John Cleese has pulled out a talk he was going to give at Cambridge University after the Student Union's president banned another speaker who impersonated Hitler.
Keir Bradwell announced that Andrew Graham-Dixon, an art historian, had been banned from speaking at the society after a debate about good taste last week in which he caricatured Hitler.
According to The Independent he said in a separate letter published on Facebook that Graham-Dixon offended members when he made “deplorable remarks” and “thoughtless and grotesque language”.
Graham-Dixon responded saying that it wasn't his intention to upset the audience, but to briefly paraphrase Hitler's "crass and insensitive statements about art and race”.
I was looking forward to talking to students at the Cambridge Union this Friday, but I hear that someone there has been blacklisted for doing an
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) November 10, 2021
impersonation of Hitler
I regret that I did the same on a Monty Python show, so I am blacklisting myself before someone else does
In response to this Cleese tweeted out that he would no longer be giving a talk.
He wrote: "I was looking forward to talking to students at the Cambridge Union this Friday, but I hear that someone there has been blacklisted for doing an impersonation of Hitler.
"I regret that I did the same on a Monty Python show, so I am blacklisting myself before someone else does."
In a follow-up to that he posted: "I apologise to anyone at Cambridge who was hoping to talk with me, but perhaps some of you can find a venue where woke rules do not apply."
Cleese, 82, has impersonated the Nazi leader in both Fawlty Towers and in a sketch in Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
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