I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to note this when it was announced a few days ago, but I have to raise an eyebrow at the fact that John Cleese is now working on a stage adaptation of The Life Of Brian. On the face of it, it’s a wonderful idea: Life Of Brian is one of my favourite films, and one of the funniest films of all time. The problem is Cleese himself. As I wrote about his rebooting of Fawlty Towers, Cleese has lately become a bit of a spokesperson for the reactionary right, appearing on channels like GB News and railing against so-called woke culture. What concerns me is that Cleese will now try to hijack Brian and use it as a mouthpiece for his inane, increasingly vile politics.

People seem to be forgetting that Monty Python was the creation of five highly educated, extremely talented men rather than just John Cleese. They want to give all the credit for the classic comedy program to Cleese alone, and he seems more then happy to accept it in the pretence that the show was a pure reflection of his increasingly judgmental, intolerant views. But that is to forget that Monty Python’s Flying Circus was a manifestly left Wing, liberal creation involving transvestic lumberjacks and exposing the stupidity of religion. As I wrote here, it was about exposing the hypocrisies of postwar, conservative Britain. In a way Python was itself manifestly woke.

Thus for Cleese and others on the right to try to argue that much of Python would have been cancelled as too offensive if it was being made today is to distort matters entirely. Monty Python wasn’t about articulating or reinforcing prejudices or stereotypes, but exposing their inherent ridiculousness. To think it was about making fun of people like cross dressers or trans people is to miss the point of Python completely. I just hope that that remains clear in the upcoming Life Of Brian adaptation, and that John Cleese does not turn it into something hideously reactionary which runs counter to the very ethos which made it so awesome in the first place.