His dwindling comic chops have been apparent since he started putting his work into focus groups around the time of Fierce Creatures in the early 90s.
While broadly agree with him about cancel culture, genuinely saddened to see him take his argument to GB News
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/oct/10/john-cleese-host-gb-news-show-cancel-culture
Remember him this way
Embarrassing isn’t it. Does he really need the money do you think? I know those divorces won’t have come cheap but really? Maybe he’s just bitter at his late period lot in life…
JC’s problem with the ladeez seems to be that he keeps on getting married to the same woman over and over again.
That’s the only funny thing I’ve heard connected with John Cleese since A Fish Called Wanda.
He wasn’t even up to much in Twin Peaks.
I thought he was excellent in Twin Peaks in a double act with the Log Lady.
“Laura’s alright, it’s only a flesh wound!” etc
Just a few years ago I read a quote from him saying “Snowflake? Yes I’ve heard this word. I think sociopaths use it in an attempt to discredit the notion of empathy.” I thought it was a good quote, but seems at odds with his current focus.
TBF, I imagine GB News viewers to be a bit like Basil Fawlty.
Or Major Gowen.
By coincidence, I bought a copy of the remastered Fawlty Towers 2 series today from Age UK. I shall obviously have to throw it straight onto the fire.
Monty Python was a wonderful thing but I am flummoxed by his four-Yorkshiremen statement that they wouldn’t be commissioned now because it was 6 white men, 5 from Oxbridge. Ooh no, not diverse enough.
I hardly know where to start. We will never know if there could have been comedy shows that were 10 times better than the Pythons. The reason for that is that this part of society ran the BBC and media.
In so many autobiographies, the Cleese-type character will say “so I left university with very little in the way of practical skills or knowledge but a fellow at the BBC saw our Footlights show and asked me in for a chat…”. What follows is a story of ineptitude where they say and do all the wrong things and assume they are finished. But no! They are given a budget and are commissioned to make a pilot etc.
This is reflected on as of it is an enormous stroke of random luck. So why was the fellow ar the BBC at the Footlights show? Why do they get more than 5 minutes to pitch their (at the time) quite flimsy ideas?
Anyone from that background concocts an against-all-odds element when telling their story, so that we like them more.
At least Angus Deayton was upfront about it. I remember him being asked about benefiting from the Oxbridge bias at the BBC and his reply was “yes, I did – your point being…?”
True. The only thing you can say to these Oxbridge types is, “You were lucky!”
The argument you’re making here is for meritocracy, which doesn’t seem incompatible with Cleese’s headline comments (caveat: I don’t know what else he’s said, and this isn’t a blanket defence of him).
You’re quite correct that we may have missed out on wonderful comedy because of a power structure that unduly prioritised white Oxbridge guys, and that was wrong.
But what’s being offered now, and what Cleese seems to be protesting, isn’t a world free of such power structures (in the media, at least). It’s a world where discrimination also occurs in the opposite direction, in an attempt at balance; the equivalent of putting one hand in the fridge, one hand on the stove and saying you’re room temperature.
What happens if in the next 50 years we miss out on a comedy show 10 times better than the Pythons because its authors are, pace Cleese, a bunch of White Oxbridge men? Are we at risk of simply exchanging one paradigm for another?
I don’t have an answer to that question – the previous status quo clearly wasn’t delivering just outcomes, and we’ll need to wait and see whether the new one does any better – but I do think it’s reasonable to ask it, and particularly to be sceptical of some of the power currently accruing to “DEI specialists”.
Personally, I think anywhere you’re giving human beings power (and particularly in a space like DEI, that’s been flooded with new entrants in the last two years), you should focus a critical eye and ensure there’s oversight. Otherwise we’re simply exchanging shibboleths, and congratulating ourselves for doing so.
What I will say is that I don’t have a great deal of faith in GB News to come up with solutions to the problem, although – per Dwight below – I confess I’ve never actually watched it.
