A Fawlty middle class ?

John Cleese reveals admiration for Germany and bemoans modern 'rowdy yob' middle-class culture

By SIMON CABLE 
Last updated at 6:00 PM on 22nd September 2010

He has built a career on his merciless lampooning of German culture and the English middle-class.

But now John Cleese has revealed a deep admiration for all things German and Austrian - and lamented the state of modern England. 

The Fawlty Towers star, whose performance goose-stepping in front of shocked German tourists is one of the most watched television clips in the world, now says he considered buying a home in Vienna because of his love of Austrian and German culture.

Controversial: John Cleese as Basil Fawlty doing his goose-step impression in Fawlty Towers - now he has said that he loves the Germans

The 70-year-old comedian said: 'I always felt attracted by Austrian and German culture in a certain way.

'I’ve always liked Vienna. I never saw so much theatre and music and so many museums anywhere else. I like the city’s velocity and the food. It doesn’t have the tackiness of other big cities.

'I considered renting a small flat in Switzerland. I love being in Lyon, Strasbourg, Munich and Milan in four hours from there. But I always felt attracted by Austrian and German culture in a certain way.'

Cleese also appears to have developed a rather different view of the bumbling public school men, buttoned-up accountants and insufferable jobsworths he famously ridiculed during his Monty Python days.

He has now spoken out to lament a decline in traditional middle class values, which he says has been replaced by 'a yob culture'.

The British star, who now lives mostly in the U.S., claims Britain has changed so much that the middle-classes no longer have 'a respect for education'.

However, while he has admitted that racist attitudes have become less prevalent than they were in the past, he has bemoaned the changing face of British society.

'England changed much more than I did,' he told Austrian newspaper Die Press. 

'We used to have some sort of middle-class culture with an adequate amount of respect for education.

'It was a bit racist - not in a mean way though - but still racist. Some things have changed for the better.

'But it's not a middle class culture anymore, but a yob culture, a rowdy culture.'