Graham Norton understands why a certain U.K. comedy legend is having a difficult time adjusting to modern expectations of ethics in comedy. In a wide-ranging sit-down interview with Radio Times posted Wednesday, the late night host and television fixture railed on “Monty Python” icon John Cleese for not getting with the times and deriding so-called “cancel culture.”
“John Cleese has been very public recently about complaining about what you can’t say, and I just think it must be very hard to be a man of a certain age who’s been able to say whatever he liked for years, and now, suddenly, there’s some accountability,” Norton told Mariella Frostrup at the Cheltenham Literature Festival.” It’s free speech but not consequence-free.”
Cleese has been very vocal, particularly in the last year, about his qualms with being held accountable for his words and opinions, telling Fox News this summer that wokeness has had a “disastrous” impact on comedy and that “if you’re worried about offending people and constantly thinking about that, you’re not going to be very creative.”
Cleese now has a series headed to the U.K.’s conservative, anti-cancel culture GB News station in 2023, in which he’s said he’ll be collaborating with satirist Andrew Doyle and encouraging “proper argument.”
“You read a lot of articles in papers by people complaining about ‘cancel culture,’ and you think: In what world are you cancelled?” Norton said of the hot-button phenomenon. “I’m reading your article in a newspaper, or you’re doing interviews about how terrible it is to be cancelled.”
The fix is to change the way we talk about “cancel culture” in the first place, he added.
“I think the word is the wrong word. I think the word should be ‘accountability.’”
Frostrup then asked about the ongoing controversies surrounding J.K. Rowling and her opinions on trans women that are widely regarded as bigoted and transphobic.
“That’s harder to make a point with, isn’t it?” she posed. “When you look at someone expressing what may or may not be popular opinions, but to be deluged with the kind of anger, rage and attempts at censorship seems to me more than just a middle-aged man kind of not being able to say something he used to say.”
Norton answered in the viral clip by essentially explaining why it’s not his place to comment on that – but he offered up a few ideas for who should be.
“I feel weird about this, when I’m asked about, then I become part of this discussion. And all I’m painfully aware of is that my voice adds nothing to that discussion, and I’m sort of embarrassed that I’m somehow drawn into it,” he said. “If people want to shine a light on those issues, and I hope people do, then talk to trans people. Talk to the parents of trans kids. Talk to doctors. Talk to psychiatrists. Talk to someone who can illuminate this in some way.”
Norton continued: “I’m very aware as a bloke of the tele, your voice can be artificially amplified, and once in a blue moon, that can be good. But most of the time, it’s just a distraction and it’s just, it’s for clicks, it’s for whatever … If you want to talk about something, talk about the thing. You don’t need to attach a Kardashian or a whatever to a serious subject. The subject should be enough in itself.”
Watch the full interaction in the video clip above.
