Now John Cleese Is Pretending Not to Know Who Michael Palin Is

In what has become the Drake-Kendrick feud for the AARP crowd, John Cleese just keeps beefing with his old Monty Python pals. Even after the dust seemingly settled on his social media spat with Eric Idle, Cleese recently took a random shot at Michael Palin for being “boring” — big talk from the co-star of George of the Jungle 2 and Beethoven’s Christmas Adventure. 

Palin fired back at his old A Fish Called Wanda co-star, pointing out that his so-called “boring” qualities are what made Cleese’s over-the-top characters funny. “You had to have someone selling the parrot, or someone in the argument sketch to play off,” Palin argued.  

Because these legendary comedians keep talking to journalists instead of, say, some sort of group therapist, Cleese recently sat down for an interview with BBC Radio 2 presenter Romesh Ranganathan, and once again found a way to dunk on his colleague. During the chat, co-host Sally Boazman admitted that she had been slightly offended by Cleese, after the Fawlty Towers star introduced himself by saying, “Nice to meet you, you look very silly.” Cleese defended himself by pointing out that she was wearing a “multicolored, beautiful dress.”

Boazman countered that calling someone “silly” wasn’t exactly the nicest thing to say, but Cleese suggested that it’s actually “the highest compliment." And to be fair, he does seem like one of the few people for whom that might be true.

After listening to Cleese and Boazman go back-and-forth, Ranganathan couldn’t help but interject, quipping, “Michael Palin said the same thing John.” Cleese then  responded: “Michael who?” and quickly added, “Oh, Pah-lin,” purposely mispronouncing his old friend’s name. 

As we’ve mentioned before, these two have a long history of pulling each other’s legs. This isn’t even the first time that Cleese has playfully thrown shade at Palin by butchering his last name.

The big difference here is that Palin seemingly took umbrage with Cleese’s previous public barb, making this one even more unnecessary. And the recent history of Python in-fighting has brought a new scrutiny to all their interviews. Even just a year ago, nobody would have cared if Cleese had pretended to forget Palin’s name in an interview, but in this highly acrimonious climate, now it’s headline-worthy news.  

During the BBC 2 chat, Cleese also claimed that he looks much younger “than the rest of the Pythons" even though they’re "much younger than me," which is certainly debatable since they all look pretty old. Also, while Cleese is 84, Michael Palin and Eric Idle are 81, and Terry Gilliam is 83, so it’s not exactly a huge age differential we’re talking about here.

Incidentally, Cleese owes his youthful appearance to healthy eating and exercise a £17,000 a year stem-cell treatment that he’s been getting every year for the past two decades. Amazingly none of that info came up during his recent/not-so-recent comedy roast.

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