A comedy double act from John Cleese and Justin Welby: the Archbishop Interviews reviewed

I’m listening to John Cleese talking to Justin Welby in the new series of The Archbishop Interviews when the thought occurs to me that he might unwittingly be comparing himself to Christ. The comedian has just been discussing the failure of the literal-minded to comprehend sarcasm and irony, and the inanity of tabloid headlines, when he circles back to the topic of religion. Though not a believer himself, he is troubled by literal-mindedness in the reading of scripture. ‘Christ taught in parables,’ he notes, ‘and parables are not supposed to be taken literally.’

One can almost feel another headline coming on. Cleese has been waging a war against the wokerati for years. In 2020, he opposed UKTV’s decision to stop streaming an episode of Fawlty Towers on the grounds that it contains racism. In 2021 he pulled out of an event at the Cambridge Union after students banned the art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon from returning to the chamber for doing an ill-advised impression of Hitler. These days it seems that Cleese barely has to open his mouth to inspire a pedants’ revolt. Headline or no headline, the octogenarian would surely have fair grounds for considering himself a victim of persecution – and for the avoidance of doubt, I don’t mean that literally.

Welby knows that Cleese has been caught out on controversial terrain, and to his credit, he does not recoil. The way we understand the Bible changes, Welby reflects, and while some quarters may still find it controversial to say so, the first part of the book of Genesis is no longer taken as science. Cleese’s point about the potentially destructive consequences of taking things too literally proves to be well borne out in the worlds of comedy and religion alike.