Neither have I. I don’t need to watch it to know that it’s stuffed with weapons-grade dickheads, because they come at me on Twitter. But I’ve done a quick crash course on YouTube anyway.
It’s very shouty, isn’t it? The actual news is perfectly fine, no worse than anywhere else. The weather forecast is good. But the rest? It’s like having a whole TV station of David Littlejohns yelling at you. No thanks.
Richard Littlejohn has a brother? Jesus Christ.
I was going to say that RL at least deserves the basic human courtesy of us getting his name right, except I’m not sure he does.
I’m going to call him Robin Littlejohn from now on.
Back on the mothership I was bawled out by Heppo for dissing his god mate/all round decent cove John Littledick. I wasn’t convinced.
Hardly surprising – journos stick together no matter what (see the success of Boris Johnson) and a lot of blokes get a free pass if they go on about football enough (see Rod Liddle)
I can’t say I’m surprised at this. I can say I’m surprised that he’ll be working with a former writer for the great Jonathan Pie.
Farage is hailing it as a great coup for GBeebies. Tells you more than you need to know.
Have a read of Stephen Fry’s autobiography. Despite a prison sentence that would’ve stopped anyone from a Manchester postcode, people literally approach him and ask him to write a review/stay in a massive hotel suite/write the book for Me and My Girl.
….and became a millionaire because of it, despite having, by his own admission, no musical ability whatsoever. Them that’s got shall get….
True. Credit card fraud would have finished off 99% of people before they hit graduation age. That said, the Fry and Laurie scripts are one of the funniest books I own.
Fry and Laurie was where he peaked. Well, peaked to date but the signs of a late return to form aren’t promising.
I think it was Cleese who once said that comic actor’s greatest creations tended be portrayals of the person they would have been themselves if they didn’t have a sense of humour. Cleese now seems to have become his own version of that since he replaced humour with a healthy portion of chips on each shoulder.
This just in….. The parrot was indeed dead.
But hasn’t Cleese always been about calling out cant, and unthinkingness, and mealy-mouthedness?
Seems to me that that’s still what he’s all about, so continued power to his arm I say.
I think what he’s fallen foul of is:
(a) that there seems to be little if any capacity for understanding wryness/archness/nuance/satire/’challenge’ in whatever passes for public discourse these days (ie, the incapable-of-taking-anything-at-other-than-simplistic-face-value ignoramuses of the Twatterati)
(b) the associated light-speed pitchfork bandwagoniness of said Twatterati
(c) the fact that he’s made a catastrophically bad judgement in deciding to share his thoughts via GB News
Spot on with (a) and (b); can’t comment on (c) as I’ve never seen GB News. Something, I suspect, I have in common with all the people professing outrage about said news channel.
But could it be that GB News is the only UK channel that will let anyone have a go at cancel culture, intelligently or not, on air?
Shan’t be watching him anyway, as Cleese and his funny bone appear to have parted ways many years ago. And GB News is bad news.
Call me shallow (don’t @ me, as they say on the Twits) but when I look at the people who whinge about cancel culture it seems to me that it’s a non-issue. Cultural kamikazes with no pause button, to mix my metaphors. The same people who proudly proclaim themselves to be anti-woke.
@mikethep
Think you want “room 12A, next door”, Mike..
Uncanny…
I told you once…
It’s clearly not a non-issue. There’s a valid debate to be had, even if sometimes people we don’t like use it to pretend things are issues that really aren’t.
The online space is, as we’ve seen, a village square. And like the village squares of old, it’s fertile ground for the formation of mobs, and the delivery of mob justice at the point of a pitchfork.
If someone says something we don’t like, should we simply ignore them, and withhold from them our custom? Or should we also loudly decry them? If we loudly decry them, should we encourage others of similar mind to also do so, and perhaps try to organise to reduce their platform? What’s the appropriate, proportionate response? It’s something we’re clearly still grappling with.
