Review: John Cleese – The Alimony tour ***

JOHN Cleese says that as a boy he collected favourite jokes in a little notebook so that he could analyse what made them so funny.

The most amusing part of this one-man show is where he talks of his love for black humour and why jokes around taboo subjects have us belly-laughing, even as we squirm.

Relating this shared humour to his fractious relationship with his mother and discussing how dark mirth bonded them as nothing else could, Cleese provided the only few minutes of fresh, insightful material in a show that was heavy on tired musings about themes with which we were already too familiar.

For a comedy legend, what he patronisingly called “just a fan show” in front of a mostly uncritical, lap-it-up audience, was never going to require hard work. That said, the clips of a few favourite career moments – such as the fire drill episode from Fawlty Towers and the fish slapping dance from Python – were still almost agonisingly funny, as were affectionate reminiscences of departed Python Graham Chapman.

To many in the audience John Cleese can do no wrong, but some of us left the theatre wishing he’d shared more of the man behind the genius in return for paying his ex-wife’s grocery bill.

To June 4.