually believe now!" afterwards.

Exactly.

i'll say again if you had told me 30 years ago that I would like Idle more than Cleese I would have really doubted you.

his twitter account is now full-on brainworm islamophobia with a bit of transphobia on the side, sharing obviously untrue AI slop and being furious about it. the man needs a wellness check.

he's been on this slide for at least a decade, maybe longer. awful.

I suppose we should all be glad that proposed Fawlty Towers reboot that was mentioned three years ago upthread never happened

It was on a hiding to nothing, seeing as how there's all those successful adaptations being staged at random restaurants on special evenings....

i looked and the first thing i saw was a retweet from an account called "Antifa_Ultra" calling out the insanity of ICE arresting children

second one was him calling Andrew Tate "awful"

Looks more resistance lib to me but idk

I have no problem believing he is a hardcore islamophobe and he does suck for sure but it's just weird with twitter if you don't have an account because you see things pretty differently than what the algo serves up

Is this the same John Cleese twitter account you're looking at?

Not sure I've ever heard John Cleese described as a 'resistance lib' before, always a first time though

I was going to share some examples but it's just far right shit as far as I can scroll

https://x.com/JohnCleese

If you aren't signed in to Twitter and look up an account, you are very likely getting tweets from many years ago, for whatever reason*.

* - Elon fucked something up

that's the link i was at, i'm just reporting what i saw. admittedly the two posts were from October 2025 and i didn't see anything more recent than that

xp well yeah

it's just weird with twitter if you don't have an account

Yeah i just looked and the first bunch of posts listed are all from 5-6 years ago.

yeah there's a bunch of old stuff like this which to me codes as resistance lib. i did see a reddit thread from a few weeks ago making the same observation about his twitter going bananas rw rabbit hole

https://i.postimg.cc/q7nXbb93/1.png

Yes, it's not a bit of grumpy old man lib/wokerati trolling it is full on far right racism.

for whatever reason*

This is by design to make twitter unusable without having an account.

I clicked through and got a bunch of stuff from 2019-2021 and this extremely trenchant enquiry from late 2022

Can anyone ( including BBC employees ) tell me why the BBC has not shown Monty Python for a couple of decades ?

Rupert Lowe

11 February
·
John Cleese is a patriot. His support for our rape gang inquiry is appreciated.

the longer people are on twitter the more their fucking brains rot, this is well established.

John Cleese, 4 hours ago

Slavery is an old Islamic tradition along with beating women, child marriage, Female Genital Mutilation, and not being very bright

Ugh what a creep.

He's been posting a bunch of pro-Ukraine and anti-Trump stuff over the last few days as well (including some obviously fake/AI generated stuff), I think his politics have basically been 'racist-centrist' for some time now, plus he is possibly sundowning

Graham Chapman dying relatively young feels increasingly like a smart move, from a reputation preservation pov at least

Michael Palin has aged rather well.

let's not kiss of death that guy

This is by design to make twitter unusable without having an account.

right and i suppose if it has the knockoff effect of obscuring the deranged posts of bigot sundowners, all the better

His support for our rape gang inquiry is appreciated

what is this regarding?

The far right in the UK are obsessed with gangs of Muslim men raping white girls.

Cleese appears to be supporting the Restore Party, led by the ridiculous Rupert Lowe, who was too racist for Farage.