When Netflix staff walk out because Dave Chappelle makes jokes about trans people, that’s cancel culture. Likewise, some of the treatment doled out to J K Rowling. These people haven’t been murdered, or silenced. But an effort has been made to make it harder for them to say what they think in the public sphere. Is that simply the nature of discourse; they get to say what they think, others get to say what they think back? Perhaps, but a concerted effort has been made in both cases to punish the speaker for their wrongthink.
I’ve used the two examples above, because they concern Trans rights, something most of us have reasonably nuanced views on, and in respect of which there’s an opposing force we’re inclined to view as good (by which I mean, Feminists). But it’s really the same principle even where the speaker is less palatable to us. It has to be.
A few months ago someone very dear to me, from an ethnic minority background, discovered compelling evidence that a close colleague had previously been a member of the literal BNP. The person in question had previously made a number of comments that suggested as much, but nothing so extreme as to really raise hackles. When we discussed the matter, my immediate thought was that the individual in question should be sacked – how can you ask people to work alongside someone whose politics are such that he would have his colleagues forcibly removed from the country? How could the company continue to serve its client base in multicultural London? The offender, now uncovered, should be required to leave, his mere presence was an offence.
But then I discussed the matter with another friend of mine, who pointed out that this was a slippery slope; once you establish that someone can be sacked/excommunicated for having the wrong views/belonging to the wrong political party, where does it end? Do you end up booting people out because they voted Tory, and if so where does that leave us?
I still don’t really have a good answer to the above scenario, but it seems to me that it rather encapsulates in essence the issue of Cancel Culture; when we know someone has thought/said things we don’t like, do we simply ignore it, allow them to continue and withhold our support? Do we actively campaign for their destruction (particularly given that social media gives us ample tools to do so)? Or is the apt response somewhere in between, and if so where?
I don’t think any of the above is a non-issue, and it’s certainly something that’s causing concern in the comedy world, which has long viewed itself as something of a bulwark of free speech. It’s therefore probably unsurprising that Cleese has a view.
For years, all of us on here would liberally quote Evelyn Beatrice Hall: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it“. It was the mark of a thinking person. But when push comes to shove, in many cases, perhaps even most, was it really true? That’s the question posed by Cancel Culture, and I certainly consider it a debate worth having, albeit I certainly don’t have the answers.
@Bingo-Little
The key word in your post seems to be “previously” (been a member of the BNP).
Have no idea whether the guy recanted those views or not. If he did, surely he deserves a second chance?
For me, one of the big problems with “wokeism”/CC is that the simple unearthing of things people said or did several years before is often enough to get them ran out of town.
It’s all worryingly McCarhyite.
FWIW, am regretting i opened this particular can of hornets’ nests.
Of course. But I’m responding to Mike above: “when I look at the people who whinge about cancel culture it seems to me that it’s a non-issue.”
Sorry, BL, think i posted before i finished.
Agree with you that CC is anything but a non-issue
👍🏼
I was being too flip Bingo, for which I apologise. Of course cancel culture is an issue, and it’s never more serious than when private individuals are involved. I should have made it clear that my comments were directed at the loathsome people who have weaponised CC to the extent that nobody can remember how or when they were cancelled, if at all, merely that they are always there going on about it – the likes of Jordan Peterson, Lozza Fox and Toby Young, whose Free Speech Union is an absolute swamp of misinformation and fake news. If students walk out on Toby Young they aren’t cancelling him, they’re exercising their right not to listen to him because they don’t want to. Media tarts who always complain that they have no access to media, the lot of them.
I hope we can agree that I’m not quite the dickhead you take me for, and now I think I’ll go back to trying to think of a nostalgia song.
I don’t take you for a dickhead at all, Mike – quite the opposite in fact.
