John Cleese responds to claim his mic was taken away after slavery joke

NME

John Cleese has responded to yesterday’s (March 15) reports that he had his microphone taken away at an onstage event after making a controversial joke about slavery.

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The comedian and actor was attending a John Cleese In Conversation event at SXSW in Austin, Texas, on March 11 alongside comedians including Duclé Sloan, Jim Gaffigan and Ricky Velez.

The Monty Python and Fawlty Towers star asked his fellow panellists who was more oppressed by colonisation and started discussing “competition” between cultures. “[People] get competitive about this business of being oppressed,” Cleese said. “You do know the British have been slaves twice, right?”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sloan then took away Cleese’s microphone, saying: “I saved a comic whose career I respect”. Cleese continued regardless, adding: “I want reparations from Italy.”

However, Cleese and moderator Dan Pasternack have now claimed the microphone removal moment was done in a comedic manner, with the latter calling it “inspired and hilarious”.

As reports of Cleese having his microphone “confiscated’ began surfacing online, the actor wrote on Twitter: “Next time the Editor of the Hollywood Reporter sends someone to review a Comedy Festival he would do well to send a reporter with a sense of humour. Otherwise it’s like sending someone deaf to review a concert.”

Next time the Editor of the Hollywood Reporter sends someone to review a Comedy Festival he would do well to send a reporter with a sense of humour

Otherwise it's like sending someone deaf to review a concert

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) March 15, 2022

Cleese has since tweeted a further seven times on the subject, adding that the “ridiculousness of the comparison was the joke” and describing the event as a “hugely affectionate laughterfest” to one user who suggested Cleese should have “been better at reading the room”.

Quite right, Sajid. But that was the joke

The ridiculousness of the comparison was the joke

But if you lack a sense of irony, you might not realise
that. But that's not a good reason to deprive people
who do understand irony of a good laugh https://t.co/zRXi4hpaHZ

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) March 15, 2022

The room was easily read

It was a continuous, and hugely affectionate laughterfest

My best experience since the Python shows at the O2 https://t.co/c5fgZj948s

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) March 16, 2022

At the end of last year, Cleese said he was planning on making a formal complaint against the BBC about the “deception, dishonesty and tone” of an interview he did with journalist Karishma Vaswani.

The comedy veteran is set to release a documentary about “cancel culture”, titled John Cleese: Cancel Me, in November 2022.

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