John Cleese Grand Theatre, Leeds 3rd June 2011

Guest rant by Mark Bower…

I have to be honest; I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to make of this show.

Despite being an ardent, lifelong fan of the pythons and pretty much the entire canon of subsequent output from the team that I consider to be the greatest comedy writers and performers of all time without a shadow of a doubt, I’ve been aware over the last decade or so that I was starting to find the once gloriously silly Mr. Cleese somewhat stuffy and, dare I say it, decidedly un-funny in his old age.

Still, let’s not forget that the man is undeniably a bone‐fide comedy legend. The cheese shop; The parrot sketch; The black knight; What have the Romans ever done for us; Basil Fawlty giving his car a ‘damn good thrashing’; Goose stepping around the restaurant impersonating Hitler; The silly Olympics; Upper class twit of the year, The fish slapping dance etc., etc., etc. These are memories that an entire generation grew up with and cherish. Cleese is quite simply a founding father of the British comedic sensibility.

Quintessentially British, eccentric to the point of lunacy, occasionally unfathomable but always, always dazzlingly creative; this is a body of work without parallel which influenced an entire generation of comics, yet to this day, in my opinion, remains without equal.

So yeah, you could say I’m a fan. And on that basis – and that basis alone – I begrudgingly shelled out a rather steep £70 (how do people afford to do this?) for a pair of tickets and dragged my poor girlfriend along on a Friday night to see what the old duffer had to say for himself.

And it was… ok.

The audience consisted of mainly late middle aged or above couples. Clearly fans, they laughed when they were supposed to – perhaps a little too enthusiastically at times given the almost done‐to‐death familiarity of some of the sketches ‐ clapped politely in all the right places, and generally everyone seemed to have a reasonably ok time. Not exactly raising the roof, but entertaining enough to allow the time to whiz by so that the almost two hours (including break) seemed to pass in no time at all.

Having said that, most of the real laughs were reserved for the various clips of classic Python and Fawlty Towers material. Cleese was, well, sort of exactly how you would expect him to be. Standing at the lectern, every bit the schoolmaster, reading his tightly scripted and extremely well written links from the sadly all-too‐obvious autocue; all in all an effective, polished performance, if not a entirely inspiring one.

One thing however remains to be said, relating to the overall experience of the evening and in particular the arrangements at the venue and the attitude of the various members of staff that we ‘encountered’ throughout the evening.

As previously mentioned, this was not a cheap night out. At £70 for two tickets, plus taxis, plus a couple of drinks we are talking well over £100 by the end of the night – essentially to watch one (albeit extremely famous) old geezer show a few old family photos and some TV and movie clips we’d all seen a million times before and probably most of us had copies of on DVD at home.

Which is all fine. That’s what we signed up for, and that’s exactly what we got. Fair enough. I have no complaints about the show itself.

However, what I do object to when spending that kind of money on a ‘fun’ night out is being treated like some kind of degenerate almost from the second we arrived.

Now, just to qualify this a little so that you don’t get the wrong impression and think that I’m some arrogant arsehole who just loves to complain, I’m 40 years old and run a business with almost 30 staff. I also have a 7‐year‐old son and am generally a decent, respectable sort of guy. For work and for leisure I’ve been lucky enough to travel a fair bit and stay in hotels all over the UK and abroad and I’ve experienced my fair share of customer service be it good bad or indifferent. I’m certainly no yob and like to think of myself as a caring, compassionate, modern individual who has respect for my fellow man – in particular when they happen to be employed in relatively poorly paid service jobs.

So, with all of that in mind I’m afraid I have to say that the entire experience at the venue was one of the least satisfactory and downright demeaning examples of the absolute worst of everything that’s putrid and sour and just plain disgustingly non­‐customer centric about good old fashioned, go­‐fuck‐yourself British service – ironically, of exactly the kind being parodied so effectively and brilliantly inside the very building, in the guise of Cleese’s despicable, snotty, aloof, and thoroughly unpleasant Basil Fawlty.

From the dull eyed, zombie bar staff who couldn’t manage to raise a smile as they dismissively refused to accept credit or debit cards but wouldn’t pour a drink for my girlfriend while I nipped across the road to the cash machine, even after we’d queued for ages in the boiling, cramped, hopelessly inefficient excuse for a bar, to the Gestapo foot soldiers on patrol in the halls gleefully chastising those lucky enough to have procured a drink within the allotted 15 minute time challenge for daring to attempt to drink it anywhere where they might be able to find 4 square feet of privacy and a breath of fresh air.

And don’t even attempt to nip outside for a cigarette. The look of disdain on the face of the hallway harridan alone is enough to chill your bones to the marrow. Then there’s the 15 feet of barbed wire fencing, assuming you make it past the Doberman pinchers with elastic bands wound tight around their cocks to make them extra annoyed.

And no. Of course you can’t take your drink outside because (implied by look on face of person we politely asked) you are a fucking infant and you might fall down the steps and kill yourself ‐ or someone else, or you might turn psycho all of a sudden and decide to club the doorman or a random passer‐by or possibly even a baby seal over the head with it.

Look. We live in England, so we’ve all encountered this kind of mindless, over regulated, nanny state bullshit time and time again ‐ and for the most part we just live with it. That’s not the issue here. What’s sad is that we are always hearing that we should support our local venues and get out to see live acts; support the Arts scene and protect the heritage of these beautiful old buildings for the enjoyment of future generations. And I passionately buy all of that. I love the Grand. I love the Arts. And I’d hate to think of all of this being lost so that in the future we are subjected to consuming all of our live entertainment in those god awful, soulless ‘arenas’ that better resemble abandoned PC World megastores than places dedicated to art and culture.

So. Here’s my point.

If I’m going to shell out a not inconsiderable £100 to listen to some old bloke blather on about his divorce settlement on a Friday evening I expect to be able to do so in comfort, with a drink by my side and to be treated with politeness and respect in the process. After all, I’m paying handsomely for the privilege.

Unfortunately, sadly, it looks like the spirit of Basil Fawlty is alive and well at the Grand and I can guarantee from first hand experience that there is nothing whatsoever funny about being on the end of that kind of treatment.

Net result (thanks entirely to the attitude of the staff and the petty rule makers at the Grand as opposed to the quality of the show) £100 down the drain. Wish we’d stayed at home and watched an old Python DVD in the comfort and privacy of our own lounge with a bottle of wine and a perhaps even a cheeky cigarette or two.

Which leads me to ask of the good folks at the Grand, Isn’t it time for something completely different?