Miriam Margolyes, 82, slams ‘poisonous’ John Cleese and claims he is ‘sour and irrelevant’ after Fawlty Towers star said he ‘could never be cancelled’
Miriam Margolyes, 82, slams ‘toxic’ John Cleese and claims he is ‘sour and irrelevant’ after Fawlty Towers star said he could ‘never be cancelled’
Miriam Margolyes said the ‘toxic’ John Cleese has ‘turned sour and irrelevant’, as she said in a new interview.
The comedian, 82, reflected on her time at Cambridge University with the Fawlty Towers star, 83, and scathingly branded him a ‘puny tadpole of a person’.
John recently revealed why he could never be canceled despite being targeted after criticizing political correctness.
In the run-up to her new book, Oh Miriam!: Stories from an Extraordinary Life, Miriam said The guard how she was treated with contempt by John and his Monty Python co-star Graham Chapman while she was at university.
In the early 1960s she performed as part of the student sketch group Cambridge Footlights, but was ‘ignored’ as the group’s only woman.
Devastating: Miriam Margolyes, 82, said ‘toxic’ John Cleese ‘has turned sour and is irrelevant’ as she spoke in new interview (pictured in 2021)
Lashing out: The comedian reflected on her time at Cambridge University with the Fawlty Towers star, 83, scathingly branding him a ‘puny tadpole of a person’
She recalls, “I think they thought I was too full of myself because women were literally not allowed in the club at that time. Graham Chapman and John Cleese were toxic.
‘John was a brilliant comedian in his day, but something has changed. Like milk, it has turned sour. He’s irrelevant… Cleese is a little tadpole of a person.”
John is best known for co-founding Monty Python and starring in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers.
In 2020, the British actor sparked backlash for defending JK Rowling when a Twitter user demanded he share his honest opinion about the Harry Potter author.
‘I’m afraid I’m not that interested in transgender people. I just hope they are happy and people treat them kindly,” he tweeted.
“Right now I’m focusing more on threats to democracy in America, the rampant corruption in Britain, the disgusting British press, the revelations about police brutality.”
He then snarkily tweeted: “Deep down I want to be a Cambodian policewoman. Is that allowed, or am I being unrealistic?’
He was criticized for his comments by a number of progressive figures, including Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness, who accused the comedian of “transphobia.”
Oh dear: She said, ‘John was a brilliant comedian in his day, but something has changed. Like milk, it has turned sour. He’s an irrelevance’ (John depicted in Fawlty Towers)
Appears on Ben Fordham Live in May, Cleese explained that it is his ability to do live shows for his fans rather than relying on big commercial networks that has helped him stay relevant.
“I don’t get canceled because I do shows… People think to themselves, ‘I like him, so I’ll buy a ticket,'” he said.
“The audience is basically pre-selected to like me, so when I come out, they like me and they like the kind of humor I do,” he continued.
“I don’t think the people doing the cancellation seem to have much of a sense of humor,” he told Fordham.
“And I don’t think people with no sense of humor should cut out things that people with a sense of humor enjoy.”