I can't speak for the whole world but I can try to give a look at Canada in 1972. I'm using production and consumption figures as a proxy for popularity.

According to the January, 1972 edition of The Dairy Review (fun fact: the last number to be published by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, which would be replaced by Statistics Canada in time for the February edition), cheddar cheese production in December, 1971 totalled 15.5 millions pounds. "Process cheese" production in the same period totalled 9.4 millions pounds and other cheese varieties totalled 4.4 million pounds. This means that cheddar cheese accounts for just over half the total cheese production in Canada.

A note in the publication says that cheddar cheese production in that period was a 4.6 million pound increase over the same period the previous year - almost a 50% increase! However, this appears to be a relative decrease in Cheddar's "popularity" since 1936, when the Department of Agriculture's Dairy and Cold Storage branch published the bulletin Why and How to Use Cheese, which notes that "Canadian cheesemakers confine their activities almost wholly to the Cheddar type."

In terms of domestic consumption ("domestic disappearance," meaning presumably that it accounts for consumption other than simply eating), the figures were 9.6 million pounds for cheddar, 9.2 million pounds for "process cheese," and 7.7 million pounds for other cheeses - imports and exports account for the balance. That means that Canadians were disappearing a lower proportion of cheddar than they were producing, but still disappearing far more cheddar than any other type.

Canada exported 7.4 million pounds of cheddar that month but, without global consumption figures of cheddar and/or other cheese consumption, I can't say whether that amounts to a globally significant degree of "popularity" flooding the market or just a drop in the bucket.

Finally, my interest in obscure topics pays off! To answer the question: yes. Cheddar cheese was the most popular cheese in the world in 1972. It is the most popular cheese in the world today. It has been the most popular cheese since the 1940s at the latest and probably since the 1920s.

Why? Well, the short answer is: America has dominated the 20th century cheese market and Americans both like and make a lot of cheddar.

The longer answer starts all the way back in colonial times. Cheddar cheese has been popular in England since at least the 13th century, especially in the Southern counties that colonization trips often departed from. (It still is: today over half of all cheese consumed in England is cheddar. This is true for a lot of the Commonwealth as well.) The English colonists in America, naturally, began to make cheddar. This was concentrated in the future American North and West, though the South was not entirely absent. The English colonists even further south, in the islands, basically grew no food at all. Any land that was good for grain could be more profitably put to sugar or tobacco. They constantly experimented with food that could be grown in more marginal lands but never succeeded.

Because labor was cheap, pasturage was plentiful, and there was a huge demand for agricultural products both in Europe and in the English sugar colonies, the Thirteen Colonies became dominant in the 'heavy trade'. It was effectively another triangle trade: traders would leave from England, sail to New England, trade books and instruments and tools for grain, wood, and cheese, sail south to the sugar colonies and trade it for sugar and tobacco, then go back to England. (The two key differences between American and the African West Coast: American colonists could easily avail themselves of English courts if they were cheated and were more likely to know inferior products. The North also sent its own ships on this trade.) There was also some export back to England directly.

America, like most colonies, mostly produced primary goods. This largely prevented the creation of recognizable products. One of the few recognizable finished products they shipped back was cheese, especially cheddar, which is particularly durable on long sea voyages. American Cheddar became... not a delicacy, because that implies expense and exclusivity. But it fetched premium prices and there was even some patriotism about American Cheddar Cheese. The Revolution actually increased demand in Britain and by 1790 the export industry was larger than it had ever been. When Jefferson brought a mammoth wheel of cheddar cheese to celebrate his election, he was making a gesture towards American industry.

American cheese production continued to grow during the 19th century (a long an interesting story in of itself). But cheddar remained very popular at home and as an export. Americans even developed several popular new kinds of cheddar. (There is a parallel history in the Commonwealth, but let's pass that over for now.) America was also quick to adopt British innovations and eventually began to outpace its European cousins in the late 19th century. Most notably, in 1916 Kraft received a patent for processed cheese. He immediately began to sell it commercially. And what sort of processed cheese did the American Kraft first decide to apply the process to? American Cheddar, of course. Side note: American Cheese is a shortening of American Cheddar Cheese and is pretty much always a form of cheddar.

