John Cleese Denounces the BBC Jan 9, 2026 2:00 pm
By Hugh Fitzgerald
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John Cleese has been following the BBC, as it attempts to ignore or minimize the anti-regime demonstrations in Iran, and he has had quite enough. More on his well-merited fury can be found here: “John Cleese tears into BBC over Iran bias row as actor fumes he’s ‘ashamed’ of broadcaster: ‘It doesn’t want to offend Islamists!,'” by Alex Davies, GB News, January 8, 2026:
John Cleese has joined the growing list of voices expressing their dismay at the BBC over its coverage of the ongoing protests in Iran.
The widespread civil unrest in the Islamic Republic is said to have been sparked by the country’s economic woes, which as seen inflation skyrocket to more than 42 per cent and food prices surge by 72 per cent.
However, hostilities had been threatening to boil over for months prior to the latest protests against the regime’s corruption, civil rights abuses, and critical energy shortages.
Despite the monumental moment in the country’s history, the UK’s national broadcaster has been accused of “ignoring” developments in its coverage, both online and via broadcast.
In one of the most high-profile rows, the Israeli embassy publicly slammed the BBC over its reporting on the Iran protests, with embassy spokesman Alex Gandler claiming the broadcaster has maintained “near-total silence” on the demonstrations while devoting excessive attention to Gaza.
Iranian journalist Mani Barsharzad has added to the criticism, telling GB News that many Iranians perceive the BBC as biased in its coverage of the protests.
“There is a bias there because it doesn’t fit the narrative,” she said. “The narrative, which they want to say is ‘it is their own culture’. ‘If the Islamic Republic is oppressive, it’s because the people want that.’ But this is not the reality.”
Now, Mr Cleese has joined the critics. He took to X, where he reposted criticism of the broadcaster from the likes of Sharron Davies and Jake Wallis Simons, among others taking aim at the Beeb over the supposed lack of coverage from Iran.
Mr Cleese also reacted to a post claiming the BBC was “deliberately ignoring” the protests as it “does not want to offend Islamists in the UK”.
The actor endorsed the suggestion, replying: “This is the best explanation I’ve read so far. Incredible as it seems. I am so ashamed of the BBC.”… 
The BBC apparently had to go back a full ten days to find a broadcast in which it discussed the protests in Iran. Otherwise, the “coverage” of the protests it claimed it had carried daily “across all platforms” had been so slender that very few people, including the estimable John Cleese, appear to have noticed it. Was it perhaps a sentence here, two sentences there, such as “protests continue in Iran,” or “more trouble in Iran as protesters give no signs of stopping” that the BBC now claims constitutes real “coverage” of the upheaval in Iran?
Well, it’s one thing for the BBC to be taken to task by such NGOs as HonestReporting and UN Watch. It’s quite another when this pillar of British entertainment, John Cleese, (Fawlty Towers, Monty Python) with his vast audience and millions of admirers, deplores the BBC’s hardly noticeable coverage of the demonstrations in Iran. And it’s positively damning when he endorses the suggestion on social media that the only explanation for the BBC’s “deliberately ignoring” the protests is that it “does not want to offend Islamists in the UK.” Cleese replied online that “this is the best explanation I’ve read so far. Incredible as it seems. I am so ashamed of the BBC.”
John Cleese is one of the most popular comedic actors in the U.K. When he is outraged, people listen. The BBC had the wind knocked out of its sails by the man from Fawlty Towers. Maybe now it will start to give more attention to the Iranian protests that it has largely been ignoring so as not to offend Islamists in the U.K.. And at the same time, one hopes that the BBC will give less attention — right now it seems to be close to 24/7 nonstop coverage — to that phony morality play about wretched Gazans and ruthless Israelis. |
