John Cleese, Touring

Even if you are not of an age to have watched Monty Python’s Flying Circus or Fawlty Towers when they were first broadcast by the BBC, you will have heard of John Cleese. And if you are remotely a fan of comedy, you will hold Cleese in high regard as he is a writer, performer and actor of great talent, and this show, an overview of his life and career, proves it beyond argument.

It’s waspishly titled The Alimony Tour and Cleese’s emotional baggage gets an enthusiastic airing for fully the first 10 minutes, during which he explains the show’s origins in his $20 million divorce from his third wife - “I’ve fallen on hard times. I’ve just been through a costly and acrimonious divorce and I’m forced to hit the road.” There may be anger (righteous or otherwise) but not once does the show edge into vaingloriousness or sentimentality - the man is a product of the anally retentive British middle classes after all, where self-deprecation and lack of emotional response has been nurtured for generations.

During that opening salvo he lays into his ex-wife even though he managed to spend 13 years with her - there’s a photograph of her at a cash machine “taking out my money” - and one doesn’t have to be a card-carrying feminist or a romantic to find this section of the show discomfiting and rather distasteful, particularly after one has walked through a foyer where a wide range of costly merchandise is on sale. Such venom is unnecessary and gives the impression that Cleese is a rather bitter man - not the best place to start a comedy show - but after he gets this off his chest the show begins and it’s funny, informative and touching by turns.

Cleese tells his story in a mostly linear fashion, starting with being born in Weston-Super-Mare (“less a seaside resort than a last resort”) to parents who hadn’t wanted children, a fact his mother constantly reminded him of “just in case I forgot”. Not for the first time this week, I remembered my "Psychology for Beginners" about comics - here, the chapter about so many being just an incy-bit needy and going on stage for the affection, acclaim and attention they never had as children. But in the weird and sometimes wonderful way that life works, it’s that very vulnerability that has turned some individuals into comics of creative genius.

Cleese is far too modest to point out his own abundant talents, but there are plenty of amusing anecdotes and enough photographic and video evidence here - of Cambridge Footlights, his early break into television on shows such as At Last! The 1948 Show and The Frost Report, how the Monty Python team was formed and the joys of working on the show, his relationship with long-time writing partners Graham Chapman and Connie Booth, and his Hollywood break with A Fish Called Wanda (1988) - to remind us, although he ascribes most of it to luck or being in the right place at the right time.

Along the way he generously pays tribute to Booth, another ex-wife and co-creator of Fawlty Towers, and, rather more movingly, to Chapman, who died at the hideously early age of 48 in 1989, from lung cancer. Another breath-catching moment comes when he shows the Wanda clip in which he explains to his lover, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, the agonies of being an Englishman who cannot express his feelings. It was, Cleese tells us, one of the rare times he has written from the heart.

Some have complained that Cleese, who has a very large teleprompter in front of him, is merely reading the script and so there is little spontaneity. I noticed a couple of hiccups in the show (which I saw at the Birmingham Hippodrome) - he garbled a couple of sentences and missed the explanation of the contractual reasons why he cannot show Python television clips (although film ones he can) - but as the tour continues I hear his reliance on it has lessened. He’s an engaging presence and a skilled raconteur and, while this show may be for fans only, it’s an enjoyable and entertaining account of a remarkable career.

• Buy tickets for John Cleese on tour until 2 July
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Watch a clip of John Cleese in conversation