I was just disagreeing with the statement; I think we’re broadly on the same page on this subject, and even if we weren’t it wouldn’t matter, I still wouldn’t think you were a dickhead. It’s not the end of the world to disagree, and certainly doesn’t preclude respect 👍🏼
👍😍
I’m not suggesting this about you in anyway so please don’t take offence. I agree that the quote from Hall was liberally used. However, if one is relying on quotes from others rarely do they deserve to be thought of as a thinking person. In fact, most thinking people are only aware of their ignorance of the gaps in their knowledge. In example you posted about removing somebody for a political position, the additional problem is that a person might hold a view for only a short amount of time. Sometimes opinions are rather visiting a quaint rural town.
GBNews sacked presenter Guto Harri for taking the knee in a display of solidarity against the racist abuse suffered by the England football team. Cancelled because their snowflake viewers didn’t like it!
Has someone given airtime on a TV station really been cancelled?
I don’t have a voice, man says to millions of people all over the world.
I knew GB News’ viewership had gone up a bit following its disastrous start, but millions of people all over the world?
Millions of people all over the world will be interested in what John Cleese has to say. Pythonism wasn’t completely brought down by General Synod’s Life of Christ.
Amazing how often the cancelled share that important information on national broadcasters. It reminds of when Farage (I think) stood in front of a court, on a specially constructed stage, proclaiming to the world’s media in order to complain about how he was being silenced. Well I heard the twunt, and I go out of my way not to.
I think it is amusing that people are slagging off Cleese for having the audacity to suggest that the BBC should concentrate on quality over attempts to address minority coverage. I agree with that entirely – it is common sense- nothing more nothing less. Quality will rise to the top surely.
I dont think that is having a chip on your shoulder at all. Whether Cleese is still funny or not is a completely different question – personally I think Basil Fawlty was a comic masterpiece that he has never got anywhere near either as a Python or since.
The OP wasn’t slagging off JC for his views, but for the channel he’s using to express those views
This only holds true if all have equal opportunity and access.
I think we are giving him far too much intellectual leeway here. Isn’t he exactly the same as a past-his-prime rock star who moans that he’s not getting airplay due to an imagined conspiracy against him and his ilk? I haven’t heard this kind of ranting from the still-great Palin, Fry, Laurie….possibly because they have a more realistic view of the world.
I cant believe he would suggest that the BBC should concentrate on quality. The audacity is startling!!
I don’t think we are giving him any intellectual leeway nor do I think he is complaining about lack of airplay either.
I doubt he needs the money and he did say when he first spoke with GB News he had no expectations at all. For what it’s worth I believe the BBC have been pressurised to fall in with PC trends at the expense of quality and I agree with the comments of both Archie V and Podicle below. The irony is that he suggests the BBC wouldn’t produce programmes that he would interested in these days yet if he ditched his principles and appeared in a BBC production he would be criticised for that too – seems he can’t win.
I will keep my memories of Fawlty Towers but will promise not to mention the war and the caricature Spanish waiter. (Not in the company of nutters anyway).
The biggest irony is that he said this on a BBC programme….
“For what it’s worth I believe the BBC have been pressurised to fall in with PC trends at the expense of quality”
Proof points?
Be Any Good
Message ends.
“Cancel culture doesn’t exist! Political correctness is just being kind!”
The very same person five minutes later:
“John Cleese is now dead to me because he’s chosen to make use of a certain media outlet I consider to be inappropriate.”
Perfect.
It’s no surprise that a) these sorts of news sites exist and b) people flock to them. The left (and yep, I’m one of them) has driven a pretty solid cultural agenda in the media over the past decade that amounts to “Aren’t we awful. Aren’t they lovely” and shuts down any attempt at discourse. People, quite understandably, get sick of being told this and seek alternatives.
In fact, the very desire to have any kind of discourse on a range of social and cultural issues immediately gets someone branded as ‘problematic’, a word that now means “I think my lefty friends may have an issue with what this person is saying but I can’t be bothered to actually figure it out”. We decry climate change deniers, creationists etc for not looking at data when they reach their conclusions, yet cringe when someone asks for data on any of a range of social or cultural issues. Somehow this is naughty data that the community can’t be trusted with.
