Alongside unruly nasal hair, erectile dysfunction and a penchant for elasticated trousers, another lurking hazard for the ageing male of our species is a precipitous descent into batshit political craziness. The symptoms can be particularly severe for those in the public eye. Van Morrison and Eric Clapton, who are both 77, have embarrassed themselves with their antics over Covid restrictions. The flirtation of Morrissey, who is 63, with English nationalist iconography coagulated into support for deeply unpleasant far-right figures.
A gentle glide to the ideological right over the course of one’s allotted lifespan was common long before whoever it was (accounts differ) coined that aphorism about the man who isn’t a liberal at 20 having no heart and the man who remains a liberal at 40 having no head. Many a fresh-faced young revolutionary has curdled over the decades into a gammon-complexioned old codger shaking his stick at the evil clouds of wokeness or some other newfangled nonsense.
John Cleese apparently believes his forthright views on cancel culture would inevitably get him cancelled by the BBC. The 82-year-old imparted this opinion, unhindered, to the BBC on Monday’s Today programme
Which brings us, inevitably, to the news this week that John Cleese will cohost a programme on GB News, the right-wing TV channel that provoked derision from opponents during its chaotic start-up phase but now seems to have found a comfy niche in British broadcasting. Who’s laughing now?
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Cleese, a member of the British Labour Party during his Monty Python and Fawlty Towers glory years, apparently believes there’s no point in talking to the BBC about making such a programme, as his forthright views on cancel culture would inevitably get him cancelled. The 82-year-old imparted this opinion, unhindered, to the BBC on Monday’s Today programme, on Radio 4. In a previous appearance, also on the BBC, he expressed the (perfectly reasonable) opinion that there wasn’t enough debate about issues of free speech these days. Then, when asked politely about a free-speech controversy surrounding the US comedian Dave Chappelle, he curtly terminated the conversation. It’s hard to tell who’s cancelling whom sometimes.
Cleese says he is being censored because the British broadcasting establishment shows no interest in giving a weekly prime-time platform to the political opinions of an octogenarian comedian whose best work lies well behind him. He will have the chance to expand on this view in his forthcoming Channel 4 series, Cancel Me. But it’s too easy to mock this glaring cognitive dissonance. And some perspective is required. Cleese has not led chants against a health minister in the midst of a pandemic, like Morrison. Nor has he expressed support for the far-right For Britain party, like Morrissey.
Graham Norton offered a thoughtful critique of the whole cancel-culture concept, saying that ‘it must be very hard to be a man of a certain age, who’s been able to say whatever you like for years, to know there is some accountability’
Judging by his public utterances over the past 15 years or so, Cleese seems to have moved incrementally from being a Liberal Democrat–supporting fan of Barack Obama to being a Brexit-supporting opponent of (his words) “so-called political correctness”. He misses the Britain in which he grew up. He doesn’t like the way young people carry on. That all puts him somewhere on the centre-left of the modern Conservative Party.
His cohost on GB News, the satirist and author Andrew Doyle, is a sometime provocateur and trenchant critic of what he sees as the excesses of social progressivism but doesn’t dabble in the sort of disinformation or dog whistling favoured elsewhere in right-wing media.
That can’t be said of all of GB News’ output. Last week another of its presenters, Mark Steyn, allowed the author Naomi Wolf to claim unchallenged that women were being harmed by Covid-19 vaccines as part of an effort to “to destroy British civil society” and to compare doctors’ support for the vaccine roll-out to the behaviour of the medical profession in Nazi Germany. Steyn’s unsubstantiated claims in previous shows that vaccines cause “every conceivable kind of damage” are already being investigated by the UK media regulator. Tackled about this in his Today interview, Cleese waffled unconvincingly about differentiating factual reporting from opinion.
[ Graham Norton: ‘I wanted out, out, out of Ireland’Opens in new window ]
Judging by the quality of these and other contributions, it’s hard to see what Cleese brings to the table apart from his famous name. For a saviour of free speech, he’s not very articulate on the subject. Discussing all this at Cheltenham Literary Festival this week, Graham Norton offered a thoughtful critique of the whole cancel-culture concept, saying that “it must be very hard to be a man of a certain age, who’s been able to say whatever you like for years, to know there is some accountability”. Norton also talked about how being that “bloke off the telly’” causes his (and presumably Cleese’s) voice to be artificially amplified. “Once in a blue moon that can be good, but most of the time it’s just a distraction. It’s for clicks or whatever. ‘Graham Norton slams... Graham Norton defends... Graham Norton weighs in on...’ And, actually, Graham Norton shouldn’t be in your headline.”
Inevitably, the headline on every report of his comments was a variation on “Graham Norton slams John Cleese”.
