Sorry Scots. My dad didn’t mean it
But which star’s daughter is hitting back on his behalf?
When John Cleese took to Twitter to criticise “half- educated tenement Scots”, he came in for a storm of criticism.
The Monty Python star caused offence in 2016 when he tweeted a response to an article on press regulation by a Scots magazine editor.
As his daughter, stand-up comic Camilla, gets set to head to the Edinburgh Fringe, she has advised people not to take him too seriously – especially on social media.
Camilla, 34, said: “I don’t think he’s fully understood once you say something, you can’t go and delete it when you have six million followers.
“People got upset about what he said about the Scots on Twitter but he’s really only nice to people he doesn’t like. You should be a lot more concerned if he’s not poking fun at you.”
Despi te his comments, Cleese has enjoyed a long working relationship with Scotland, getting his first break at the Edinburgh Fringe and filming Monty Python and the Holy Grail at Doune Castle and Glen Coe in 1975.
He was also a fan of the barrage of scorn and wit aimed at US president Donald Trump on his visit to Scotland, according to Camilla.
She said: “I have to say my dad and I were both having a good giggle. Of any of the countries, you guys are the best at insulting people.”
Whatever the reason he is in the public eye, Camilla knows the shadow cast by her dad’s status as a comic icon – thanks to Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and films including The Life of Brian and A Fish Called Wanda – is one she can’t escape.
She discovered that when she first played Edinburgh in 2014, the place her father made his name as part of the Cambridge Footlights theatre club in 1963.
This time round, she’s embraced it and the show, which she is performing with fellow stand-up Steve Hofstetter, is called Produced By John Cleese.
It comes with the caveat that only 50 per cent of the performers were produced by the man in question.
She said: “Last time I was there, although I talked about it him in my act, I never directly addressed it.
“This time, it was all very last minute. I thought it would be fun and then I realised how big the venue was and I thought, ‘How am I going to sell tickets? I think I have to just go for it and shamelessly exploit my dad’. It was that or a sex tape.
“A lot of people ask, ‘So he produced 50 per cent of the show?’
“Well, actually, he produced zero per cent of the show because he prefers lucrative endeavours but he did produce 50 per cent of the comedians in the show.
“I hope that people understand that it’s me making fun of myself because I’m well aware of the fact I’m selling tickets because people are coming to see his daughter. It’s a double-edged
sword.word. sw They are also coming to judge his daughter,aughte da which is a bit scary.”
A formerform model and professional equestrian, Camillaamilla Ca never meant to follow in her father’s footstepsotste fo but eventually fell into it through workingorkin wo with him on a one-man tour.
She co-cwrote the musical stage adaptation of f A Fis Fish Called Wanda and has worked as a writerriteroon wr the first Just For Laughs International Comedyomed Co Gala at the Sydney Opera House.
She said:sa “I thought I was going to ride horses professionallyrofess pr all my life because that was all I knewnew kn uup until I was about 20. But between injuriesnjuries inj and my dad being like, ‘I wasn’t kidding about a uuniversity’, that ended up not happening and I am glad for that.
“MMy dad was going to do a one-man show and asked me if I would work with him on it bubut I think we both thought that meant I
would type and make coffee. I don’t think he anticipated I would contribute anything else.
“But apparently the accidental comedy education I’d received from him over the years paid off because I ended up contributing some stuff and I even wrote my way into the show – that was a great way to get cast.
“I ended up going on tour with him and that’s when I kind of got the buzz.”
Camilla, whose mum – American actress Barbara Trentham – died of leukaemia in 2013, starting doing stand- up to prove herself but she admits it’s a difficult balance to get right when your surname is Cleese.
She said: “No matter who you are, or what your parentage is, you are still going to have to work just as hard as the next guy if you want to be successful at it.
“I have spent all this time trying to establish myself and then do I go back and talk about my dad? It’s a little bit of paradox.”
She can always ask her 78-year- old father, whom she will be starring alongside for the first time later this year in British romantic-comedy One Night in Bath, for advice – although she’s learned to pick her subjects.
They spoke just before she left home in Los Angeles when he was bemoaning a lack of maps at petrol stations.
She said: “I said, ‘Aren’t you calling me from an iPhone? (Which has a maps app.)
“Sometimes he does have that attitude that if he doesn’t know about it, it must be bad thing. Like he used to hate Twitter, now he loves it.” Camilla Cleese and Steve Hofstetter: Produced by John Cleese is at Assembly George Square Studios until August 26.