A note from our Editor-in-Chief:
Thank you for subscribing to Zeteo UK. We are still in soft-launch mode until September as we finish recruiting our team, but we will be publishing stories and op-eds on a semi-regular basis between now and then. Please do become a paid subscriber today so you can read and watch all of our Zeteo UK original content without hitting a paywall – and also so you can help fund independent journalism in Britain. – Mehdi Hasan
I can’t say I grew up with ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’, or waited with anticipation for the new episode of ‘Fawlty Towers’. By the time I came to London as a refugee from the Middle East in the 1990s, ‘Monty Python’ and ‘Fawlty Towers’ were being shown only on repeat, but I fell in love with the sharp wit, randomness, absurdity and silliness of the Pythons’ sketches and films, and came to count the feature-length ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’ as one of my all-time favourite films. ‘Fawlty Towers’, arguably the best British sitcom ever made, opened my eyes to a different representation of Britishness. Here, there was no sign of the stiff upper lip, or the reserved, polite attitude I had been taught to expect. The Britain of ‘Fawlty Towers’ was chaotic, rude, self-deprecating and utterly miserable (both Basil and Manuel, in different ways). These significant components of British popular culture were, for me, important resources for settling in, finding some peace and, dare I say, “integrating” in my new environment.
Sadly, John Cleese, Monty Python star and co-creator of ‘Fawlty Towers’, is no longer known simply as the gloriously frustrated duped purchaser of a dead parrot or the symbol of bureaucratic inefficiency in the Ministry of Silly Walks. Today, he has become a controversial figure who is equally well-known for what in my view are clearly racist and Islamophobic remarks, as well as his sympathy with the far right. What the hell happened to him?