The Daily Beast
Actor and comedian John Cleese decided to upend the first in-person South by Southwest conference in two years by claiming British people deserve reparations for being colonized by Italy and France, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The conversation started with a joke about colonization by Black comedian Dulcé Sloan, to which Cleese, 82, earnestly insisted that the British were also slaves. As the panel, moderated by Portlandia executive producer Dan Pasternack, continued, Cleese began insisting that the British were owed their dues for “being oppressed”—despite the British Empire’s history of colonization. “I want reparations from Italy,” Cleese said. “…