“I don’t know much about contemporary comedy. I don’t watch any. I’m 77. I will almost certainly be dead within 10 years—maybe I’ll get 15. So to sit down to watch a sitcom seems to be a rather futile way of passing the time. It’s as simple as that. If I have a free evening, I’ll read, because there are so many things I don’t begin to understand and that I’d like to try and get a handle on before I’m dead. I’d rather do that than watch comedy.”
John Cleese, quoted in David Marchese, In Conversation: John Cleese (Vulture, September 12, 2017)