John Cleese loses talent as a husband

John Cleese thinks he is getting worse at marriage because his relationships with his former wives have got increasingly strained.

John Cleese thinks he is getting worse at marriage.

The 71-year-old funnyman divorced third wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger in 2008 and thinks his relationships with his former spouses have been increasingly strained and gone progressively downhill.

He said: "I'm not very good at marriage. And the awful thing is, well probably, I've got worse at it. I'm definitely going backwards.

"I'm still on very, very good terms with Connie Booth, we talk all the time, you know, and we still laugh together. We always loved each other. I mean, we confused everyone by writing the first series of 'Fawlty Towers', getting divorced and then writing the second series, so that indicates there was a very close affection.

"The second one, Barbara (Trentham), is now in Chicago, we speak very occasionally, and the third, Alyce Faye, always said if we broke up we would never speak again, and I think it's turned out to be an excellent arrangement."

John - who famously had to pay Alyce a settlement worth around $18 million when they split - also hit out at the system for dividing assets in a divorce as he believes those who contribute least to the union always come out better off.

In an interview airing on Absolute Radio today (22.11.11), he told Christian O'Connell: "I always fall in love with people who don't have any money. And what happens then is they say, 'OK, I married you, I'm stopping work.' And then the person in the marriage spends all the money they can on everything to try and get the standard of living as high as they possibly can, and then say, 'This marriage doesn't work for me, I want a divorce', and then you're entitled to the standard of living to which you've become accustomed.

"As far as I can make out, and I have to say it's not a sexist thing, it's a passenger's charter, whoever in the relationship does least benefits most, because I've had two women friends who've been taken to the cleaners by men."