the times | Thursday November 11 2021 2GM 3
News
A judge has attacked both dog owners’
and cyclists’ “sense of entitlement” in
ruling that a banker can challenge an
award of up to £50,000 after her pet
allegedly knocked a publisher off his
bicycle and caused him brain damage.
Granting an application from Carina
Read to appeal against the damages
ruling made last year, Judge Alan Sag-
gerson said that each had a “sense of
entitlement ... to do exactly what they
want to do”.
The dispute centres on David Crane,
a 71-year-old publishing executive, who
sued Read, a 49-year-old banker, over a
In the era of “cancel culture”, some
comedians fear that an old gag may be
seized upon by offence-taking mobs
seeking to shut them down.
So perhaps it is no surprise that John
Cleese has chosen to blacklist himself
from his old university “before some-
one else does” over an impersonation
he did of Hitler more than 40 years ago.
Cleese, 82, announced yesterday that
he had pulled out of a talk at Cambridge
University after the union’s president
banned another speaker for imitating
the Nazi leader.
“I was looking forward to talking to
students at the Cambridge Union this
Friday, but I hear that someone there
has been blacklisted for doing an im-
personation of Hitler,” Cleese wrote on
Twitter. “I regret that I did the same on
a Monty Python show, so I am blacklist-
ing myself before someone else does.”
Keir Bradwell, the union president,
had emailed members to tell them that
the art historian Andrew Graham-
Dixon would not be invited back to the
society after a debate a week ago in
which he performed a mock-Hitlerian
rant he said was intended to underline
“the utterly evil nature of the Nazis”.
Bradwell announced the decision
well said it was a “huge shame” that
Cleese felt he could no longer attend
the event, but that his “blacklist” was
merely a recommendation to future
presidents. “It would have been a really
fantastic event and our members are
really excited to hear from him, the
documentary he is making is extremely
topical,” he said.
Bradwell clarified that the “blacklist”
was a list of speakers who were recom-
mended not to be invited back to future
events, but that these were not binding.
Graham-Dixon did the impression of
Hitler during a debate on the motion:
“This House believes there is no such
thing as good taste.” Bradwell said the
remarks made by Graham-Dixon were
“grotesque” but that his conduct during
the event was the main reason for him
not being invited back.
“As president of the Cambridge
Union, I receive recommendations
from my predecessors about who we
think is and isn’t worth making the
effort to invite back, based on how they
behaved while a guest of our society,”
he said.
“When I leave office, I will pass on
recommendations of my own. And
when I do, Andrew Graham-Dixon will
be someone I suggest future presidents
leave be: he spoke over another of ourYou started it!
Hitler parody
leads Cleese to
cancel himself
Tom Ball after he was criticised by some students
for applauding Graham-Dixon’s speech
at the event, where he joked that it was
the “longest Hitler impression” the
chamber had ever heard.
Cleese appeared to criticise the
union’s handling of the furore, writing
on Twitter: “I apologise to anyone at
Cambridge who was hoping to talk with
me, but perhaps some of you can find a
venue where woke rules do not apply.”
More than 400 people had registered
interest in the talk, which was due to be
filmed for the comedian’s forthcoming
Channel 4 series John Cleese: Cancel
Me, which will explore “why a new
‘woke’ generation is trying to rewrite
the rules on what can and can’t be said”.
Cleese railed against “cancel culture”
when UKTV removed from its stream-
ing service a 1975 episode of Fawlty
Towers entitled The Germans, in which
Basil Fawlty goose-steps around shout-
ing: “Don’t mention the war.”
He also played Hitler in a Monty Py-
thon sketch called Mr Hitler and the
North Minehead by-election which was
broadcast in 1970. Dressed in Nazi rega-
lia, Cleese rides a bicycle through the
streets shouting German through a
megaphone in an apparent attempt to
persuade people to vote for him.
In a statement issued last night Brad-
John Cleese mocked the Nazis as a goose-stepping Basil Fawlty in 1975, and with Michael Palin in in Monty Python, leftJoking apart
Dave Chappelle The stand-up comic
has courted controversy with his
latest Netflix show, The Closer, in
which he asserted “gender is a fact”.
Transgender activists have called for
it to be removed from the streaming
site. Chappelle has remained bullish,
saying: “If this is what being
cancelled is like, I love it.”Graham Linehan The co-creator of
the Channel 4 series Father Ted was
permanently suspended from
Twitter last year after allegedly
making multiple transphobic
comments on the platform. An
invitation to speak at the Oxford
Union was also later rescinded.Billy Connolly Having cut his teeth
on the Glasgow comedy circuit of
the 1970s, he said that he would not
make it in showbiz were he starting
out today. “Because of political
correctness people have pulled in
their horns but I don’t know how I
feel about that,” he said. “I couldn’t
have started today with the talent I
had then, certainly not.”speakers, insulted a student, and de-
railed our debate.”
Responding to his ban, Graham-Dix-
on said: “I apologise sincerely to anyone
who found my debating tactics and use
of Hitler’s own language distressing; on
reflection I can see that some of the
words I used, even in quotation, are
inherently offensive. It was not my
intention to upset anybody, merely to
persuade them that bad taste and bad
morality often go hand in hand. MrBradwell’s implication that I am racist
and antisemitic by placing me on his list
is utterly rejected, and in the context
surprising. The speech I gave was a
strident attack on Hitler’s racism and
antisemitism.”
In a letter published in The Times on
Tuesday, Louis de Bernières, the author
of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, demand-
ed to be included on the debating
society’s list of banned speakers in
support of Graham-Dixon.Graham-Dixon’s
impression of
Hitler was done
during a debateJudge attacks ‘sense of entitlement’ of dog owners and cyclists
brain haemorrhage that he suffered
after falling off his bicycle. He claimed
to have been forced to brake hard to
avoid Read’s cocker spaniel, Felix, on
Acton Green Common in west London
in 2016.
Crane demanded up to £50,000 in
compensation after his lawyers told a
court hearing that the dog owner was
negligent in failing properly to control
the animal. Reid denied blame and in-
sisted in court that the accident was a
“freak occurrence”.
At the first hearing, Judge Patrick
Andrews ruled that Read was negligent
and that she had failed to call Felix
back as the dog ran towards the pathand the oncoming cyclist. Now Judge
Saggerson, also sitting at Central
London county court, has granted the
banker permission to appeal. However,
in granting the application, the judge
said that “we all know that cyclists,
whether on path, road or common,
have a sense of absolute entitlement to
do whatever they want to do and we all
know that dog owners also have a
similar sense of entitlement to do ex-
actly what they want to do irrespective
of anybody else. It’s quite a conun-
drum.”
At the original hearing, Crane’s bar-
rister, Helen Pooley, said that the pub-
lishing executive sustained a “not insig-nificant brain injury” that affected his
hearing, memory, concentration and
ability to drive. She added that since the
incident, Crane was also plagued by
headaches that impaired his sense of
taste and smell.
During the dispute, Crane has de-
scribed himself as “100 per cent a dog
lover”. He said outside court after the
latest hearing that he had started walk-
ing his friends’ dogs for exercise as he
could no longer ride his bike.
According to written submissions to
the court, Crane’s claim was for up to
£50,000 compensation, although the
exact amount he is due if he wins has
not yet been decided.Jonathan Ames Legal Editor
Carina Read’s
cocker spaniel
was said to have
knocked David
Crane off his bike,
causing him to
suffer a brain
haemorrhage