John Cleese’ Letter To America | Monty Python & Fawlty Towers Star Claims USA Back For Britain
This is a letter I found while surfing around the Interweb a while back. It’s a letter that Monty Python and Fawlty Towers star John Cleese jokingly wrote to the citizens of America, in which he claims the United States back for us Brits.
It’s a brilliantly witty piece of satirical comedy from the master of the surreal, with references to your great leader as well as ours.
NB: I changed the name of the Prime Minister from Blair to Brown to keep it current. Have a read, have a laugh, if you’re British and a bit stupid be aware that this isn’t real, and if you’re American and have no sense of humour, well, screw you!
To the citizens of the United States of America
In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.
Her Sovereign Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).
Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:..
1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up “aluminium,” and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
2. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour’, ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix “ize” will be replaced by the suffix “ise.”
3. You will learn that the suffix ‘burgh’ is pronounced ‘burra’; you may elect to respell Pittsburgh as ‘Pittsberg’ if you find you simply can’t cope with correct pronunciation.
4. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up “vocabulary”). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.
5.There is no such thing as “US English.” We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of “-ize.”
6. You will relearn your original national anthem, “God Save The Queen”, but only after fully carrying out Task #1 (see above).
7. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but to be celebrated only in England. It will be called “Come-Uppance Day.”
8. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.
9. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
10. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.
11. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric immediately and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
12. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling “gasoline”) -roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.
13. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called “crisps.” Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with mayonnaise but with vinegar.
14. Waiters and waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.
15. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as “beer,” and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as “Lager.” American brands will be referred to as “Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine,” so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
16. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” was an experience akin to having one’s ears removed with a cheese grater.
17. You will cease playing American “football.” There is only one kind of proper football; you call it “soccer”. Those of you brave enough will, in time, will be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American “football”, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).
18. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the “World Series” for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.
19. You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad.
20. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due backdated to 1776.
Thank you for your co-operation.
John Cleese
There’s so many things there that I agree with it isn’t even funny, well it is, but you know what I mean. Of course, as you are reading Pop Buzz UK, which is rapidly approaching its first birthday, you probably already love everything British and are getting used to the U’s being in every word which you ripped out of the language years ago.
And don’t even get me started on the petrol prices, which have gone up yet again this week here in good ol’ (but expensive) Blighty.
EDIT: Since first publishing this I’ve been told by numerous people that this letter wasn’t actually written by John Cleese. Thanks to all of you who directed me to the Snopes Entry on it. Regardless of its author though, it’s still very funny and some of the points raised are accurate and insightful… so stop the whinging!
John Cleese, UK, USA, Britain, America, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Comedy, Satire
October 4th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Baseball is played in Canada, therefore it is the world series of teams in the MLB.
October 4th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
I protest. We here in America use catsup, (pronounced properly just as it appears) not mayonnaise on our french fries. The French do that, and we all know how the French are.
By the way, except for a few backward fry producers, we’ve dropped “French” and just call them fries seeing that the French objected so strenuously to the term. Apparently we were insulting their culinary expertise by calling them french fries, especially since we do not have the good sense to capitalize the “F” in french.
Thick cut fries are properly called steak fries, which we consume with massive slabs of under cooked beef. Yummy.
Oh, and we have laws about the use of trans fats here, so the lard will have to go. You can’t disband all the government, it being so entrenched in the everyday workings of this county, sorry, British Crown Dependancy and I tell you the Food and Drug Administration is not to be crossed.
We don’t really care if you take over, You can’t muck it up any worse than the current administration. However, we suspect you want to take us over again because you like America television better than the BBC. In that case, you will only get what you deserve.
October 4th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
I love Steak Fries (and therefore your version of fries). There’s a restaurant here where you can get milk shakes and bottemless Steak fries. BOTTOMLESS. God bless America. Of course you’re full from your first go around, but I love having the option of ordering more for free if I want them.
October 5th, 2007 at 2:02 am
You do know, don’t you, that John Cleese had nothing to do with this letter? It has been making the rounds on the Internet for years.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/revocation.asp
October 5th, 2007 at 2:14 am
A-loom-i-numb. That’s how it’s pronounced
As a Canadian, I’m all for the ‘U’ spellings being brought back though.
I”m not sure what this ‘burra’ crap is, but what the hell?
You guys don’t really like the queen all that much anyway!
Better gun control would be a plus (or not, 15,000 dead Americans a year…
Obviously the Brits haven’t ever tasted Canadian beers as they wouldn’t be all up about their ‘bitters’
Baseball can die, there’s nothing wrong with American football (well, maybe there is, but at least hooligans don’t claim 500,000 deaths every week.)
