Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam could be forgiven for thinking the whole Donald Trump presidency is a joke on him.

This is a man, after all, who renounced his American citizenship in protest at George W Bush.

“For years I was saying we are getting to the point of having a complete conman for a president,” the 77-year-old film director and animator told AFP. “And now here we are...

“For somebody who likes turning things upside down, I should be enjoying this - but Trump is an idiot.”.

And humour is no defence. Not even the Pythons in their 1960s pomp could match the surreal madcap nature of the presidency, he insisted. “It’s absurd.”



“The reality is funnier than anything one can do,” Gilliam laughed.

The Life of Brian, their classic satirical take on a false messiah, now seems all too prophetic, he said, “completely relevant to the world we are living in”.

“It makes me feel like I’ve gotten very old and I am living through a nightmare,” he added.

“It’s so crazy and there is no way you can do anything. So I have become apolitical, I am Candide,” he said, referring to Voltaire’s naively optimistic hero. “I am going to be tending my garden, that’s what I am going to do.



“Look at America under Trump, look at England under the Conservatives - it is just a joke. Britain is part of Europe and to think it can be Great Britain again is utterly foolish.”



Nor is Gilliam, now a British citizen, afraid to call out his old friend and fellow Python John Cleese for supporting Brexit: “He is an idiot!”