JOHN Cleese said his new GB News show is aimed at “dinosaurs who are out of touch”.
The comic legend’s programme, the Dinosaur Hour, kicks off on October 29 and will see him interview a string of top names.
Those taking part will include Stephen Fry, Trevor McDonald and Sir Tim Rice.
Speaking about the new show in an interview on GB News, Cleese, 83, said: “There are some amazing guests including Stephen Fry, Trevor McDonald, Tim Rice.
“It also has a lot of very good guests who aren’t celebrities. Yes, you’ve got to have a certain number of celebrities to get people to turn on but then you can interview people who are really interesting. And a lot of celebrities aren’t interesting at all.
“The show is for all those who are out of touch; all the dinosaurs who are out of touch. You can be out of touch for two reasons. You can be voluntarily out of touch because you’ve given up, which is a very sensible point of view.
“Or you could be out of touch without knowing it but it’s for those sorts of people.”
The new programme will be set in a castle and Cleese was given full creative freedom to make the show he wanted.
He said: “It was extraordinary. With the setting, I wanted to make it look like a very, very strange gentleman’s club a little bit like the bar in Star Wars.
“Because it seems to me that television falls for cliches so easily. You look at every news show now.
“What happens is you get this very elaborate animatronic then everyone’s sitting at a desk, which is pretty much the same on any show that you’re looking at.
“I just wanted to create something different because I thought that would start people out by saying, ‘what’s this about?’”
Revealing how he almost ended up making a new series with Netflix he continued: “Early on, I went to Netflix and I gave them six ideas and I thought two were really good and they never even called my agent back. And you kind of think, ‘What are you looking for?’
“I’ve no idea what they are looking for. The main thing, as you get older, is you realize that very few people have any idea what they’re doing. It’s true.
“When you get older it takes you some time to realise that most people don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Meanwhile, Fawlty Towers legend Cleese also offered some advice to aspiring young comics, including quipping that he’d wipe out the BBC.
He joked: “I would say murder everyone at the BBC and start again with people who understand a little bit about creativity because otherwise it’s all done by committee.
“Because people at the BBC, they only have one thought when they go into work in the morning. One thought which is ‘today, I must not get fired’.
“They come out of it at the end of the day, they’ve still got a job. They’ve had a good day. They shouldn’t be in the business of making the best possible programs for the British public.”
