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82-year-old British actor and comedian John Cleese was slated to give a talk at Cambridge University on November 12th, but rescinded his plans to visit after another speaker was blacklisted from the institution for performing an impression of Adolf Hitler. Andrew Graham-Dixon, an acclaimed art historian, reportedly assumed a German accent and imitated the dictator […]

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John Cleese slammed “woke rules” while announcing his exit from a scheduled talk at The Cambridge Union Society on Friday, November 13. The “Monty Python” comedy icon pulled out of his Cambridge Union appearance after the free speech society announced earlier this month it was banning art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon from future appearances after he did an impression of Adolf Hitler during a debate held at the Union last week. The debate Graham-Dixon took part in was focused on art and good taste.

In announcing his own exit from an upcoming Cambridge Union talk, Cleese reminded his fans that he also has done Adolf Hitler impersonations in the past. One famous example is on Cleese’s BBC2 sitcom “Fawlty Towers,” where the comedian went as far as reenacting Hitler’s Nazi march. If Cambridge Union was blacklisting someone for a Hitler impersonation, then Cleese wanted to impose a self-made blacklist for the same reason.

British actor John Cleese says he has pulled out of a scheduled talk at Cambridge University over “woke rules” that saw another speaker blacklisted by the organization for doing an impersonation of Hitler.

Last week, Cambridge University paper Varsity reported that Andrew Graham-Dixon, a Union speaker, put on a German accent, impersonated the dictator, and used racial slurs during a meeting that was videoed. Later, Graham-Dixon stated the act was meant to be satirical and was not an endorsement of Hitler or anti-Semitism, claiming he had intended to “underline the utterly evil nature of Hitler and his regime”.

Cleese famously impersonated Hitler while in character as Basil Fawlty in the 1970s sitcom Fawlty Towers.

The actor was due to appear in Cambridge alongside the Channel 4 team behind his upcoming doc series Cancel Me, in which Cleese interviews people who claim to be the victims of ‘cancel culture.’

Today, the...

Celebrated “Monty Python” and “A Fish Called Wanda” actor and writer John Cleese has pulled out of an upcoming talk at the Cambridge Union on Friday, citing concerns over “woke rules” and an Adolf Hitler impersonation he had famously done on the “Fawlty Towers” series decades ago.

Cleese, who is a Cambridge alumnus, was responding to a decision by the Union, which is a debating society, to blacklist art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon. The historian had performed a mock impression of Hitler ranting, during a debate last week on art and good taste at the Union. Subsequently, Union president Keir Bradwell informed members that Graham-Dixon was banned from speaking there.

“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,...

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