October 5th, 2007 at 2:56 am
Baseball is not really played outside the United Sates as Toronto is well known to be America Junior. Also the Championshipo series is properly called the World’s Series as it was created by the New York World Newspaper many years ago.
October 5th, 2007 at 3:07 am
I’m all for bringing the letter U back, and the metric system. Then again I’m Canadian and not American so those things are normal to me and I can’t see why they aren’t used in the first place.
October 5th, 2007 at 7:56 am
It’s Al - you - min - i - um
not Al - you - min - um
October 5th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
This is false, John Cleese never wrote nor said that.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/revocation.asp
October 5th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
this is one from the archives isn’t it… its as old as the internet!!
October 5th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
[...] People in England are smart. You can tell by the accent. [...]
October 5th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
im american.
and this is funny.
October 5th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
[...] P over at Pop Buzz UK is our resident expert on all things British. Sorry about that whole Tea Party thing, [...]
October 7th, 2007 at 3:56 am
I accept!
Actually, if Russian President Putin wanted to take over for W, I would accept that, as well. I think Putin has a better human rights record than Bush. I KNOW the Queen does.
October 7th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
[...] piece of literature, demanding the United States to give back their independence to Her Majesty. I found it through StumbleUpon over here. I almost wish it were for real. To the citizens of the United States of [...]
October 8th, 2007 at 4:22 am
[...] Pop Buzz UK » Blog Archive » John Cleese’ Letter To America | Monty Python & Fawlty Towers … (tags: funny) [...]
October 9th, 2007 at 8:01 am
[...] Wenn John Cleese einen Brief schreibt, dann tut er es auch mit einer gehörigen Portion Monty Python Humor. British schwarz Satire mit zu viel Wahrheit, um drüber hinweg zu sehen. Per Zufall hier gefunden. [...]
October 10th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
THE MISSING ‘U’ IN COLOUR IS DIFFERENT BUT NOT NECESSARILY RIGHT. THE SPANISH WORD FOR COLOUR IS COLOR AND SPELLT THE SAME WAY AS THE AMERICAN WAY.
October 11th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Jeez, even more proof that the Net is simply an echo chamber for the next load of n00bies. Others have already pointed out the actual truth at Snopes.com. This letter does NOT belong to John Cleese, and it’s been around since 2000. So stop pretending!
(And it’s whingeing, OK? Learn to spell the brit-speak. Yeah, I know it has lots of obsolete crap in it, but do try to remember. Stiff upper lip, wot?)
October 11th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
“Aluminum” was actually the original spelling of the word, but was changed later to fit in better with the rest of the names of the elements. Or so I’m told.
I’m British and the only time I get annoyed with American spellings is when my spell check tells me I’m wrong. Variation and change is a natural part of an evolving language, especially one so widely-used as English.
Also, wasn’t Andie MacDowell’s character in Four Weddings American?
October 15th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Baseball is huge in Japan, though I don’t see their teams playing in the “World Cup”. And it’s a frikkin boring game anyway, so drop it already.
And Cleese isn’t this funny anymore, he’s a bloody sell-out, don’t know how could anyone mistake this “letter” for his. Some of the more recent stuff he does makes me doubt he was abducted by aliens and replaced by humourless (btw. my spelling checker in Firefox is showing me that it’s spelled humor, I never would’ve guessed :S) robot with a personality not unlike the animal of a flying kind commonly known as a Parrot.
October 17th, 2007 at 2:09 am
So how do you Europeans pronounce “Platinum?” Is it “Platinium?” It’s aluminum. We invented it we name it. (Yes that’s a joke)
October 17th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
The spelling and pronunciation of Aluminum/Aluminium is moot. Doesn’t make a difference. Both are correct. Since the plural of the element is Alumina, however, it’s easy to see how “aluminum” is a multiple, carpet term evolved. However, we here in America don’t have time to add the extra vowel. Over in Europe, where half the year is a state-mandated holiday, they can add all kinds of extra vowels to things. Speaking of which, if GB takes America back, will we get extra “holidays”?
Also note that MLB will be going worldwide inside of a decade.
October 17th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Actually America has more public holidays than the UK.
The rest of Europe may well have a very generous amount of holidays, but Great Britain is separate in many ways from mainland Europe.
October 17th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
You may want to check your sources, the next time you write an article. This isnt written by Cleese, nor are most of the ones written by George Carlin written, by him either. Neither one of these guys would write the hackish, lame shit that these posts are full of.
October 17th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
That’s why I added an edit the day after the post went live. You may want to read full articles in future before leaving comments.
October 21st, 2007 at 8:39 pm
ur all twats. im english and john cleese is a legend. long live john cleese!!!
October 24th, 2007 at 1:29 am
“And it’s a frikkin boring game anyway, so drop it already.”
December 14th, 2007 at 7:39 am
lets see how long america would last in a game of rugby