Monty Python alum John Cleese was granted a slight reprieve on his hefty divorce payout. The actor, who had been ordered to pay his third wife £1.3 million per year, successfully argued in court that the amount should be half that number. It’s the latest installment in the Cleese divorce drama, and one that finally seems to be working out in his favor.

John Cleese has successfully halved the £1.3million-a-year divorce settlement he had described as ‘feeding the beast’.

A judge in the U.S. agreed with the Fawlty Towers and Monty Python star that the maintenance he had been ordered to pay to his third wife, American Alyce Faye Eichelberger, 64, was excessive.

Cleese, 69, will still have to pay around £57,000 a month to Miss Eichelberger, to whom he was married for 15 years.

A source close to the star said: ‘The settlement has been cut back because it was unrealistic. The lawyers had been wrangling for some time.

‘They are still fighting it out, but I think a final decision is expected in the next two weeks.’

Cleese’s divorce from psychotherapist Miss Eichelberger has been one of the most acrimonious in showbusiness.

He said recently: ‘In my 70th year I will still be spending two months a year doing work that is of no interest to me and which is probably slightly spiritually depleting in order to feed the beast.’

Comparing the split with the break-up from his previous wives, Connie Booth and Barbara Trentham, he added: ‘My two other divorces were very peaceful affairs.’

As well as the maintenance, Miss Eichelberger had demanded two houses and half of Cleese’s earnings during the marriage.

She had been living in a third-floor London council flat with her two sons from her marriage to an American golfer when she first met Cleese 18 years ago.

She claimed that while married to a ‘world renowned celebrity’, she had become used to be ‘being entertained by royalty and dignitaries in castles’.

Her lawyers said Cleese earned £93,000 a month and had a property portfolio worth tens of millions.

But the star’s lawyers argued that the calculation was based on his income in 2007, when he enjoyed bumper earnings from the movie Shrek 3 and made a £750,000 profit on a property deal.

They say Cleese had a lean year in 2008 and his monthly income is actually £76,363.

Last year he sold his beloved ranch in California to help pay for the divorce.

The dire financial climate meant he had to knock the price down from £14million to £8.25million to make the sale.

In a recent interview, before the divorce settlement was revised, Cleese said: ‘I feel angry sometimes.

‘But my anger is not so much about sharing the property but having to go on working hard to provide alimony for someone who’s already going to have at least $10 million worth of property, and who’s getting £1million this year. The system is insane.’

[From The Daily Mail]

I have to agree with John Cleese – Britain really needs to catch up with the times and allow court-supported prenuptial agreements. I don’t believe that Cleese’s wife is necessarily a gold digger, like Heather Mills was. She was with him for 15 years. But it’s very easy for someone who feels wronged by their partner when a marriage breaks up to become vindictive and “hit them where it hurts” – their wallet. In a country where divorce automatically means a 50/50 split of assets, regardless of who owned what in the beginning, exploiting those vindictive emotions is all too easy. As for Cleese- maybe he should avoid marriage in the future. It doesn’t seem to work out too well for him, does it?
Here’s John Cleese attending the opening of Brit Week, solo, and Cleese with his ex wife, Alyce Faye, in happier times at the 2002 Emmy awards. Photos: Fame.

This is a never-ending tabloid free-for-all. First, John Cleese’s “27-year-old” girlfriend Barbie Orr did a tell-all interview where she talked explicitly about Cleese’s anatomy. Then we found out that Barbie is not anywhere near 27 years old – she’s 45, something she is still denying. Then Cleese unceremoniously dumped Barbie. Now he’s trying to do damage control.

I really like John Cleese, though this whole situation has made him seem like an old fool. He’s trying to defend himself in the press while he should just quietly wait out the storm. He spoke to Hello! Magazine, and The Daily Telegraph has the details, which are still too much information:

Speaking about his split with American comedian Barbie Orr, the Monty Python and Fawlty Towers star told Hello! magazine that the pair met on a film set last year and they dated a few times, perhaps six or seven in total.

He said she had made him laugh, but a couple of months ago he told her he thought they should “just be friends”.

Asked about claims that the 69-year-old went to great lengths to look good, Cleese told Hello!: “All that was nonsense. When you get to my age, you do running repairs. I had my fourth hair transplant as it means I don’t have to wear wigs in a movie – I hate wigs. It only takes four hours, it’s really easy – so much easier than wearing those horrible things on set.”

“My teeth were terrible – I had a remodelling of my mouth about two years ago. I can’t tell you how many teeth I’d cracked and had to have replaced – it all works really well now. All of this I had done before I even met her.”

