My comic hero, John Cleese, is falling off his pedestal
My first thought, when I heard John Cleese’s latest comments, is that the humour somehow got lost in translation. Yes, I know: wishing your ex-wives dead and claiming children are “the cause of most of the misery in the world” isn’t exactly funny ha ha. But comedians are dark, contorted souls (Cleese more dark and contorted than most), this is a man I grew up adoring, and every time he makes a casually mean remark (like the one he made about Spectator magazine editor, Fraser Nelson (a “half-educated tenement Scot”), or indeed my husband (“a real third-rater”), it chips a large chunk off the graven image I have of him.
For Cleese to tell US chat-show host Conan O’Brien that children “cost you a fortune, you worry yourself sick and then they grow up like their mothers” was particularly bemusing because I’ve met one of Cleese’s two daughters, Camilla, and if her mother is anything like her, Cleese was a lucky guy.
Beautiful, funny and clever, the 32-year-old comedian grew up idolising her father – and inherited his tendency to use humour as a coping mechanism.
“I can turn anything into a joke,” she told me. “Not everyone’s going to think it’s funny, but I’ll still make it.”
She also admitted to finding it hard “when everyone puts your dad on a pedestal”. Something she might not have to wrestle with for much longer.