There will be tall stories aplenty when comedy legend John Cleese brings his latest solo tour to the county this week.

Where do you even start: The Ministry of Silly Walks? Basil Fawlty? Monty Python’s Life of Brian?

Not to mention the Hollywood years – A Fish Called Wanda, Fierce Creatures, turns in Bond films The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day as Q, and not forgetting Nearly Headless Nick in the first two Harry Potter movies.

To say John Cleese, now 75, has achieved a lot in his career in entertainment, which started as a sketchwriter for BBC Radio’s Dick Emery Show and then the Frost Report, is an understatement.

Monty Python was created with John co-writing and starring in four series and three films. He went on to achieve further success as the neurotic hotel manager Basil in Fawlty Towers, which he co-wrote with then-wife Connie Booth.

Beyond the UK, he cracked the USA with A Fish Called Wanda, which he wrote and starred in with Jamie Lee Curtis.

His personal life has famously been just as busy, with three failed marriages behind him – including the painfully costly divorce from third wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger, believed to be in the region of £12 million, which spawned his worldwide Alimony Tour – and a fourth to current wife Jennifer Wade.

There’s no shortage of fodder for an autobiography there and plenty to chat about. Unsurprisingly, John’s new book, So, Anyway, is supported with a tour by the man himself, with two Kent shows this week.

Expect to hear John exploring his thoughts on diverse topics such as the nature of comedy, the relative merits of cricket and water-skiing, and the importance of knowing the dates of all the kings and queens of England.

If his recent comments about his satisfaction with life at present are anything to go by, the audience are in for a chirpier John than his previous Alimony Tour audience may have encountered.

“[I’m] enormously happy, because I’ve finally found true love, which is a fish and three cats,” said John when the book launched. “I call Jenny ‘Fish’ because of the way she swims. She’s the most beautiful swimmer I’ve ever seen.”

Now aged 75, he has born in Weston-super-Mare in 1939

In the late 1960s, he co-founded Monty Python, the comedy team behind the sketch show Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the four Monty Python films

In the mid-1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the sitcom Fawlty Towers.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Cleese focused on film, though he did work with Peter Cook in his one-off TV special Peter Cook and Co in 1980.

In 1992, he married his third wife, American psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger. They divorced in 2008. The settlement left Eichelberger with £12 million in finance and assets, including £600,000 a year for seven years.

In 2009 and 2010, Cleese crossed the globe with his one-man show. It was tagged the Alimony Tour in reference to the financial implications of his divorce.

In August 2012 he married British jewellery designer and former model Jennifer Wade.

So, Anyway... by John Cleese

One of Britain’s (if not the world’s) most loved comics charts the twists and turns of his ever upward spiralling career, from humble schoolboy days in the West Country through to the formation of Monty Python in the late 1960s.

Although the fast pace he adopts is never a dull read (far from it), John Cleese plays it safe by simply plotting his life chronologically, whereas a man with such a unique writing talent might have been more elaborate with its structure. Having said that, his unrelenting charm and crisp wit make this the hilarious memoir expected of such a comedy giant.

The book might as well be coated in glue, as it proves tricky to put down, like when you come across any of the Python films late at night and know you won’t be able to go to bed until either it’s finished or there’s a power cut.

The humour is relentless, and isn’t merely peppered in as filler, his approach is just naturally funny.

Highlights include observations of dim-witted New Zealanders, a heated discussion with an American immigration officer, who is adamant UK is short for Ukraine, and Cleese stating one of his three ‘claims to fame’ is that he was the first person to say “s**t!” on British TV in 1968.

Disappointingly, Cleese doesn’t delve too deeply into his two biggest successes, with Python reduced to a single chapter at the end (almost an afterword), and Fawlty Towers merely nodded at in passing throughout.

Left somewhat open-ended, here’s hoping a follow-up which will appease the die-hard Python fans (myself included) is in the pipeline!

Published in hardback by Random House, priced £20 (ebook £6.99) Review by Wayne Walls.

John Cleese A life in quotes...

‘The thrill I got discovering Buster Keaton when I was growing up was so exciting. He was one of the greats.’

‘The Americans all love The Holy Grail, and the English all love Life Of Brian, and I’m afraid on this one, I side with the English.’

‘I can never do better than Fawlty Towers whatever I do.’

‘Who’s ever going to write a film in which I get the girl? Me!’

‘My compulsion to always be working has become less strong and my current business is purely down to this enormous alimony. If I wasn’t doing this I’d be making documentaries about wildlife and other subjects that interest me.’

John Cleese is at the Assembly Hall Theatre in Tunbridge Wells on Friday, December 19 at 8pm. Tickets cost £29.50, which includes a copy of his autobiography So, Anyway. Visit www.assemblyhalltheatre.co.uk or call 01892 530613.