‘Have it at 40, not at 70!’ — ‘Surprisingly poor’ Monty Python icon John Cleese, 85, eyes Bath home with fourth wife Jennifer Wade after handing her £1.5m Chelsea flat and recalling financial hit from $20m divorce payout - suong

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.'

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He said in April he'd gifted his £1.5million flat in Chelsea to fourth wife, Jennifer Wade (pictured together last month), 'to make her feel secure'

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. 

Stand-in host Kate Garraway recalled his first comment onstage in his 2011 Alimony stand-up tour: '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!'

The actor has tied the knot a number of times over the years. 

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He's been complaining of penury since his 2008 divorce from third wife, Alyce Faye Eichelberger (pictured together in 2001) 

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Monty Python star John Cleese , is hoping to buy a home in Bath (pictured, file photo of the city's Royal Crescent), close to where he grew up

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.

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.