Last month, Orr, who is more than 20 years younger then Cleese, gave a detailed interview to the Sunday Mirror in which she said Cleese had a “nice package” and took lots of vitamins as well as working out.

Cleese is working on a stage musical adaptation of his hit movie A Fish Called Wanda with daughter Camilla, 25, from his second marriage to Barbara Trentham.

Three-times-married Cleese said that he could do the work he wanted to do for the first time in a while.

He told the magazine: “Now that I’m not married any more, my earning requirement has dropped rather dramatically – I can now do the work that I want to do, which has not been the case for a long time. I’ll write about my divorce eventually.”

Cleese, who said his latest divorce after 16 years of marriage to Alyce Faye Eichelberger, was nearly settled, cast doubts over whether he would marry for a fourth time.

He said: “The question is, what’s the point? If you’re having children I think it’s a very, very good idea to get married, because it means that it’s much harder to break up, and you should give it absolutely your best shot when you have children.”

“If you’re not going to have children I seriously query, if you’re not religious, what the point is.

“When I look back, I think getting married to Alyce Faye, I did it really because it meant a great deal to her. It didn’t seem as significiant to me.”

From The Daily Telegraph

Yeah, it’s not really the classiest thing to defend yourself by belittling your ex-wife, who never gave an explicit interview about your anatomy. I don’t really care about the hair plugs or the new teeth, I put that under the general heading of “maintenance”. But all of that stuff Barbie said about his package and how he was near death? When will he do damage control about that?

Note by Celebitchy: I read that Hello! Interview and Cleese says that Orr told him she was 35, which is still 10 years younger than her supposed age. He also said that she staged a hug with him after a date in which he told her he just wanted to be friends and that “A few days later the pictures [of the hug] were in the press. I think because she knew it was over she was trying to resuscitate it using the media.”

John Cleese is shown in the header on 5/3/08. Credit: PRPhotos

Remember Barbie Orr? She was John Cleese’s “27-year-old” girlfriend who gave a tell-all interview where she discussed, in intimate detail, every part of John Cleese’s body. As it turns out, she’s not even close to 27, and she’s not his girlfriend any more. According to Richard Kay of The Daily Mail, Cleese unceremoniously dumped Barbie after her little tell-all, and after the discovery of her real age – 45.

By any standard, it has been a masterclass in the art of British reserve.

Already hit by a multi-million-pound divorce from his third wife, John Cleese was forced to squirm in silence when his new girlfriend revealed even more embarrassing intimacies about their relationship.

It was certainly toe-curling stuff as Barbie Orr let slip details about his not-so-subtle chat-up line, her opinion of his ageing physique and how she felt about sleeping with a man of pensionable age.

So no wonder – and to the relief of his supporters in Britain – the 69-year-old Monty Python star is telling friends he has dumped her.

Barbie, who claims to be 27 but as the Mail revealed is actually 45, breathlessly disclosed how Cleese fell in love with her after seeing a photo of her in a bikini on her website.

She also said he was ‘athletic’ in the bedroom and a ‘great kisser’. All that, Cleese could perhaps have taken on the chin.

But her references to his new teeth, his hair plugs (transplants from other parts of the body) to cover his bald patches and the fact that she ‘kept picturing him naked wondering what someone that old looks like, and would I actually sleep with them’ were a step too far.

The comedienne even quipped: ‘For his birthday, I was thinking about buying him a Zimmer frame.’

Cleese is no longer returning her texts and their brief romance is over, say pals. What finally put the kibosh on the romance, however, was the exposure that Barbie was not all she cracked herself up to be.

According to official records in the U.S., she knocked 18 years off her age. On her website, she claims to have been born in 1981, whereas in reality she was born in 1964.

It is the latest setback for Cleese, who claims he is paying his estranged wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger £1million a year while their lawyers haggle over a final settlement. She is also claiming half of his nine properties.

But of the excitable Miss Orr, I am told: ‘What she did to Cleese was undignified. He was very vulnerable.’

From The Daily Mail

Barbie Orr sounds like a world-class whack-job, but Cleese doesn’t look much better. I’d imagine it would be devastating for a sixty-something year old man to be happily dating who he thinks is a 20-something bimbo, only to find out she’s just a 40-something bimbo who wants to give interviews about your anatomy. Yikes. Perhaps Cleese can learn from the mistakes of his same-aged brethren, like Paul McCartney, and stay away from the Barbie Orr-Heather Mills types.

Note by Celebitchy: Barbie Orr suggests on her official website that the Mirror made up that interview in which she praised Cleese’s package and claimed to be 27, but she never quite accuses them of it. It’s all a bit suspect.

