This past week, cancel culture reached a fever pitch with BBC owned TV network UKTV removing a Fawlty Towers episode called “The Germans”. The co-creator of this brilliant TV sitcom, John Cleese, has pushed back and it has been restored:
Speaking to Australian newspaper The Age, Cleese had said: “The Major was an old fossil left over from decades before. We were not supporting his views, we were making fun of them. If they can’t see that, if people are too stupid to see that, what can one say?”
He slammed BBC executives for yielding to pressure from protesters. “A lot of the people in charge now at the BBC just want to hang onto their jobs,” he said. “If a few people get excited they pacify them rather than standing their ground as they would have done 30 or 40 years ago.”
On Twitter, Cleese doubled down on his criticism of the BBC. “The BBC is now run by a mixture of marketing people and petty bureaucrats,” he wrote. “It used to have a large sprinkling of people who’d actually made programs. Not any more. So BBC decisions are made by persons whose main concern is not losing their jobs. That’s why they’re so cowardly and gutless and contemptible.”
Feel free to watch the episode here yourself and decide.
No dog in this fight. I don’t get all misty eyed about Cleese and his latest sh*t fight with the BBC. It’s simply the left eating one of their own as far as I’m concerned. Cleese admitted he was a Labor Party enthusiast back in the day and likely changed gears when he received a royal spanking for his “London no longer feels English” comment some time ago. Too late.
And as writer Ed Driscoll once pointed out about Cleese and his biting satire about post war England…”when you’re constantly throwing British values and traditions onto a bonfire seven days a week, isn’t the inference you’d like to see them changed?
Well, now they have. So enjoy what you’ve wrought Mr.Cleese.
You can still catch him on YouTube yapping off about Trump, so he hasn’t learned anything apparently.
Yes, and one of Cleese’s worst interview moments was when he was asked to comment on Obama versus McCain. His worshipful spews about “O-bawmber” were enough to make a person nauseous. Great comedic writer and actor,but typical showbiz left wing shithead.
If anyone finds ANY of the FT episodes offensive,they should go buy a sense of humor.
showbiz left wing shithead
That shouldn’t be surprising as he was also a member of Amnesty International at one time.
No one ever mentions the huge double-take Basil does when he sees the black doctor
Blazing Saddles.
Exact same situation at today’s Canadian broadcasters …gutless overpaid bureaucrats desperate to hold on to their jobs.
Cleese has made me laugh over the years but satire/humor is as dead as Juthtin’s marriage.
Its a brave new world and the nation of comedy isn’t allowed anymore.
Cleese is right to strike back. Never complain, never explain, and NEVER APOLOGIZE; it’s the kiss of death.
Just ask Wendy Mesley for uttering “that word” that nobody hears so don’t know what it is.
I thought I was reading the Onion.
Proof positive, with CBC icon Mesley taking out by the perpetually outraged, nobody is safe from the raging mob.
If they cower the electorate into their regressive realm, in 50 we’ll be tearing down they monuments they build themselves.
So far they must feel good about their chances, keeping Joe in the basement there and our fellow snap calling an election in the Fall to forestall future tax hike reality.
Remember, extremism feels good because you get an enemies list of bad people to attack because they’re bad.
If you want to feel good, become an extremist.
And of course …… moderates. LOL Classic Cleese
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLNhPMQnWu4
One of the best sitcom episodes ever. You’d never see something like that being made today.
Good to see Cleese showing some backbone, but then it’s his ox being gored.
This episode was banned in Germany when it first came out. The Europoors really have no rights.
The episode has apparently been put back into rotation after immense public outcry. Proof, if John Cleese (a lifelong Liberal Democrat) needed it, that showing up to riot gets results—which is why the bolshies keep doing it.
That episode was a veritable masterpiece.
Whaaaat, not funny!?!? You’re joking!!!
I gather that the writing took 4-5 times longer that for the standard sitcom.
That said, Cleese is shockingly UNFUNNY in interviews.
