John Cleese is making it clear that he – and a few other Pythons – are in complete disagreement with long-ago co-star Eric Idle, who last weekend slammed manager (and daughter of Python co-founder Terry Gilliam) Holly Gilliam for what Idle suggested were the troupe’s dwindling finances.
“We own everything we ever made in Python and I never dreamed that at this age the income streams would tail off so disastrously,” Idle posted on X/Twitter Saturday. “But I guess if you put a Gilliam child in as your manager you should not be so surprised. One Gilliam is bad enough. Two can take out any company.”
Cleese left no doubt where he stands on the matter.
“I have worked with Holly for the last ten years,” the Fawlty Towers creator tweeted today, “and I find her very efficient, clear-minded, hard-working, and pleasant to have dealings with.”
Cleese continued, “Michael Palin has asked me to to make it clear that he shares this opinion. Terry Gilliam is also in agreement with this.”
Apparently there’s no love lost between Cleese and Idle, with the latter responding, when asked by an X follower if the two remain close, “I haven’t seen Cleese for seven years.” When another follower replied saying that made him sad, Idle responded, “Why. It makes me happy.”
Today, Cleese responded with an assessment so blunt some followers wondered if it was all a gag: “We always loathed and despised each other, but it’s only recently that the truth has begun to emerge.”
Gag or not, Cleese’s comment is in line with a post by Idle’s daughter Lily, who wrote, “I’m so proud of my dad for finally starting to share the truth. He has always stood up to bullies and narcissists and absolutely deserves reassurance and validation for doing so.”
I think ultimately Cleese is held up as a bastion of British values and stiff upper-lip comedy… his enduring popularity and the onset of tech like social media has allowed people to see through the facade though. I don’t think he’s an awful person by any means, but just a product of his generation where views and takes on things just won’t fly today.
I think if you had Instagram or Twitter back in the 60’s and 70’s, there’s a good chance that even British icons like Bob Monkhouse or Bruce Forsyth or… god forbid, Jimmy Saville may have had some questionable views or tastes exposed.
A shame really. Maybe social media was a watershed moment for PR.
Cleese was never a “bastion of British values” or the stiff-upper-lip. Python was part of the counterculture which subverted everything about British values at the time. Fawlty Towers is about someone who kept the stiff upper lip so hard they completely cracked. Clockwise and Wanda are both about establishment figures who go potty and break bad.
He fits in to the satire boom of the 60s. His contemporaries are the Two Ronnies, the Goodies, David Jason, and he followed in the footsteps of David Frost, Peter Cook and Spike Milligan. Not in the same comedic species as those you mentioned. Barely the same genus. Monkhouse and Forsyth come from the variety tradition, which isn’t establishment, more comfortable affirming fare for the working class of the time.