John Cleese; is he funny?

counterpoint: yes minister did brexit

fawlty towers is a documentary, written by connie booth abt the inside of her soon-to-be ex-husband's absurd head: it is funny! connie booth is funny!

also her ex-husband

the fawlt in the timeline

love that bit where he hilariously falls through a bar and then starts self-flagellating with a twig till he bleeds to death.

beating up the famine-thin oirish yokel is a classic

O'RLY

The contractor?

Orelly man.

just spent a few minutes reading orly taitz's wiki page, thx for the reminder of a more innocent age of rightwing nuttery

Orelly man.

So, what's those "all my friends from abroad" about, is that like "Coloured Brethren" or some such?

he lives in the caribbean so maybe "abroad" means the uk

the phrase "i opined" rarely signals worthwhile content imo

"mused Cleese"

friends from abroad = the Americans, Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle

(this is a joke, as Eric Idle has no friends)

If some twitter japester hasn’t cunningly jiggled around the letters on the fawlty towers sign so it now reads ‘fucking cunt’ then I shall be sorely disappointed

this guy's brain has been shit soup for more than 50 years

As part of the research I'm doing for the programme on woke attitudes, I'd like to ask this:

Are wokes bothered by the lack of diversity in Putin's army ?

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) March 3, 2022

i wouldn't go back that far but the past five years or so of him on twitter has been 75% unbearable. Eric Idle presents as a much more tolerant and likable person which surprises me because for years I thought he was a twat.

i checked my numbers and they're in fact correct

(xp) He is a twat but Cleese is a thousand times worse.

I had no idea woke was a noun now.

everything is a noun

Worst thing about Cleese's current steez is he still pretends he's exploring the issues with an open mind, the cowardly sniveling cunt

Are wokes bothered by the lack of diversity in Putin's army ?

Just another open-minded guy askin' questions

I checked Tom’s numbers and they're in fact correct

always despised the hideous cunt. ha ha ha I'm going to hit a car with a branch and shout very loudly - instant brit comedy classic. Him and Baddiel should be dropped from a helicopter into a volcano before they make any more tv programs.

fawlty towers is good and that falls within the 50-year range but i suspect the good things about it are mostly due to connie booth

Fawlty Towers is good and I think a lot of it is due to John Cleese but nonetheless he is still a dick.

Controp: the latest series of The Righteous Gemstones is far funnier than anything Cleese ever did, including with Python.

but this puts me in the invidious position of admitting that comedy is good... grr!

cleese is for sure some of why fawlty towers is funny -- bcz connie booth knew how to deploy his silly walks and moves and also his obnoxious and stunted persona (aka the real him)

Person who is a dick unsurprisingly good at portraying a character who is a dick.

I could never stand that show. So shouty.

I think someone else could have played Fawlty - Leonard Rossiter for instance. The physical comedy would have been slightly different and the class based humour would have played differently but it would have been just as funny.

this crop of aging famous dudes who stroke out over woke-ism are so limp and lazy with their “zings” it seems like they mostly end up undermining their point. but then I remember who the intended audience is and it’s like oh right you really can’t fumble this

yeah, its not worth getting too het up about an eighty something yr old comedian lads if anyone that matters is listening its to stoke their own rage reactors

Idle posted several tweets about how electing Corbyn would lead to communism and how creators like him would him would have all their property and wealth stolen. He also called him a cunt. All around the 2019 election. Idle is dead to me.

None of us has any idea how the Fawlty Towers scripts were written and which of Cleese and Booth, if any, was the dominant one in the writing partnership.

i know exactly how they were written (the good funny stuff: all connie booth)

electing Corbyn would lead to communism and how creators like him would him would have all their property and wealth stolen

Unless you were in the room with them while they were writing it, which I doubt, I don't think you do. xp

no i do

there's actually going to be a whole episode of Cleese's new podcast about wokes where he confesses to this

it's clearly contrarian to write Cleese's career off. I think everything he did through a Fish Called Wanda is pretty excellent, and that includes some of the odd films he appeared in like Clockwise and Privates on Parade. His drop off post-Wanda was precipitous though. Anyway I'll just pretend he died after making that film.

Connie Booth supposedly had more to do with the plotting and making sure the scripts made sense. I imagine Cleese did the shouty bits

Wonder which of them was responsible for the badly-dated caricature that is Manuel?

didn't he start getting therapy at some point? I think I've seen people theorize that he stopped being funny because the therapy made him better adjusted and therefore less shouty and stunted etc.

xps to anagram afraid this is true, Connie Booth’s ghost appeared to me in a dream and confirmed it

he went through tons of therapy in the late 80's I believe, he wrote two books with his therapist. I read one of them (families and how to survive them).

And he's emerged from therapy a king-size wanker.

who knew therapy made you a senile unfunny bigot?