For the first time, what has happened to John Cleese isn’t funny. Instead, he is living the adage “when you laugh, the world laughs with you; when you cry, you cry alone.” He is because, sadly, he is a voice crying out alone. Alone because Britain of today has done everything it can to intimidate its citizens from crying out at all.

As anyone who knows anything about British comedy, John Cleese has been at its forefront for six decades. His work is iconic, from Monty Python to Fawlty Towers to numerous movies and television appearances. So important has Cleese been to modern British culture that it is impossible not to recount the importance of the shows in which he has starred, and so integral has he been in these that it’s equally impossible to list them without seeing his performances in your mind’s eye.

Yet Cleese is today starring in something that is no laughing matter in Britain. Because of a series of posts about Islam, Cleese is threatened with cancelation for the first time in his career.

As a comedian, Cleese made his living and societal mark by observing and lampooning British conduct. Then, the world laughed with him. Now, he is crying out against certain Islamic practices; in today’s Britain, that can make you very lonely indeed.