Thread by @steveparks

Next up it’s @JohnCleese being interviewed by @peterjukes about why he’s decided to leave the country, the state of the Press, and “I was a national institution until last Friday and apparently I’m now a legend”...
#BylineFest

@JohnCleese @peterjukes Cleese starts talking about his daughter, when his phone rings and it’s her... he takes it for a laugh... she invites him to go with her tomorrow to the Fawlty Towers dining experience as a joke, and he agrees... (!)
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@JohnCleese @peterjukes ... he gets back to the subject of how he came to live in the US first time he left the Uk, was to be close to his daughter there who had addiction issues. The added benefit was he was only a medium celebrity there, so was ignored by Press...
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@JohnCleese @peterjukes ... Cleese says British Press has become far worse over years. It used to be they’d do an interview, interested in what you had to say. Now the editor has given them an ‘angle’ and they have to just get quotes to go with that, and don’t care about anything else...
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@JohnCleese @peterjukes …now so much of any paper is a reflection of the personality cult of the editor, particularly ‘that lunatic Dacre’. Cleese has heard from people work with Dacre who talk about his alarming and unstable behaviour - but that never gets reported of course…

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@JohnCleese @peterjukes …he says used to be frightened of the power of Press, but actually Twitter helps because now he answers back, so when Piers Morgan says “when are you going to be funny Cleese it’s been a long time”, he could reply “when are you going to be talented Piers, it’s been a lifetime”

@JohnCleese @peterjukes …Cleese talks about filming recently with Minnie Driver. she was called by paper on Friday saying they were going to publish ‘compromising photos’ of her with an ex. She had been called recently by an ex wanting to have lunch and talk, maybe he’d agreed to help paper(?)…

@JohnCleese @peterjukes …Driver couldn’t imagine what the photos might be, they’d just had lunch… it wrecked her life for a few days, but then turned out to just be a few bad photos that had been cropped to suggest they’d been closer than the original photos show. Etc…
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@JohnCleese @peterjukes …Cleese is angry that the press can have that power to ruin her life over nothing.
Peter says a friend of his had a similar experience, a tabloid had photoshopped out his wedding ring to make it look like he’d taken it off when meeting a female friend…

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@JohnCleese @peterjukes … Cleese said he started off being a Conservative because his parents were, bit by time he got to Cambridge he realised he was more aligned with the Labour Party, then filled with solid intellectuals. Then he supported thatcher as he felt power with Unions needed rebalancing…

@JohnCleese @peterjukes …but then Thatcher went way too far… he ended up with the Lib Dems, in a large part because he believes Proportional Representation - “vital because it keeps extremists in the margins”, but the right wing Press is against it.

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@JohnCleese @peterjukes “Rupert Murdoch is fundamentally the most evil man on the planet” Cleese says. And a key part of him moving abroad is to be where Murdoch doesn’t have power or influence.
He says it was demeaning that the first thing Blair did on being elected was meeting Murdoch…
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@JohnCleese @peterjukes Peter says John also does a show called “there is no hope” and asks if that’s true?
Yes, Cleese, says - he doesn’t mean just here and now, he means ever. We keep thinking there was some rosy time in the past we can go back to, but when? Boer war, World Wars, vietnam?
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Cleese worked with a psychologist called David Dunning who looked into people’s ability to assess their own skill and knowledge. Found you need to be expert to know you’re expert. If you’re no good you have absolutely no ability to understand you’re no good…

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…however he found that people who were no good had a much higher self esteem.
And this, Cleese says, is the situation we find ourselves in with current politics.
Trump is the embodiment of self esteem over ability…

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…he says Ivanka marrying Trump is proof that there are some jobs that only an immigrant will do.
He talks about how Trump has made comedians life impossible - meeting Kim Kardashian to talk about prison reform - how do you get ahead of that?
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Cleese is asked if he could change one thing about the UK what would it be… he refers to psychological studies into confirmatory bias… and the awful thing about Brexit was the nature of the debate - such fixes points of view…
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…and the trouble with the British press is they are all so pompously and indignantly self-righteous, while at the same time not being very clever.
He reads the press while abroad, eg New York Times, and realises just how bad British press is in comparison…

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…Cleese rounds off by saying things do seem hopeless, but have always been that way. Those in power are there because they want power, and will do what it takes to keep power, not to do good things….

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…”so all we can do is find ways to have contentment in our own lives and ways to look after those around us.”

He says “I’ve talked about doom and gloom, but let me end with something to give you hope….

…

…

…Nope, can’t think of anything.”

@JohnCleese at #BylineFest

Here’s a thread of my live-tweets of the smart and funny @JohnCleese on stage at @BylineFest …

(Now he’s left the stage a woman has come to join her husband who watched the talk in the row behind me and asked “so is he still funny?”
“Yes,” he said, “he is.” 😂)

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https://twitter.com/steveparks/status/1032998851374968833