So, it’s no surprise that these sorts of media organisations are waiting, arms wide open, offering ‘balanced’ reporting. I predict they will only get stronger.
I wish there were more on the left like you.
FWIW, I don’t regard myself as either “left” or “right”. Unfortunately I’ve never found the demo where people chant:
“What do we want?”
“Evidence-based policy!”
“When do we want it?”
“After extensive peer group review!”
But in the event of something like a pandemic, an earthquake/tsunami or an ongoing terrorist atrocity, there’s no time for extensive peer group reviews, so our leaders have to wing it and hope they’ve got it right.
I think an informed public and competent leaders are probably the most important things.
The examples you quote are all predictable eventualities for which policy can be formulated for in advance. Competence and information are of course highly important, but so is ensuring that planning for such eventualities is not tainted by idealogical bias.
That’s a catchy tagline for your banner on your next protest march! “Competence and information are of course highly important, but so is ensuring that planning for such eventualities is not tainted by idealogical bias!”
PARKLIFE!
Today’s tea/nose/keyboard interface moment. Cheers, Moosey.
In a mockney accent.
arf!
@Arthur-Cowslip
Wasn’t that the B-side of Fairport’s Now Be Thankful 45?
I did use on my last protest march.
I still can’t work out why no one came along.
“Whadda we want?”
“Sound forward planning!”
“When do we want it?”
“It should already have taken place.”
“What do we want?”
“Competence and information are of course…” [see next banner]
Re: the comments above about Cleese’s early career.
He was born in 1939, and I was alarmed at how middle-of-the-road that pre-Python (not my favourites anyway) stuff is compared to, say, Round the Horne, when the repeats have come on BBC 4 Extra.
He didn’t leave Cambridge and walk into Python (when he was 30).
He left Cambridge and walked into stuff long before.
Pop music – not from Cambridge, Oxbridge, Stamford Bridge, Bridge Over the River Kwai, “A Game of Bridge, Rupert?” – was WAY ahead of them.
A lot of RTH was written by the criminally now almost forgotten Marty Feldman who also worked on At Last the 1948 show with JC and Graham Chapman with whom he co-wrote The Four Yorkshireman sketch (think TIm Brooke-Taylor also co-wrote)
MF also wrote or co-wrote the famous series of Class sketches on the Frost Report in which JC first did the puffed up well-to-do type that later became his stock in trade
TBT was also one of the writers, the wine waiter in the 1948 version was Barry Cryer who may have contributed to the writing. Must dig my copy out.
Feldman didn’t go to Oxbridge.
i first heard the sketch on I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again, it was revived several times.
Feldman bestrode the comedy world like a colossus at the end of the sixties, his TV show got huge ratings. Now he’s just remembered, if at all, for Igor.
This is a terrible shame – anyone who could come up with the name Pete Frontkettle (for RTH) is clearly touched with genius.
Could be worse, his RTH writing partner, Barry Took is probably remembered for hosting a 10 min TV show where people read out letters to the BBC complaining about there being too much snooker on.
Mercilessly sent up on Not the 9. “We think you’re a load of old crap too”
I think MF’s problem was that he moved to Hollywood at a time when doing so was the exception rather than the norm and got royally fucked over by studio bosses.
Couple of points, he basically invented that whole schtick were actors interact with dead stars from classic movies (him and Gary Cooper on the battlements in Last Remake of Beau Geste), he also gets a name check on Bob Dylan’s Street Legal.
Mrs. F who only died a few years back also gets a mention in Mark E Everett’s autobiography, the title of which I don’t have time to look up right now as I have to go to a funeral
There is some terrific footage of him somewhere having a blazing row with (I think) Johnny Speight on some talk show about the state of comedy in 1968 or whatever.
Sorry for your loss , while I’m here.
Thanks, M.
