The BBC’s biggest chat show host has had enough of British icons and billionaires who complain about being “canceled.”
Following the news that Monty Python co-founder John Cleese is joining the conservative television station GB News after spending much of his twilight years railing against “cancel culture” and “wokeism,” Graham Norton delivered a dose of cold water to Cleese and the rest of the oppressed British elite in an interview with Times Radio at the Cheltenham Literature Festival this past Wednesday, saying, “In what world are you canceled? I think the word is the wrong word. I think the word should be accountability.”
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The Irish actor, author, comedian, and five-time BAFTA winner addressed Cleese’s complaints about the shifting tides of social awareness, saying, “It must be very hard to be a man of a certain age, who’s been allowed to say what he wants for years, and now suddenly there’s some accountability. It’s free speech, but it’s not consequence-free.”
Naturally, as one can expect of any conversation about deliberately obtuse and obscenely wealthy British media icons, the topic of discussion moved to Harry Potter author and transgender-bathroom-use ‘expert’ J.K. Rowling. Graham Norton provided his own point of view on the complicated issue of transgender rights in the U.K. by deferring to the actual experts, saying, “talk to trans people, talk to the parents of trans kids, talk to doctors, talk to psychiatrists, to someone who can illuminate this in some way. I’m very aware that, as a bloke of the telly, your voice can be artificially amplified, and once in a blue moon, that can be good, but most of the time, it’s just a distraction. It’s for clicks.”