John Cleese tells Roz Laws why he’s working so hard to pay off his ex-wife in a flying visit to Birmingham

John Cleese leans forward in his chair and lets me in on a secret – how to get rich (fairly) quick.

For the first time in our conversation, the laid back Monty Python star looks animated. And sounds just a touch bitter as he explains his money-making scheme.

That’s because he wasn’t the one to benefit from it. It was his third wife who pocketed millions, and unfortunately from his pocket.

“Seriously, if you want to get rich, go to California, marry somebody rich, spend as much money as you can to establish a high standard of living, stop working so you have to totally depend on them and then get divorced four years later,” says the 71-year-old.

“My sense of resentment is directed towards the insanity of Californian marital law. It annoys me that in my seventies I am having to live in a way I don’t choose to live.

“With my first two divorces, I offered what my wives thought were generous financial settlements and the lawyers barely got involved.

“Alyce Faye decided, for reasons I have never understood, to use the nastiest lawyer around. This woman, Jacqueline Misho, is so ruthless. It is her policy to make whole process as unpleasant as she can.

“Once I realise she had declared war, there was nothing I could do except to conduct a sort of rear-guard action.

“But I think my lawyer wasn’t terribly good. I think he had been, but he’s my age and perhaps a little over the hill. He seemed to be caught on the wrong foot.”

Times are so tough in the Cleese household that he’s taking to stand-up comedy. After honing the act touring Scandinavia, he’s taking his Alimony Tour on the road in the UK, with three dates at the Birmingham Hippodrome.

It is to pay for his third divorce from psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger. A Californian judge ordered him to pay her $13 million (£8.3 million) upfront and $1 million (£640,000) every year for seven years.

He has sold off most of his five properties around the world – including a beach house, an office and 15 acre ranch in Montecito, California, a New York flat and a mews house in Holland Park, London.

Now he has three homes, a ‘tiny’ flat in London off Sloane Square which he has just acquired, one in Bath and a flat in San Francisco.

“When I was married to Alice Faye, I had a ridiculously high standard of living,” admits John, who now lives with his girlfriend Jennifer Wade, a jeweller 32 years his junior.

“I have gone from a very expensive lifestyle to a very neat and enjoyable one. I have no real sense of loss, I don’t think ‘oh gosh, how I miss my 15 acre ranch. I liked it at the time but it’s now history and I have all I need.

“But the divorce settlement absolutely effects every decision I make professionally.

“I have to earn $1 million a year before I even get to keep a penny. I have to build my professional choices around that fact.

“I would have been doing much more writing and much less performing if I didn’t have the settlement to consider.

“But at the same time, if you have to earn money, then earning it in this way is about as pleasant a way as you can.”

It is, perhaps, slightly more pleasant than doing television adverts for the AA’s home emergency service, another recent source of income. In the commercials, he suffers the indignity of having to jump around in a tightly zipped-up sleeping bag while discussing ‘faulty showers’.

So where does he draw the line when it comes to taking work?

“Oh, there is always a filter,” he agrees. “I call it the EQ – the embarrassment quota. I will only do embarrassing things if there is a lot of money involved and people won’t really know about it.

“But I am very happy to do the commercials for the AA because I think it’s an extraordinarily impressive organisation and has been for decades.