While not a family member, the lady in question was a lovely old dear called Eithne Gavin who welcomed B and to Roscommon in 2013 and has brightened every day of the nine years we were lucky enough to live over the road from her. She has a musical connection in that she used to sing in the dancehalls here in the 1940s and 1950s. Almost the whole street turned out to bid her goodbye. She deserved it, too
What a rich and enriching person she sounds.
I’m really glad you crossed lives with her for a meaningful amount of time and got to understand who she was, and I too am sorry for your loss.
Those generations are the bedrock on which we’re all built. We owe them everything.
Which means we are the bedrock on which future generations are being built and they will owe us everything. I might not live long enough to see that debt paid, so I’ve already tapped the neighbour’s kids for a tenner each.
In the UK we’re already in hock to our great grandchildren for about a trillion. Those banker’s bonuses won’t pay for themselves.
Edit: here it is.
https://www.facebook.com/BBCArchive/videos/1966-late-night-line-up-writing-television-comedy/533295453844486/
1. Comedy writers…. in 1966… I wonder if any of them will be smoking? er…
2. Johnny Speight comes across as a bit of a gobshite. He seems to be deliberately winding people up. Which is of a piece with his writing, to be fair.
3. Marty has quite a cool mod hairstyle/sidies combo, whereas Ian le Frenais seems to have his hair on backwards.
4. The “security guy” who removes the interloper (John Antrobus apparently) at the beginning…. relax ladies, he’s married (and, realistically, dead)
Great find, M,
Cheers for sharing
I guess 10 minutes of comedy is better value than 90 minutes of economics…
Mainly because it features people whose names and reputations I’m aware of and whose insights and opinions carry some weight.
A couple of years ago I was given the autobiographies of John Cleese and Paul Merton. It was interesting to read how they managed to get into comedy in different ways, which were both opening up at the time.
John Cleese said at the time he was in it, the Footlights was seen as something that you did for fun, but accepted that after perhaps some shows in London, you dropped it and went into the law or whatever you’d originally planned to do. It was David Frost who saw the success of Beyond the Fringe and realised that there was a broader audience for Oxbridge humour, and as an impresario, realised that they would work better with a broader range of performers and writers, like the two Ronnies, Sheila Steafel, Marty Feldman and Barry Cryer. This seems the start of Oxbridge comedians making its way into the mainstream, from what Cleese says, it wasn’t there before. Look at the fifties – Hancock, Galton and Simpson, the Goons– not university wits at all, but hugely popular and innovative.
Paul Merton on the other hand, puts his break down to the Comedy Store opening at just the right time for him. He wanted to be a comedian, but living in London, he wasn’t part of the Northern club circuit and didn’t know how to get into the BBC. The open mike policy at the Comedy Store opened things up for him and a lot of others.
PM’s big break is something I remember well – a fantastic Smith and Jones sketch about a guy falling into a grave at a funeral. Very tasteless and very funny.
….the sort of thing Cleese and Chapman would have approved of, in fact.
Can someone explain to me exactly what GB News is? My understanding is it’s a kind of British equivalent of Fox News in the US and Sky News here in Australia. Run by and featuring any number of RWFWs.
Nail – head.
It’s TV by Outraged of Tunbridge Wells for Outraged of Tunbridge Wells and its motto is “We’re as mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!”
Or, as Mrs F says, “Great Brexit News”
Properly pissed …in every sense
It really has a lot to offer a typical Afterworder. All our favourite musicians almost certainly approve of it. From Morrissey to Clapton to Van Morrison. Quite possibly even Kanye West.
Whenever I open a new browser page on my work computer it defaults to a news aggregator. The Sky news headlines are beyond parody, but they obviously have an audience.
To be honest, I think actual Sky News is pretty good these days.
I think Australian Sky News is a very different beast to UK Sky News.
UK Sky News is not biased at all in my experience. And I speak as someone who would like to see Rupert Murdoch buried up to his chin in concrete before being made mock of by wayfaring urchins.