Buffoonish really. And I’ll never forgive him for his vicious comments — cackles and all — about Sarah Palin.
That said, dozens of Fawlty lines have been incorporated in MND family conversation.
…. now run by a mixture of marketing people and petty bureaucrat …. decisions are made by persons whose main concern is not losing their jobs. That’s why they’re so cowardly and gutless and contemptible.”
This applies to the majority of politicians, specifically “Conservative”, and bureaucrats at every level of government in Canada, today as you read this.
Look at “Conservatives” they can’t roll over fast enough, long enough, often enough. The only one that has any guts is Poilievre, though don’t know his position on things as a whole.
The “Liberal” fascist dicktators (sic) get away with the dicktat (sic) with such an ease, it should be shocking to free people, though it’s not.
Why?
I grew up in the sixties in England, and actually saw this episode when it originally aired, and even though I don’t agree with Cleese’s views on politics, and a bunch of other things as well, it is, and was, funny! As were a lot of the comedy shows of those years. It really is a shame that we have become so PC these days, that the N and W words mentioned in the sketch, are verboten. Yes, when those words are used to directly offend, perhaps they should be used more carefully, but to add context to the sketch, and used as a means to create levity, to give us something to actually laugh at or with, among all the ills of this world, can we not accept their usage to convey the humor? We now hear and use the F and C and B, and A words commonly, and their use on TV and in the movies too, that I personally find just as offensive, but it is supposedly done to to add reality to the producer’s and director’s efforts to portray the depth of meaning! When growing up, nobody even blinked at the N and W words used in that sketch, but we would have been aghast at the use of the above alphabetic terms now in common use. So now we have a complete reversal with their usage, but not for the better! Where now, we can’t have comedy sketches because they might offend, but can freely offend with cuss words that would make a sailor blush! (Note, in my younger days, I actually was sailor)
It’s Comedy for crying out loud!!! Really, how extremely sad this is!
GerryK
Re ” but can freely offend with cuss words that would make a sailor blush! (Note, in my younger days, I actually was sailor)”
I saw recently that one of the authors of “Amazing Grace” pre “the light” was also a sailor. Described by one of his captains as “having the foulest mouth I ever did meet” (IIRC)
“…decisions are made by persons whose main concern is not losing their jobs. That’s why they’re so cowardly and gutless and contemptible.”
So glad it’s not like that in Canada’s media, parliament, legislatures, council chambers and police headquarters.
And if you want to add the executive offices of all major corporations to that list, I won’t object.
How about something more recent? The Big Bang Theory. In one particular episode Sheldon insults Greeks by referring to their cuisine as inferior and awful tasting… “little cubes of charred meat that taste like sweat!” he says.
https://youtu.be/S4XbWFGtbpo
As a Greek person (not really, but if I was), I’m deeply offended and would like Bell Media, who have the exclusive rights over the show in Canada, to ban that episode when it’s set to air on their CTV and Comedy Channel networks and to skip over that one when it’s set to be the next episode.
Would Bell cave? Sadly they probably would.
Some time ago I saw a broadcast of Blazing Saddles on a US cable channel, and they bleeped out ‘nigger’ and left ‘chink’ in. I thought their hypocrisy a little peculiar.
Did they include the famous “farting” scene,or did they have the cowboys eating beans and rising up silently for no discernible reason as I have seen when the movie is shown on TV?
I don’t know why they bother to show it.
The education system has produced a generation or two of a humorless little hybrid of nazi/ commie children, taking shallow offence to almost everything.
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this nicely encapsulates the politically correct insanity…
NEW YORK, NY – “In response to a growing anti-police sentiment,
McGruff the Crime Dog has been taken to the vet and put down.
“We just didn’t feel safe with him around,” said activist Ray Clarke,
one of the people who demanded McGruff be euthanized.”
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Nothing is ever as it seems. Is anybody else sick of the bullshit?
Someone should ask Cleese if his politics helped create this mess.
See how far along his self awareness has progressed.