Let me say upfront that I’m a longtime fan of John Cleese. His comedic talent is unquestionable. Everything from Fawlty Towers to Monty Python classics are comedic gold. There is nothing to take seriously in any of them and that’s the point. It’s pure entertainment, an escape into silliness and fantasy. The productions just make people laugh.

In 1979, Cleese and the Monty Python troupe starred in “Life of Brian”, a religious farce. There is a famous scene in the movie that deals with a male character who wants to be a woman named Loretta. And he wants to give birth to a child. When the movie was released, it was very controversial and protests broke out against its showing in local movie theatres, especially in the United States.

The scene in question features a male character from the 1979 British comedy telling his associates that he wants to be woman named “Loretta” and demands the right to bear a child. Flabbergasted, Cleese’s character in the film tells the man that the notion is ridiculous, while another male colleague offers that they all merely advocate for his right to childbearing as a symbolic way of standing up to “oppression.”

“I want to be a woman… It’s my right as a man,” the character claims in a scene obviously played for laughs. He adds, “I want to have babies… It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.” After Cleese’s protest, the character snaps, “Don’t you oppress me!”

Remember, it was 1979. Political correctness had not completely crippled American dialogue, or British dialogue, as in this case. It was well before the very small minority of transgender people began to insist that their lifestyle be normalized. This was just a wacky scene in a movie. Who could have forecast that forty years later, men would be demanding the same thing but in a very serious way? Not John Cleese and the Monty Python cast.

Fast forward to 2023. Culture scolds no longer have much of a sense of humor. Everything is way too serious now. An upcoming stage adaption of this classic satire film is being planned and you know what has happened, right? The intolerant progressives on the left are demanding that the ‘Loretta’ scene be taken out of the current adaptation. John Cleese isn’t having it. When a news outlet incorrectly reported that he was going to remove the politically incorrect scene, Cleese spoke up and corrected the record.

A recent example of this misreporting !

A few days ago I spoke to an audience outside London.
I told them I was adapting the Life of Brian so that we could do it as a stage show ( NOT a musical ). I said
that we'd had a table-reading of the latest draft in NYC a year ago…(tbc) https://t.co/VPWJGdUZtJ

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) May 25, 2023

..and that all the actors – several of them Tony winners – had advised me strongly to cut the Loretta scene.

I have, of course, no intention of doing so

So someone in the audience had called a journalist and misreported me. Amazingly none of the British media called to check

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) May 25, 2023

Similarly, there are reports that " Bright Side " is going to be cut

Untrue, for a very good reason

We don't want to upset Eric and it's his only contribution to the Life of Brian script

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) May 25, 2023

Several days ago The Daily Mail reported that the scene from the classic movie”had to come out” of the script for a future adaptation, according to the comedian.

The British outlet cited Cleese’s comments he gave at a recent show noting the controversy of the scene. Describing a recent read-through of “Life of Brian” with several actors, he said, “At the end, I said to the American actors: ‘What do you think?’ And they said: ‘We love the script, but you can’t do that stuff about Loretta nowadays.'”

He added, “So here you have something there’s never been a complaint about in 40 years, that I’ve heard of, and now all of a sudden we can’t do it because it’ll offend people. What is one supposed to make of that?”

Good for him. He was misrepresented and no one bothered to check for validity. How refreshing that the original scenes will remain, controversial or not.

Cleese is no stranger to culture wars. He often speaks up against Woke World and the demands to bend to their agenda. He is developing a reboot of Fawlty Towers with his daughter, Camilla Cleese. It is hard to believe that so few episodes were filmed of the original show – only 12 episodes. Cleese co-created the show with then-wife Connie Booth. They both starred in the show.

It may be a staple of any Christmas season telly schedule, but for anyone who somehow might be unaware of the hallways of Fawlty Towers: the original series revolved around Cleese’s Basil Fawlty, an uptight and rude hotel proprietor, along with his wife Sybil, played by Prunella Scales, their sensible helper Polly, played Booth, and the linguistically-challenged Spanish waiter Manuel, played by Andrew Sachs. Landing on screens just after Cleese wrapped up Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the series that made him and the rest of the troop household names, Fawlty Towers veered away from sketch comedy and made its name as a farcical sitcom classic.

The series ran from 1975 to 1979, spreading just a dozen episodes over four years in classic British fashion, and let’s just say, it grounds itself firmly in the 70s with few jokes getting a pass today. But that’s what the reboot is about. According to early info from the development, the series will “explore how Cleese’s over-the-top, cynical and misanthropic Basil Fawlty navigates the modern world”, with the help of a newly-discovered daughter, played by Camilla. Cleese is one of the most outspoken opponents of ‘cancel culture’ and the ‘mob of wokeism’, going so far as to even have been given a slot on the right-wing news channel GB News for a show with the tagline “So, stay out of touch, with me!”. Considering his overall feelings on getting to grips with modern discourse, there are some assumptions that can be made about just how much good faith Fawlty approaches this education. Just don’t mention the culture war, and all that.

Rob Reiner (I know) is working with Cleese on the reboot. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with the show.