John Cleese has announced he is joining GB News to present his own new show.
The Fawlty Towers star will work with fellow comedian and satirist Andrew Doyle on the show, which he says will encourage “proper argument”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme on Monday, John said: “The nice thing about talking to the GB News audience is that they may not be used to hearing the sort of things I’ll be saying.”
He admitted he previously had little knowledge of the station, which initially had a rocky time after its launch in June 2021.
“I was approached and I didn’t know who they were,” John said. “I don’t know much about modern television because I’ve pretty much given up on it – English television.”
He added: “Then I met one or two of the people concerned and had a dinner with them and I liked them very much.
“And what they said was, ‘people say it’s a right-wing channel [but] it’s a free speech channel’.”
John said he would discuss so-called cancel culture and “woke” politics on his show.
“The BBC have not come to me and said, ‘Would you like to have some one-hour shows?’ and if they did, I would say, ‘Not on your nelly!’ I wouldn’t get five minutes into the first show before I’d been cancelled or censored,” he added to BBC Radio 4.
GB News currently has a roster of presenters including Eamonn Holmes, Alistair Stewart, Anne Diamond and Nigel Farage.
John’s new show is set to launch on GB News in the New Year.