John Cleese has announced that he will be joining GB News with a new TV and radio show.
The Monty Python star revealed that he will be hosting a new one-hour programme on the channel during an appearance on BBC Radio Four today. The 82-year-old added that he was drawn to the new job because he sees GB News as a “free speech channel”.
The actor went on to say that he would have rejected any offer to appear on the BBC, because he would get “cancelled or censored” minutes into an appearance, The Mirror reports . Speaking to host Amol Rajan, John admitted that he was not aware of GB News before he was approached to do the new show.
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“I don’t know much about modern television because I’ve pretty much given up on it,” he explained. “And then I met one or two of the people concerned and had dinner with them and I liked them very much.
“It's a free speech channel and I am working with a young fellow, Andrew Doyle, who's a stand up comic,” John added. He then made a dig at the BBC - the channel on which he became a household name in the 1970s as Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers.
“The nice thing about talking to the GB News audience is that they may not be used to hearing the sort of things I'll be saying,” he said. “I mean, the BBC have not come to me and said ‘would you like to have some time on our shows’, and if they did I would say ‘not on your nelly’, because I wouldn't get wouldn't get five minutes into the first show before I'd been cancelled or censored!”
In a series of Tweets replying to fans, John said that he has “had a very low opinion of the BBC for over 20 years”, branding it “a parody of bureaucracy”. He added: “Most of TV in Britain is so cliched and cowardly there’s not much around.”
Speaking of his upcoming GB News show, which he admitted “would never get on to the BBC”, the comedian told a fan: “Beware the ‘wokes’. They won’t like it!”
He told another Twitter user: “There’s a massive amount of important information that gets censored, both on TV and in the press. In my new show, I’ll be talking about a lot of it. You should be prepared to be shocked.”
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