John Cleese has urged the “mainstream press” to “check out” the allegations of innappropriate behavior against Dan Wootton, his future GB News colleague.
In a tweet yesterday, the Fawlty Towers creator said the media’s failure to investigate the story will be “final proof of their complete corruption.” Cleese will soon start hosting a GB News show, which he has previously joked will be for the “much neglected demographic” of viewers “who are completely out of touch.”
“If they [the mainstream press] give this the ‘Boris’s phone’ treatment, it is final proof of their complete corruption,” added Cleese on Twitter, as he retweeted an account promoting the investigation into Wootton.
In an article in The Byline Times earlier this week, Wootton, who hosts GB News’ Dan Wootton Tonight and writes a column for the MailOnline, was accused of posing as a fictitious showbiz agent called Martin Branning and offering thousands of pounds to people including former colleagues in exchange for sexual images and videos. More Byline Times revelations are expected in articles coming out today and later this week.
The allegations also emerged on Twitter via Wootton’s ex-boyfriend Alex Truby, who alleged he made the discovery after accessing Wootton’s hard drive in 2013 and seeing emails mentioning the pseudonym. According to The Guardian, the publishers behind the Sun and MailOnline are now looking into allegations that Wootton inappropriately offered colleagues tens of thousands of pounds in return for sexual material. Both told The Guardian they are investigating.
Wootton, who broke the story on Meghan Markle moving to the U.S. with Prince Harry and has subsequently written extensively about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, hit back last night as he returned to his GB News show – one of the right-leaning network’s most popular – following a vacation.
In a six-minute video at the start of his show, Wootton accepted he had made “errors of judgement in the past” but extensively criticized the role of social media in the discussion. “There are dark forces out to try and take this brilliant channel down,” he added. Watch the full video below.
Cleese has made a name for himself as something of an anti-woke campaigner in recent years and he has been heavily critical of the BBC in particular. Along with his upcoming GB News show, the actor and comic is rebooting Fawlty Towers with daughter Camilla Cleese and Rob Reiner’s Castle Rock Entertainment after more than four decades, and he has already said the show will not be on the BBC.
