Some thoughts about this John Cleese moment

‪When I started out in comedy, there wasn’t much room for me or my style. Was turned away from a lot of things because I didn’t look like what they wanted. I repeatedly used to tell myself “be better”, “be undeniable”.

I refused to see it as being about my qualities (even though it probably was) and made it a spur to work on the work’s quality. That was me starting out. Tonight I’m doing the MICF opening night gala. Whether it’s my improvement or the industry’s, or both, I don’t know. ‬I’ve definitely gotten better. Undeniable, probably not, but it feels like people are trying less hard to deny, as well.

You can’t make it happen by wanting it, but if you want it enough, you can sometimes do the things you need to do to make it happen.

‪When I first first started wanting to do comedy it was because of having loved things like Monty Python and the goon show. Pink panther, Marx Bros, all that. I never thought I couldn’t be like them because of how they looked. I didn’t think of myself as being a different shape to them in the world. In my head, the challenge of being like them was just a matter of quality; of how close I could get to getting that good.

‪I was a tomboy and a kid when I fixated on those shows, so I didn’t make the connection between me and the big-bosomed topless women that were used as props and trophies in shows like Monty Python. That was a lucky piece of stupidity, because it meant that it wasn’t til I was well grown and started coming up against me-shaped filtration systems that I realised the shape of my gender had anything to do with “place in the comedy industry” at all. By which time I had already set my heart on it, and it became fuel for the fire rather than water. ‬

I feel like this tweet by Cleese is more likely an expression of frustration at having his ideas bounced than an expression of sexism. I hope so. His daughter is a very funny standup with plenty of body-based clever jokes. We’re all entitled shits when we get our ideas rejected.

I used to say “I wish I could have the career of Stephen Fry, or John Cleese because they get to do the projects that they want, however silly, funny, risky, different from what they did before. Nobody would say no to them”. I guess that was another failure of imagination on my part. It was nice to think there would be a point you could reach in this industry where you don’t have to throw a million ideas at the wall in the hope one might stick. Alas, that seems not to be true.

I hope he gets his special up somewhere. I imagine it will be good. If he wants it enough I’m sure he’ll make it happen.