American Cheese is often thought of as terrible cheese. But it's very easy to produce, can be made even during times of shortage, and is incredibly durable. It basically does not go bad. World War 1 and its aftermath was a time of famine and these facts were arguably more important than taste. Additionally, cheese got more expensive during the postwar period, especially during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. But processed cheese remained readily available and inexpensive. On top of that, many of the cheddar producing regions in America were less affected by these disasters. So cheddar, always popular in America and probably dominant even beforehand, was boosted even further in the 1920s and '30s.

Now, you might ask, I've spent all this time talking about America. What about the rest of the world! The world isn't just America, right?

Well, hold onto your seats, because World War 2 is coming. And World War 2 devastated the world's cheese production. Most countries lost more than half of their cheese production. Some lost more than 90%. On top of that, many prioritized the relatively popular and durable cheddar over producing other cheeses. For example, the British lost the vast majority, but what was left was put into a government program to produce... wait for it... cheddar. (This is why the wider history of cheese in Britain is a bit less important than America's. The British basically destroyed the Commonwealth's for reasons of wartime rationing.) Cheddar cheese was basically the only cheese Britain produced during the war. The one exception is the Soviet Union, whose cheese industry was destroyed by collectivization and the war.

After World War 2, there were three cheese producing regions still in play. The Americas, Central Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa did not export cheese. Central Asia either exported it locally or to the Soviet world. This left the Americas. And only the US had the industrialization, labor, and pasturage to dominate the market. (Canada, for example, lacked the necessary pasturage and labor but had the industry. Argentina had the pasturage and labor but lacked advanced industry.) Additionally, the US market was still strong enough to sustain consumer demand for cheese at a time when the rest of the world was near starvation or on strict rations.

This reshaped the world cheese market to look a lot like the US cheese market. (It was assisted, in this like many things, by the fact Commonwealth and American tastes in cheese were fairly similar.) And that's why we focused on the US. In the 1940s and 1950s, the American cheese market became the world cheese market. This didn't mean only American cheeses sold. The American appetite for French cheeses ensured it would have a place in the middle and upmarket, for example. It led to a boom in Latin American cheese, since most Americans were familiar with them but most Europeans hadn't been. But it did mean a lot of American cheeses. And that meant a lot of cheddar, especially for export. American cheddar would remain somewhat prestigious throughout the middle of the century until it became so associated with processed cheese that it became associated with low quality. From that point on, at the very latest, cheddar was the most produced and consumed cheese in the world.

Cheddar has become so ubiquitous we rarely identify it anymore. Colby and Colby Jack? Types of cheddar. American cheese? A type of cheddar. Monterrey Jack and Pepperjack? Cheddars. When people think of the taste of basic cheese, not something 'exotic' like gouda, they're usually thinking of the taste of cheddar.

To this day, American is the single largest cheese producing country in the world, producing almost a third of the world's cheese. A key policy priority of the European Union, for decades, has been the boosting of their native cheese industry. This program, however, relies in part on export to the American market. It also has failed to get into the international downmarket. While the EU has passed America in the value of their cheese industries (and some individual countries have as well), this is mostly because they are mid or upmarket cheese (and so worth more per pound). And even then, their prices are sustained by significant subsidies that have been a constant, low-intensity trade dispute between the two for a long time. However, they have succeeded in stimulating cheese production and consumption, which the EU (collectively but not individually) currently leads the world in. (Interestingly, Britain has increasingly tried to 'claim' the term cheddar with limited success. They've also managed to restart their native cheese industry, returning several regional varieties to market. Whether their exiting the EU, with its subsidies and trade protections, will change that has yet to be seen.)

But anyway, back to 1972. The joke has a twofold context: Cleese is asking for the most common, durable, and popular cheese in existence. It'd be like a grocery store not carrying any bread. He's also harkening back to rationing (which had ended only 18 years before the sketch began) when shops were often empty. Cheddar was often still in supply. The shop doesn't have that basic cheddar that was still available during the Blitz. Something so common and cheap the government gave it away for free to the poor.

From Cheese and Cheese Culture, The Oxford Companion to Cheese, The Story of Cheesemaking in Britain, The History of American Cheese, Wartime Food and Agriculture, Austerity in Britain, 1939-1955, and For the Duration...

PS: For the British/Commonwealth patriots who're upset I didn't talk about Britain's place in creating cheddar, or its enduring homemade popularity in the Commonwealth, you're right! Likewise, you can justly claim that you've contributed a great deal to the development of cheddar and its popularity. But the United States took the lead in turning it from an Anglophone to international phenomena.

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