Have you ever wondered what 69-year-old Monty Python alum John Cleese looks like naked? Yeah, neither had I. But now I can’t get these images out of my head, so I’m bringing them to you. The three-times divorced Cleese has a new girlfriend, and she’s a talker. She gave an interview to Britain’s Mirror, and the 27-year-old named “Barbie” had a lot to say about Cleese body and his… wang. And yes, she’s 27. And he’s 69. No fool like an old fool, as the saying goes. Cleese had gotten hairplugs and new teeth to begin dating after his last divorce, and Barbie was surprised by how great his legs, arms and “package” looked

Funnyman John Cleese’s new girlfriend says he’s got new hair, new teeth and downs a daily cocktail of vitamins just to keep up with her. Blonde Barbie Orr – just 27 to Cleese’s 69 – insists she’s fallen head over heels for the three-times wed Fawlty Towers and Monty Python star – but calls him “Fossil”.

Despite the huge age gap, she also says the pair share a passionate love life. Cleese, now based in America, met comedienne Barbie in October when she auditioned for a part in a movie. At the time he was divorcing his third wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger.

Barbie – a vegan who lives close to Cleese in a Californian mountain ranch – says: “I knew John from the Fawlty Towers DVDs. And when I saw there was a chance to act with him I jumped at it. I made him laugh and afterwards he came over to sit next to me. I said, ‘You were interested in me because of how funny I was?’”

“And he said, ‘No, actually I first noticed that you had a perfect arse, and then I noticed your great waist’. He asked me for my card – for professional reasons I thought at the time. But then he started calling me a lot and it turns out he had gone to my web page and seen me in a bikini. He told me he had fallen in love immediately.”

…Barbie she is keen to point out that although Cleese is a “great kisser” they didn’t sleep together until their third date – as she was worried about how much she really did fancy him. She says: “I kept picturing him naked. I wondered what someone that old looks like and would I actually sleep with them? For his birthday I was thinking about buying him a zimmer frame!”

But, to her surprise, when they slept together, she discovered Cleese was athletic in the bedroom with the “package of a 19-year-old”.

She says: “The first time I knew we were going to do it, I was acting like a total jerk. I turned up at his place in glasses and acting really nerdy. He was going to New York the next day for two months and I thought if he has a piece of this it will seal the deal – and I’m sorry, but it did.”

Barbie added of their first night together: “I can’t get into what he really looks like naked, but for an old guy, you know, they’re normally saggy down there, but he really has a nice package. He takes a lot of vitamin supplements and eats really well and he works out. His arms are really muscular and he still has amazing legs.”

“He’s had his teeth all redone and he recently got hair plugs (transplants from other parts of the body) to cover the bald patches at the front. He’s getting back on the market again so he’s got to get himself in shape. And he is very romantic. He bought me a little white porcelain mouse to match his nickname for me. And he also bought me earrings that look like eyeballs with eyelashes that move up and down!”

As to the future, she says they are taking their three-month relationship slowly as his heart is still “sore” after his divorce to Alyce, 64, his wife of 15 years, who he has to pay almost £1million a year in maintenance.

And she joked: “At his age, how much of a commitment can it really be? I won’t have to break up with him and break his heart. I just have to go to his funeral!”

[From The Mirror]

There are so many things wrong with all of this, I don’t know where to begin. First, I doubt Cleese is at all pleased that Barbie is mouthing off all of these personal details to the press. So even if he loves her 27-year-old ass, he’ll probably dump her. Second, I normally don’t get too worked up over age differences, probably because I’ve always had a thing for older men. But not that old. When it starts getting into a four-decade difference, it’s time for contemplation about life’s lessons. Third and final point – congrats to Cleese for not being “saggy” down there.

Here’s John in Park City for Sundance this weekend. Images thanks to WENN and Bauer-Griffin.

Divorces can obviously get very, very nasty. People are easily hurt by the ones they love(d), and it must be very hard to divide up your hard earned assets, as adjust to the life changes without a partner.

Madonna seems to have been quite nasty to Guy Ritchie, in a petty way, in concert. She needs to take lessons from John Cleese about how to really sling the mud. Andrew Billen asks 68-year-old Cleese when he can slow down on his entertainment work, and gets this response.

So when can he turn his back on this toil? “I don’t know about that,” he says. “People would think I’d have enough money, but I do have a very expensive, or comparatively expensive, divorce. When I divorced Barbara [Trentham, wife two] in about ’88 that cost me £2.5 million then. And now this divorce with Alyce Faye – I mean, I’m paying more than £1 million a year right now. And we never had children.”

Given that this is John Cleese’s third marriage, you would think he might have been experienced enough in divorce to have considered a pre-nup. He claims it is because his previous wives, being less financially savvy then his latest, accepted his generous offers.

