Ah, John Cleese - the tight moustache, the impressive height, the silly walks, the silly talks.
If you have any in-depth love of comedy, you'll known and love his works in 'Monty Python's Flying Circus', 'The Life of Brian', 'Monty Python & The Holy Grail', 'A Fish Called Wanda', and of course, 'Fawlty Towers'. You can throw the likes of 'Rat Race' in there too, if you're feeling generous.
In recent months and years, Cleese has taken to pitching himself as "I can say whatever I want, and if you get offended, that's on you" comedy man on Twitter, and the results have been intriguing to say the least. The most recent example?
Take a look.
So, I reckon the English oppressed the Irish for only about 250 years
So 400 under the Romans still wins— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) January 17, 2020
A man walks into a bar, and asks the barman if he's heard the latest Irish joke
The barman says " I should warn you I'm Irish, and so is the owner of the bar over there, and so are Seamus and Sean here, our oldest customers. Now. Are you still going to tell the joke ?'
......— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) January 17, 2020
And the man says ' No ! '
' No, I don't want to have to explain it four times '— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) January 17, 2020
So, obviously, the intention here is to try and piss off Irish people with this kind of stuff and, as you can expect, it worked like a charm. The vast majority of the replies vary from concern about Cleese's capacity for reasoning, to attempts to correct his thinking, to just about everything else you can think of.
No doubt you're thinking to yourself, "Hey, entertainment.ie, you're just giving him the attention he wants by writing about this," and that's a fair statement. We are giving him attention, because this kind of thinking and reasoning is not only wrong, but it's upsetting to hear it come from someone who was deeply influenced by an Irishman.
Spike Milligan was a huge influence on Monty Python, held an Irish passport through his Irish father, and even has an inscription as Gaelige on his tombstone. As much as all that, Milligan's comedy regularly poked fun at Irish stereotypes that were prevalent in the UK during his time and played them up.
Here he is on 'The Late Late Show' talking about being Irish with Gay Byrne back in the '80s.
There's a difference, then, between self-deprecating humour and comedy - if that even is what Cleese is doing here with the comments about Ireland being oppressed by the British - that is aimed specifically at pissing people off just for the sake of it and nothing else.
There's a quote attributed to Cleese that says, "If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth."
Nobody's laughing now.
