Cleese’s sense of humour is no more. He is an ex-funnyman
ThirTeen minutes and 39 seconds. That’s all it took yesterday morning for John Cleese to demolish the myth that he’s still one of Britain’s funniest men.
John Cleese Presents, the first episode of which went out at 9.30am on radio 4, is supposed to be a parody of a radio programme.
The former Python and creator of Fawlty Towers plays himself as a rambling, conceited old bore. And, boy, did he succeed. But there was one small problem. Within seconds, it became clear that this embarrassing ego-tripper was the real Cleese, not a parody.
True, there were a few comic devices intended to persuade listeners that the ‘John Cleese’ disc jockey was a character as fictional as Basil Fawlty. But they were so lame that they only underlined the real message of the programme.
John Cleese isn’t funny anymore. his sense of humour is – like the Monty Python parrot – no more. it has ceased to be. it has kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil and gone to join the bleedin’ choir invisible.
Cleese is an ex-funnyman. Many of us have known this for years, listening to him drone on about his inner child and the wicked Tories in an attempt to divert our attention from a string of very public divorces – surely the messiest since henry Viii’s.
if there was anyone left in Britain who thought he was still amusing, John Cleese Presents will have set them right. My toes were curling within ten seconds.
After crashing into the studio, supposedly late, Cleese said he was ‘normally on the other side of the camera’. ‘Microphone’, the producer corrected him. So that was the clunking ‘old-fool-thinks- this-is-television’ joke out of the way, i thought. But it wasn’t. Cleese had planned a ‘visual feast’ which, among others things, involved ‘a racy performance by the hackettes, a troupe of overweight tabloid journalists…’
Aha! So that was why this comic misunderstanding was so painfully prolonged. Cleese hates the tabloids. For writing about his alimony payments, which would cover the national debt of a small Balkan state? nope. Back to the programme (the first of five, God help us) and a listener calls in saying: ‘The Daily Mail says you haven’t done anything funny for 40 years.’ it seems the truth hurts. And with 15 minutes to go, Cleese had resorted to padding and a shameless plug by reading from his memoirs. Speaking of which, you do have to wonder, will the BBC pull the plug on John Cleese Presents, despite their long-running feud only just ending? ironically this disastrous experiment has proved Cleese’s own point of just two years ago when he accused Auntie’s commissioning editors of not knowing what they’re doing.
Personally, i’m happy for him carry on and discover it’s not just tabloid hacks who find him tedious. ‘Car-crash’, was the verdict of one listener on Twitter.
interesting choice of words. You must remember the scene where Basil Fawlty, out of his mind with panic and rage, thrashes his own car with a stick. Why was i reminded of that yesterday?