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John Cleese has weighed in on a row between Piers Morgan and Hugh Grant over Rupert Murdoch, with the Fawlty Towers star calling Morgan “lazy” and “sloppy”.
Grant and Morgan have been engaged in a spat on X this week after the government ruled out a reopening of the Leveson Inquiry, which Grant has been leading calls for.
Defence secretary John Healey insisted that there will be no new inquiry or restrictions into the activities of the media in the UK despite The Sun paying damages to Prince Harry this week.
In response to the government’s decision, Grant had told Radio 4’s Today: “I have some sympathy, when I’m in a generous mood, for politicians terrified of the Murdochs.”
Murdoch owns News Group Newspapers (NGN), owner of The Sun and the now defunct News of the World.
Morgan then took to X to call Grant a “hypocrite”, claiming the actor had taken “many millions of pounds” from Murdoch to make films for him.
Grant fired back 15 minutes later: “Bulls***. The last time I worked for a Murdoch-owned company was in 1994. Which was long before I knew anything about his papers’ methods.
“Since then I have turned down every single job offer emanating from a Murdoch-owned company.”
Hours later, Morgan replied: “UPDATE: Your movie Florence Foster Jenkins was distributed by Murdoch-owned (at the time) 20th Century Fox in the UK. #HypocriteANDliar.”
Grant retaliated with: “That film was made for the BBC and Pathé. My contract was with them.
“I have no control over which local distributor is subsequently used in various countries. Fox was just local distributor for the UK. Keep up.”
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On Saturday morning (25 January), Cleese, 85, weighed in, writing on X that the argument “clearly illustrates the difference between a well-educated mind and a lazy, sloppy tabloid one”.
He added: “NB: the man who is defending Murdoch has taken millions from him. Hugh and I choose not to work for him.”
It was announced earlier this month that Morgan, former editor of the News of the World, is leaving Murdoch-owned News UK to focus on expanding his YouTube channel.
Morgan’s Uncensored programme has found some success since the broadcaster first established it on TalkTV in 2022, with the channel now boasting around 3.6 million subscribers.
In a new deal with News UK, Morgan will take ownership of the Uncensored brand through his production company, Wake Up Productions.
Both Cleese and Grant are involved with Hacked Off, a group that campaigns for a “free and accountable press” and was set up in response to the phone hacking scandal.
NGN denies that phone hacking took place at The Sun, the company’s flagship newspaper, or that its journalists there were involved in criminality.