Buried up to his chin in concrete…with an itch.
Oh come on, let’s not be inhumane.
Wayfaring urchins who haven’t been to the toilet in a while.
You people are monsters.
As far as I know, UK Sky, including Sky News, was bought by Comcast in 2018, and Murdoch no longer has any involvement. Australian Sky is owned by News Corporation, which is run by Murdoch. This could explain the difference.
UK Sky News has never had a rep for being biased, though. And I don’t think it’s ever had this tiresome “We’ll do things our way because we’re not the boring old BBC” which is basically the whole reason for GB News’s existence. If anything Sky News resembles CNN.
It is a non taxpayer funded news channel that no one has to watch or pay for if they don’t want to.
In other words, it’s not your problem.
Not entirely sure about the “or pay for” part.
It is being funded from somewhere and some of that money might have been from someone you or I did business with.
Let’s give @jaygee a hamper, just to show Cleese how ‘cancelled’ he actually is.
Corsair chicken? Luxury!
Interesting interview with Graham Norton on cancel culture which mentions John Cleese.
Norton’s position there is such a cop out.
J K Rowling gets death and rape threats, and has been made persona non grata in certain circles, because of a political view she holds and that is probably held by a decent majority of this country. I actually don’t entirely agree with her, but to describe that as “accountability” is fatuous at best.
Part of the problem with this debate is that it’s very easy to ignore the tricky questions in favour of the simple ones. Should ageing, reactionary bigots complain that they’re being “cancelled” in national newspaper columns because they can no longer make gay jokes? Obviously not. But that’s the super easy area of the discussion. Insisting on living endlessly in that area, as Norton is doing here, is either ignorance, cowardice or both, in my view.
I didn’t get that impression from the interview. Firstly, I don’t think that by “accountability” Norton was referring to the threats from anonymous Twitter users (I imagine he feels it goes without saying that he condemns them unreservedly) but rather to comedians and public figures being required to explain themselves. Also, I don’t see him insisting on living in the easy area of the discussion (though that’s true) so much as agree with him when he says his name shouldn’t even be mentioned in a discussion about which he knows relatively little (but it is cos he’s “on telly”) and instead there should be much greater focus by the media on expert opinion. I’d agree with him on both those points.
It’s a discussion I’m reluctant to get into due my ignorance of the subject, but also curious about. Unfortunately, (like everything since Twitter was invented) it’s also very polarising, which is off-putting. I’m with Norton in both the ignorance and cowardice corner!
He’s explicitly asked about J K Rowling in the question. In fact, the interviewer takes pains to make it clear she’s asking about Rowling, as opposed to comedians being required to explain themselves (the latter being the easy bit). Norton also references “trans kids” in his answer, which demonstrates that he understands the question, even if he ultimately chooses not to meaningfully engage with it.
If Norton wants to stay out of the argument and leave it to “experts” (though who the experts in cancel culture would be, I have no idea), he’s entirely free to do so. But that’s not what he’s done here. Instead, he’s offered his view (that it’s just “accountability” and that Rowling should “speak to the parents of trans kids”) and then tailed it with “oh but silly me, what do I know”. Either leave it to the experts, or don’t. This is the worst of both worlds.
I see this morning that Rowling has responded to the interview making precisely the point I’m making above. I can’t say I’m surprised, I’d probably be wondering the same in her shoes.
The absolute best you can say of Norton’s thoughts is that he adds nothing of value to the debate. And I think that’s being unduly charitable.
I think I’m confusing the two debates: cancel culture and trans issues. When I said it’s a polarising discussion “I’m reluctant to get into due my ignorance of the subject, but also curious about” I was meaning the trans debate. (I have almost zero curiosity about cancel culture.) Perhaps Norton is too.
“The absolute best you can say of Norton’s thoughts is that he adds nothing of value to the debate. ” – I thought that was the point he himself wanted to stress in response to the interviewer’s question about Rowling, but with regard to the trans debate rather than cancel culture.
