John Cleese and Eric Idle are continuing to duke it out on social media.
The Monty Python legends exchanged barbs earlier this year, locking horns over their estrangement after Idle complained that he still had to work because Python’s earnings had dried up.
Idle blamed the mismanagement of the Python brand on Terry Gilliam and his daughter, Holly. The latter runs HDG Projects, which manages Python and helped stage Monty Python Live (mostly) – One Down Five to Go, the group’s 2014 reunion shows at the O2 in London.
Now, in a fresh post on X (once Twitter), Idle has accused Cleese of firing former manager Jim Beach and installing Holly. He said this was the reason their relationship was “over.”
Cleese fired back on the same platform, accusing Idle of “invention.” He added: “Jim, who was an old friend of mine from Cambridge days, became Python manager after the O2 show. About four years ago he suffered a bad stroke and subsequently resigned as our manager. His number 2, Holly Gilliam, automatically took over as Python manager.”
The thing that stands out the most to me is when he said that London was no longer an English city. What he meant by that is that it was no longer a mostly white city.
That was a little ambiguous, because he said that after London was the major city that voted against Brexit, he was saying it was more foreign (European) than English. Schroedinger’s asshole type of comment.
Also he said that because he was pro Brexit (which is already not good), so it might not have been about skin color at all, just international European culture.
He did get caught in the Rowling shitshow, early on when he started saying “I just hope (trans people) are treated kindly” but slowly admitted that he only had surface knowledge and let it slip that he thought the whole trans thing was an act or a choice. I don’t think he was malicious or aggressive about it, but he was called out on propagating transphobic messages.
And he spoke up against cancel culture.
It’s possible that he doesn’t understand that even if he doesn’t mean bad things, he’s letting bad propaganda slip out and repeating a language that hurts easily targeted people without understanding the scope. But he doesn’t seem very willing to learn quickly about it.
I haven’t heard anything recent if he changed his mind or double down about any of this.