Monty Python star John Cleese, is hoping to buy a home in Bath, close to where he grew up.
Cleese, 85, who insists he’s ‘surprisingly poor’, has lived in Monaco in the past, and more recently in Nevis in the Caribbean, where there’s no income tax.
He said in April he’d gifted his £1.5million flat in Chelsea to fourth wife, Jennifer Wade, ‘to make her feel secure’. The pair are understood to spend most of their time in London. However, it seems they’re house hunting in the West Country. Speaking at Clifton College, the £19,000-a-term Bristol private school he attended as a boy, Cleese said: ‘Unquestionably, my home is the West Country. My wife and I are thinking very seriously of buying in Bath.’ He added: ‘When I look back at my time in Weston-super-Mare … There were a lot of very nice people having peaceful, friendly lives and being nice to each other and behaving really pretty well. And how little of that there is around these days.
‘It’s an idea which has come from America, which is that if you are not either rich or powerful – or both – then somehow your life has been a failure. I think that is a terrible idea.’
Cleese bought a flat in Bath’s Royal Crescent in 2016, but it was back on the market in 2018, when he left the UK and settled in Nevis. He’s been complaining of penury since his 2008 divorce from third wife, Alyce Faye Eichelberger. She reportedly got a settlement of $20million and Cleese said two years ago he was still paying it off.
The Fawlty Towers star confessed his ongoing frustration at this when he appeared on Lorraine earlier this year to discuss the stage version of the iconic sitcom.
Stand-in host of the ITV chat show Kate Garraway, 57, brought up when she saw John, who played Basil Fawlty, during his Alimony stand-up tour in 2011.
She recalled his first comment onstage: ‘I’m doing this for the money, to pay for the exes.’
Cleese replied, of his ex-wife Eichelberger: ‘I had to give her $20million [£15.5million], the thing is, a bit of advice for people…
‘If you’re going to have an expensive divorce, have it when you’re 40, not when you’re 70!’
An awkward Garraway replied: ‘Right, then you have to keep working at a time where you’d, perhaps, rather be relaxing.’
Cleese confessed: ‘Well, you’re just doing nothing, which is my favourite way of passing the time.’
The actor has tied the knot a number of times over the years.
He was married to Eichelberger between 1992 and 2008, and Barbara Trentham between 1981 and 1990.
His first marriage was to his Fawlty Towers co-star Connie Booth in 1968 and lasted a decade.
Back in 2023, Cleese claimed he was still paying his settlement to Eichelberger – and he has previously said the deal left him worse off than her.
In the opening moments of his one-man show in Singapore, John told the 1,200-strong audience he had been ‘forced’ to take to the stage.
He said: ‘I know what you’re thinking: What is an elderly English comedian doing here in Singapore when he should be back in his old oxygen tent in London, resting?
‘Well, I’ll tell you the reason. I’ll show it to you.’
Projecting a picture of his ex-wife on a giant screen, he went on: ‘This is my ex-wife on her regular morning stroll, going to collect her alimony.
‘Do you know I had to pay her $20million? Can you believe that? Twenty! No children. Twenty million.
‘The awful thing about that is that you give them ten, then you’ve still got another ten to go.
‘Look at it like this. If only she’d been satisfied with a mere $15million, I’d be going to bed in half an hour.
‘Instead, I am forced to go on being a huge international megastar, a comedy icon, a national institution, a living legend.’
But Cleese’s Monty Python co-star, the comedian Eric Idle, 82, said last month he thinks all his former castmates should be more ‘grateful’ for the money they continue to receive from their work as a comedy troupe.
All the original Monty Python members, including Terry Gilliam, 84, and Michael Palin, 82, alongside Cleese and Idle, continue to receive money from the production.
Idle’s words came after he revealed in February there was a rift in the troupe and confessed the show was a financial ‘disaster’.
He told The Guardian: ‘They got more f***ing money than they’ve ever been grateful for. They got f****** millions and they’’re miserable and horrible and b****y about it.’
The comedian continued: ‘I spent 20 years working for Python and then two years on the O2 show. They were there for two weeks.
‘I’m not really motivated by money, to be honest. Anyway, the producers get all the f***ing money and divide it up according to the contract.
‘Someone sued us for years, saying I was paying the Pythons money from my back pocket.
‘And I said, “Why would I risk going to an American jail to give John Cleese more money?”‘
Idle added the group would often ‘fight and argue’ when working together but he thinks it was good for their output.
‘Some things in Python were very enjoyable and some were not,’ he shared.
‘Holy Grail was cold and miserable. Sometimes that makes it funny. One of the worst things you can have in comedy is enough money.’
‘Python was quite a lot of arguing and fights and good work is often like that. The best thing about showbiz is when it’s over.
‘I think if you’re enjoying yourself, then you’re not acting or giving, you’re just having a good time. Well, that’s not funny.’
Monty Python came to prominence in the BBC sketch comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which aired from 1969 to 1974.
