Monty Python and the Holy Sale: John Cleese sells off TV and movie props to fund multi-million-pound divorce

Python star John Cleese, 73, married fourth wife Jennifer Wade last year

Divorced Alyce Faye Eichelberger in 2008 and ordered to pay her £12.5m

Selling fibre-glass helmet from Monty Python and the Holy Grail for £999

Also selling photos of silly walks and Fawlty Towers car thrashing scene

Back in the UK: John Cleese and his wife Jennifer Wade

The crippling cost of divorce has already forced John Cleese into crisis measures, such as launching his stand-up comedy ‘Alimony Tour’, and even moving to another country.

But it would seem he is still looking for ways to keep his finances afloat.

The Monty Python star has embarked on a sale of film props and signed photos he accumulated during his career.

The items include a fibre-glass helmet used in the film Monty Python And The Holy Grail, which is being offered at £999.

There is also a 1970 photo which shows the Monty Python stars doing silly walks, priced at £29.99, and a signed photo of the classic Fawlty Towers scene in which Cleese as Basil Fawlty thrashes his red Austin 1300 with a tree branch.

The photos are among seven of Cleese performing in Python and Fawlty Towers sketches which, with the other items, are for sale on the Original Memorabilia Company website.

It is the same website the 73-year-old actor previously used to sell his beloved 1987 Bentley Eight, which was bought for £17,100.

As part of the deal he agreed to have lunch with whoever bought it and give a handwritten story of some of the car’s most famous passengers, including Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline, his co-stars from the film A Fish Called Wanda.

Cleese, who last year married his fourth wife, Jennifer Wade, 31 years his junior, divorced American psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger in 2008 after 16 years of marriage.

He was ordered to pay £12.5million in finance and assets, including £612,000 a year until 2016 and hand over an apartment in New York, and a £2million mews house in Holland Park, West London.



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Sale: The items include a fibre-glass helmet used in the film Monty Python And The Holy Grail, which is being offered at £999

Famous: There is also a 1970 photo which shows the Monty Python stars doing silly walks, priced at £29.99 Prize car: The Original Memorabilia Company website is the same place that Cleese previously used to sell his beloved 1987 Bentley Eight, which was bought for £17,100

Faced with the demands, he was forced to sell his £6million California beach house.

Cleese has also moved from the US to Monaco to avoid paying a huge tax bill on his divorce payments to Miss Eichelberger.



He has already said he would not return to the UK because of harsh tax laws.

It also prompted him to embark on his stand-up tour, in which he told audiences: ‘I am here because, frankly, I have fallen on hard times having been through a costly and acrimonious divorce. I call it the Alimony Tour or Feeding The Beast.’

Cleese has remained friends with his first wife Connie Booth, who co-wrote and starred in Fawlty Towers with him, and his second wife, US actress Barbara Trentham.