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Anorak News | John Cleese Heads To Austria: Well, Where Else Do You Go When Humour Dies?

John Cleese Heads To Austria: Well, Where Else Do You Go When Humour Dies?

by | 23rd, September 2010

JOHN Cleese has finally turned into one of the arcane brigadiers he used to lampoon. So unfunny is Cleese that for years many wondered if it was all a joke on us. Can his haughty ex-pat be for real?

But where a can man who isn’t funny feel at home? The answer is Austria.

He’s in Austria, lamenting the UK’s fading class system. The British working class has all but vanished while an educated middle-class made good on hard work and ambition has swelled.

Says Cleese to Die Presse:

England changed much more than I did. We used to have some sort of middle class culture with an adequate amount of respect for education. It was a bit racist – not in a mean way though, but still racist. Some things have changed to the better, but it’s not a middle class culture anymore, but a yob culture, a rowdy culture.”

So says the 67—year-old fo whom the class system gave him his better jokes:

“Especially the media are to blame. Since (Australian-American businessman) Rupert Murdoch took over English newspapers (The Sun, News Of The World, The Times, The Sunday Times), he ruthlessly sent them down and further down. They are trivial, vulgar and deeply dishonest today. We were once able to claim having the least worse TV. Today, it’s the same rubbish as everywhere in the world.”

So. What does Cleese like?

“I’ve always liked Vienna. I never saw so much theatre and music and so many museums anywhere else. I like the city’s velocity and the food. It doesn’t have the tackiness of other big cities.”

The Third Reich’s Air-Raid Shelter was always a lovely place…

Spotter: Yampster

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Prunella Scales (left), John Cleese, Connie Booth and Andrew Sachs (right) are seen in London promoting two Fawlty Towers specials created to commemorate the 30 years Fawlty Towers Anniversary.



Posted: 23rd, September 2010 | In: Celebrities Comment | TrackBack | Permalink