John Cleese: London “no longer English”
Posted by admin978 on September 14, 2011 · Leave a Comment
Monty Python and Fawlty Towers star John Cleese says he now feels like a foreigner when in London. Interviewed during his current tour of Australia, the former Liberal Democrat supporter said:
I’m not sure what’s going on in Britain. Or, let me say this – I don’t know what’s going on in London, because London is no longer an English city.
That’s how we got the Olympics. They said we were the most cosmopolitan city on Earth. But it doesn’t feel English.
I had a Californian friend come over two months ago, walk down the King’s Road and say, “Where are all the English people?”
I mean, I love having different cultures around. But when the parent culture kind of dissipates, you’re left thinking, “Well, what’s going on?”
Cleese’s comments provoked a furious liberal counter-attack, but he insists that he prefers living in the more English atmosphere of Bath, where he has bought a house thirty miles from his birthplace Weston-super-Mare.
It feels more like the England I grew up in.
Among those who will now be joining Cleese in wondering what’s going on in what used to be England are the family of Mr Harjinder Singh Burdi, who was stabbed to death in Ilford, East London, this week by a black “carjacker” who wanted to steal his Mercedes.
Few Londoners will have been surprised by the description of the killer:
The suspect is described as black, 6ft 2ins tall and slim. He was wearing a grey beanie hat, a grey hoodie and a dark-coloured bandana, and spoke with a London accent.
Nor will they be surprised that the London Evening Standard and several other newspapers chose to censor this description, including the grey hoodie but deleting the suspect’s race!
As Basil Fawlty himself might have said: “Don’t mention the blacks!”