I don’t think Rowling helps either debate by claiming Norton is throwing his support “behind rape and death threats to those who dare disagree” by asking for more expert analysis and less celebrity opinion. (Or has he been saying other stuff outside of this interview?)
I’d suggest watching the interview and reading Rowling’s comments again.
Same here.
“If Norton wants to stay out of the argument and leave it to “experts” (though who the experts in cancel culture would be, I have no idea)”
I think here he means experts on trans issues.
Norton (summary): Cancel culture doesn’t really exist. Look at Cleese, he’s not “cancelled”. And why are people discussing celebrity opinions anyway? They should be discussing expert opinions.”
Rowling: Very much enjoying the recent spate of bearded men stepping confidently onto their soapboxes to define what a woman is and throw their support behind rape and death threats to those who dare disagree.
I think the mistake with cancel culture is to think it is all about celebrities. JK Rowling can defend herself, but it is more difficult for people who express Gender Critical views, as they’re called, who are in day to day jobs, and are squeezed out as a result, for example Allison Bailey, Kathleen Stock and Maya Forstater. I believe they have all received some redress for using their right to free speech.
Graham Norton or Billy Bragg don’t have to have an opinion on anything, and on the other hand they are also, like the rest of us, entitled to have an opinion on everything. I agree that it is best to look at the experts, rather than secondary commentary. The most recent study from an expert on the medical treatment of Trans people in England was the Cass Review of the Tavistock Clinic, which has resulted in its closure, because of poor practice.
I don’t follow Norton or Bragg, so I don’t know their views on any of these cases.
Perhaps Norton only associates the term “cancel culture” with celebrities (I did, but then I know feck all about it).
Of all the recent polarised debates I’ve seen on Twitter (Ukraine, royalty, Brexit, etc), it seems to me the trans debate is one that really needs both sides to actively seek to avoid entrenched position and listen to experts, especially as children are so involved.
@david-kendal
Have been reading about the Tavistock Case you mentioned. Very interesting.
https://theconversation.com/tavistock-clinic-fallout-what-the-courts-would-consider-in-litigation-by-former-patients-149788
That’s an interesting article. All of the medical and psychological issues around this subject are very complex, and Dr Cass has clearly tried to address that, and avoid any ideology or taking sides. I think everybody would hope that the last sentence is the best way ahead: “In any event, patients are likely to be investigated and counselled more fully in the future.”
@Gary
Sadly, nothing “goes without saying” unless it is actually prefaced by the words “it practically goes without saying” nowadays…
Perhaps send Cleese that hamperful of Corsair Tinned Chicken.
A cancellation prize.
If Cleese wants some Corsair chicken he can jolly well start his own thread
Been thinking about Oxford and Cambridge and shite like that.
The one time this country didn’t seem in thrall to these places was the 60s.
The only pop stars I can think of who went there (Paul Jones and Nick Drake) left, and the only people I reckon from the era who went there (the Beyond the Fringe lot and Dennis Potter) had pretty much left by the time the 60s had got going.
I cannot think of anyone else.
Beatles, Twiggy, Mary Quant, David Bailey, Bobby Moore, Michael Caine… any of the ikons of the Golden Age… the nearest they got to either of them was the Boat Race on telly.
I suggest THAT is why it was the Golden Age.
Only one I can think of was the loathsome Jonathan King (Cambridge)
Satirists are a lonely breed. The problem is, while most people have a fixed position about how they feel about things, satire fires in any direction it feels needs the jab. That can be friends or foes. Very few satirists were beloved in their lifetimes. Most of them were constantly criticized for aiming their arrows in directions people didn’t like them to be pointed. But ultimately, sticking pins in sacred cows is *exactly* what we need satire to do.
That’s very interesting.
But, equally, doesn’t that just present satirists as kneejerk contrarians / misanthropes?
I, for one, would be very keen to hear more.