John Cleese blames others for his Oscar Pistorius Twitter gaffe

Comedian John Cleese appears to have blamed a member of his staff for the insensitive joke about Oscar Pistorius that appeared on his Twitter feed.

The former Python apologised to his 2.4 million Twitter followers after making an insensitive joke about Oscar Pistorius last week.

John Cleese has blamed others for his insensitive Oscar Pistorius joke appearing on Twitter

But over the weekend the 73-year-old tweeted once again about the furore, saying: “Explanation required: Someone made the comment. I said yeah we should tweet that – sarcastically. Misunderstood.”

He had previously faced a wave of criticism for making light of the South African case in which the Olympic athlete has been charged with the murder of his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp.

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On Thursday the Fawlty Towers star, who was born in Weston-super-Mare, tweeted that Pistorius' defence would be “that he was absolutely legless at the time”.

The following day he was forced to release a second tweet saying: “Sorry if the last tweet was a bit naughty.”

Pistorius appeared in court on Friday charged with the murder of his girlfriend, South African model Reeva Steenkamp.

The body of the 29-year-old was discovered at the athlete's property in the Silver Woods gated community in eastern Pretoria on Thursday morning.

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