John Cleese found himself in hot water on Twitter after making remarks about the Irish language.

The actor and comedian tweeted: "I love your use of words ! But,seriously, if an Irish 'bh' is a 'v' sound, why don't you write it with a 'v' ? Of course, Bernard Shaw pointed out that in English, the word 'Fish' could be spelled G-H-O-T-I."

He later doubled down on his comment and said that Irish names look like "deliberate attempts to mislead innocent people."

When someone pulled him up on his "anglocentric viewpoint" he admitted: "True, and I do realise that the Gaelocentric viewpoint is dominant in the rest of the world."

Hundreds of twitter users rushed to inform the Fawlty Towers star that Irish is in fact a different language to English, using a different alphabet that does not include the letter 'v', and that there are many instances of words not being spelled phonetically in English also.

Read more: Opinion: John Cleese and our internalized cultural cringe

Game of Thrones star Liam Cunningham replied to Cleese: "Why isn't phonetic spelt phonetically?"

The Rubber Bandits wrote: "Because the British tried to eradicate our language through colonization, so we prefer not to further anglicise it by our own volition."

One commentator pointed out that "English pronunciations are absolutely inconsistent," adding: "Also, why are English speakers constantly mocking/giving their hot takes about Irish, often with zero knowledge of the language? You've done enough."

Another Twitter user succinctly replied: "Ok Jon Cleez."