“When I got divorced from Connie [Booth, wife one], with whom I had dinner on Sunday, and when I got divorced from Barbara, I didn’t need lawyers on either occasion, because I just sort of said, ‘Why don’t I give you this?’ And they said, ‘That’s very fair, very generous. Thank you.’ End of story.

Cleese continues to talk about his divorce, despite interviewer Andrew Billen being told not to mention it.

“I feel angry sometimes. But my anger is not so much about sharing the property but having to go on working hard to provide alimony for someone who’s already going to have at least $10 million worth of property, and who’s getting £1 million this year. At some point you say, ‘Well, what did I do wrong? You know, I was the breadwinner.’ The system is insane.”

So, I check, his anger is not at the failure of the relationship? “It’s about the fact that in my 70th year I will still be spending two months a year doing work that is of no interest to me and which is probably slightly spiritually depleting in order to feed the beast.”

Read the full interview in the London Times

Despite the way the words sound bitter, the interviewer describes him as being like a man ‘escaped from a life sentence’, which after 16-year of marriage maybe he does feel a little that way.

Unlike Madonna, who called Guy names in convert, John actually comes across as reasonable, and we still wind up on his side. Even if he seems a little narcissistic, he doesn’t seem bitter. Madonna, even if you’re a fan of her music, just isn’t likeable. Was she ever?

John has a simple solution to the problem, which is to require people to renew their marriage license every five years, ‘like dogs’. Except when children are involved, where you should also get a license to procreate. I’m not sure how many Hollywood marriages would last five years, but the license idea for parents isn’t a bad one. Case in point: Should Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen ever have procreated together?

John Cleese and Kevin Spacey are shown outside the Ivy in London on 6/6/08. Credit: WENN

68 year-old Monty Python star John Cleese is in a new relationship with the VP of marketing at Radar Magazine, 34 year-old Jane Smiley. The two went on a vacation with to Italy and Switzerland recently and the Daily Mail has quotes from both of them on their new relationship. There’s also a photograph of the two of them together, with Smiley looking a little sheepish. It’s hard to believe they would speak so candidly to the Daily Mail, and it’s possible these quotes are taken from somewhere else or even fabricated given the source. The Mail phrases things so vaguely that it’s hard to tell when they’re telling the truth or have an exclusive interview. Even a friend of Cleese who joined the couple briefly on vacation chimes in to say that he didn’t think they were hitting the sheets – before they went on that jaunt to Europe together. Cleese is going through a divorce from his third wife of over 15 years, Alyce Faye Eichelberger, and his friend jokingly calls the vacation with Smiley a “divorcey-moon.”

Cleese spied his opportunity when his old friend Michael Winner, the movie director and restaurant critic, arranged a six-day road trip to Switzerland and Italy.

The 72-year-old Death Wish director dubbed it the ‘Divorcey-moon’ to mark his friend’s split from therapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger after 16 years.

When the two men reached Zurich, Miss Smiley flew out from the US to join them, and she and Cleese continued their journey alone through Switzerland and Italy to Vaduz, Lake Como and Bergamo.

Cleese explained: ‘We met in New York at a power breakfast and spent a few days together in Switzerland and Italy and we liked each other a lot, but the problem is she works in Chicago for a magazine and I’m in California and London.
‘I am not sure when we’ll be seeing each other again. Unfortunately we are living very far apart citywise.’

Miss Smiley said: ‘We met a few weeks ago at the Regency Hotel in New York and we had this natural connection and became firm friends.

‘We’re at the stage where we are still getting to know each other.

‘At the moment it is a very close, very warm friendship.

‘He is twice my age. He’s very stimulating and extremely funny and charming.

‘I’m American and had never heard of Monty Python or Fawlty Towers, although I had seen A Fish Called Wanda.’

Winner, who dined with the couple in Zurich, said: ‘It was almost a blind date.

‘I don’t think they’d had a major consummation before that, if I may put it that way.

‘She’s delightful and definitely a girlfriend.’

Cleese has been in London working on a series of projects including recording a commentary for a new set of BBC DVDs for Fawlty Towers.

[From The Daily Mail]

If Smiley grew up in America she’s not likely to use phrases like “firm friends,” and it sounds awkward the way they have her speaking so stiffly and saying obvious things like “He is twice my age.” Maybe everyone talked to the Daily Mail assuming they’d make up and embellish shit anyway, but I doubt it. Good for these two, though. They’re both single and old enough to make a decision about who they want to date. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to work out given the way they’re presumably talking about it. It sounds like they’re interested in each other because they found a connection but that they’re not sure they’re right for each other given the age difference. That kind of spark doesn’t always evolve into a romantic relationship, but they’re giving it a chance anyway.