John Cleese, who gained international fame as a member of the comedy group Monty Python with films such as “The Life of Brian”, becomes a presenter at GB News, a British broadcaster that is considered the equivalent of the conservative US broadcaster Fox News. The Fawlty Towers star confirmed this on BBC Radio 4’s Today show.
Cleese is set to host his own show on the network, which devotes much of its time to criticizing “Wokeism,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. Viewers are “perhaps not used to hearing the kind of things I’m going to say,” the BBC quoted the comedian as saying.
In the past, Cleese had often acted as a fighter against the “cancel culture”. He recently described himself as an “old-fashioned liberal” and said that “GB News is not a right-wing channel. It’s a free speech channel.” The BBC didn’t approach him, but he would have turned down an offer anyway, “because I couldn’t get five minutes into the first show without being canceled or censored.”
“Comedians no longer have the freedom to be funny”
Earlier this year, 82-year-old Cleese called the “abolition of culture” a “tragedy” and told attendees at the FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas, where he was the keynote speaker, that comedians no longer have the freedom to be funny and comedy movies are now “targeting young men because they’re the ones going to the movies on Friday nights.”
Last year it was reported that Cleese was set to star in a new series on UK Channel 4 called ‘Cancel Me’, which would be about ‘cancel culture’ and its implications for comedy.
In November, Cleese dropped out of a performance at Cambridge University after a guest speaker was expelled for impersonating Hitler. He “blacklisted himself before anyone else does,” and urged organizers to “find a venue that doesn’t have ‘woke’ rules.”