The Gay Joke on Gielgud in "Twilight of the Gods" (Season 7) Episode

John Gielgud was freakin' hilarious in that episode. Everything he said was comedy gold. Impeccable timing, hilarious result. One of the best cameos of the entire series. So far far above everybody else in that episode.

And the fact that he was gay must've been one of the worlds worst kept secrets, though I don't know how open he was about it. Did he ever come out, or was he a closet gay until the end? "In his later years he said to the actor Simon Callow, "I do admire people like you and Ian McKellen for coming out, but I can't be doing with that myself." Considering that, and considering he had been in the closet for at least the seventy years of his adult life, I think it's very very sweet he didn't take it so seriously he couldn't joke about it, and on film no less. He was 90 years old, and he simply didn't care what anybody thought of it. I actually think it was very very sweet.

The writers are always doing this sort of thing. Anybody get all the butter jokes in "The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn"? This in an episode that features "Last Tango in Paris"!

"I used to know things. Now I have to remember them."

I just watched that episode this afternoon and you are so right--Gielgud is hilarious, and he has the best lines in the show.

He probably requested that joke. Otherwise, the writers would not have dared to make it about someone of Gielgud's stature.

I almost fell out of my chair! That's the last thing I expected to hear!