John Cleese insults Taylor Swift’s cat, she gives it right back

December 16, 2015 • 2:45 pm

I can’t brain much today, so—moar cats. Here’s a pretty funny exchange between Taylor Swift and John Cleese on the Graham Norton show (BBC America). Both are cat lovers, but differ in what they see as a “proper cat”. Later on, Cleese makes an invidious remark about women, and Taylor responds appropriately. It’s a few funny minutes to end the day.

h/t: Taskin

35 thoughts on “John Cleese insults Taylor Swift’s cat, she gives it right back”

  3. That may be the most egregious example of canned laughter I’ve ever heard. Graham Norton reminded me of the oleaginous broadcast host in The Hunger Games.

      1. He reminds me of Father Noel, the character he plays in Father Ted. When I first saw Father Ted I assumed Norton was acting. Now I’m less sure.

  6. ‘The reason it’s not here tonight, is it didn’t want to come’.

    Looking at the size of Cleese’s kitteh, I thought that an excellent remark.

    cr

  7. Swift certainly has stage awareness. Did you notice her moving away from the person on the (stage) right when he said he didn’t like cats?

    1. Yes, she moves away from him, at about 1:30 in, and sidles over toward Cleese a bit more later. (The bloke on the right is a cricketer, I gather– someone else, perhaps, can ID him.)

      2. Kevin Pietersen. South African chap who played for England. Can’t remember how he qualified. A polarising character in the game but on his day an extremely good batsman.

        And however much Taylor Swift gets grief, she is very experienced at playing to the crowd. You need to be fairly quick of mind to react to situations when singing or playing music live…

        1. I think cricket has a similar rule to many sports that if your a resident in a country for a few years you can declare for that country

  8. Cleese is all-time funny. Fawlty Towers is a favorite of mine. I can’t get enough of him — and he’s an atheist! Now he has a book to sell and some big alimony payments to make.

    2. “… and he’s an atheist!”

      Are you sure about that? Can you provide a clear statement from a reliable source?

      My recollection is that he is one of those people who criticise “organised” religion, but hasn’t given up on the idea of the supernatural entirely.

      Der Spiegel interview, March 2015
      “ SPIEGEL: You have a lot of respect for the Dalai Lama, you even rewrote some Buddhist writings for him. Are you a religious person?

      Cleese: I certainly don’t think much of organized religion. I am not committed to anything except the vague feeling that there is something more going on than the materialist reductionist people think…“

      1. Cleese has also said “I’d encourage people to be open-minded about the afterlife…Human experience is far more complicated than science suggests. The book ‘Irreducible Mind’ by Edward F Kelly is a brilliant look at phenomena that’s almost impossible to account for in physical terms. If we’re open to the idea of an afterlife, maybe we’d start behaving a little better in this life.” (www.readersdigest.co.uk/entertainment/celebrities/john-cleese-if-i-ruled-world)

        I’m not sure if one can be atheist and still believe in an afterlife, so I’d rule Cleese out. It’s shame that a man with such cutting intelligence should still fall for the egoistic premise of the afterlife. It hardly needs saying that people often behave worse on this planet if they think they’re going elsewhere after they die.
        As for the other Pythons, none are religious. Michael Palin has said he’s an agnostic, while Eric Idle calls himself a Buddhist Atheist and says he’s glad there’s no afterlife.
        I’ll close with a classic line from one of Monty Python’s record albums:

        “There’s nothing an agnostic can’t do if he really doesn’t know whether he believes in anything or not.”

        1. OK, maybe he’s a deist. I’ll accept deists into the atheist fold, and I give him props for dissing religion. He’s still funny.

  9. As a fellow Englishman I was embarrassed for John Cleese – we’re big on that. What an arse, automatically reverting to Basil Fawlty.
    I was embarrassed by Taylor Swift’s as well seeing her somewhat over processed appearance. Fortunately her voice speaks for her.

    1. I agree. I don’t think the clip puts either of them in a great light. Cleese is bombastic and Swift’s response was nowhere near as witty as I was expecting after reading Jerry’s post. Her sidling also seemed like a bit of silly stage humor to me. The most amusing thing in the clip is the picture of Cleese’s enormous cat.

      1. I thought the face of shock and horror she pulled looking at his cat was entertaining. Also she deadpans Cleese in a way that doesn’t backfire which is deceptively difficult. I was impressed…she probably doesn’t know who he is.
        I know youtube is full of them, but this clip of monty python is worth watching again. It’s so funny, the faces they pull, the humour…there’s nothing to compare in our time.

        1. ‘she probably doesn’t know who she is’

          I think that’s probably an insult to Taylor Swift _and_ John Cleese.

          I do love John Cleese’s deadpan performance as centurion in that clip you linked. Makes a nice contrast to the corpsing soldiery.

          cr

  11. May I use this post to make a comment to an older post on which comments are switched off? [REST REDACTED BY PSSE ON GROUNDS OF IRRELEVANCY AND IGNORANCE]

    JAC: No, you may not; your post is not only off topic, but you have no idea what you’re talking about, beginning with this:

    But are you aware of the circumstances in which most of the key players have become cynical about natural selection, and furious with the ‘intellectual descendents’ of Darwin the gate-keepers of Neo-Darwinism?

    You’re clearly oblivious about the numerous posts I’ve made evaluating the challenges to modern evolutionary theory, and the way that most of them are vacuous. I suggest you go read Doug Futuyma’s latest textbook on evolution, and then perhaps go over to the Discovery Institute, where ignorance is welcomed.

    Oh, and you should have read the Roolz before posting blather like this:

    Yes epigenetics is shit. But the reason all of this is happening, you are not free from responsibility for. You are the abstract theory community. Nature abhors a vacuum and that is what the failure of abstract theory to emerge at levels of detail, opened up.

    I think you people should stop congratulating yourselves, spend less time blathering about religious folk – which lets face is repetitive and easy – and more time translating Darwinism to the powerful form that it deserves.

    1. Well, I expected this post to be full of incoherence from either the talk show host or a cat…

      Anyway, thanks for the post. If I were John Cleese, I would have asked Mr Cricketeer to keep insulting cats. He was definitely winning in that exchange, though I’m not sure why he kept sidling away from TSwift?

      1. Yes as OT advertisements go, not very effective. No link to the product and no description of what she’s trying to sell (‘pawn off’ may be the better analogy).

      2. My feelings too. I was going to say I couldn’t follow a word of it but I was afraid everybody else might know exactly what the post meant and I’d look dumb.

        I did notice that J Cleese was benefiting considerably from mr cricketer’s cat allergy. Though if the person in the photo (the one on the left) is the current Mrs Cleese and not the alimony collector, he may feel some discretion is advised.

        cr

  12. Oh talk shows are so fake. The best hosts make it seem not so obvious I guess. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which ones are the best hosts lol.

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