Deb's Digest
Debbie Atkinson’s family life column, as featured in the Southport Visiter.

Wednesday 25 May 2011

THE ALIMONY TOUR


We went to The Lowry last night to help John Cleese pay his ex-wife $20m alimony.
For two hours he retraced his glory days - after giving us a droll potted history of his dreary upbringing in Weston-super-Mare. Numerous lucky breaks, he modestly maintained, were his rare advantage, whether it was landing a role in Half a Sixpence alongside Tommy Steele on Broadway - fresh out of university and flushed with the surprise success of the Footlights revue Cambridge Circus - or David Frost’s summons for him to take a leading role in the career-making The Frost Report.
The funniest bits were the well-remembered (by me anyway) clips from Fawlty Towers and Monty Python and it's prompted me to revisit my boxed sets.
But the whole idea of such a great entertainer having to come out of well-deserved retirement to flaunt his stuff for a few thousand pounds is rather sad. I hope he's learnt his lesson!

No comments:

Post a Comment