WE are not used to seeing John Cleese on his own. Even in his recent AA advert, Cleese has a “daughter” to work off as he hops around in a sleeping bag.

His comedy is often rooted in friction, in differences of opinion, one-upmanship and irritation, usually with someone shorter. All he has on stage for company is a table, stool and lectern and, in a theatre box, an autocue, presumably just in case the memory slips up at 71.

For all the lack of a physical foil, his first ever British solo touring show is still full of friction, differences of opinion and something rather than stronger than irritation. Cleese has to find $5 million to complete the $20 million alimony awarded by a Californian judge to ex-wife number three, Alice Faye Eichelberger.

His solution is to go on the road with his life story, and so, over the weekend, this giant of British humour performed two nights in York for the first time since the Cambridge Footlights played the Joseph Rowntree Theatre in 1963.

In jeans, blue summer jacket and open shirt, his relaxed look belies the cogs whirring away inside. Scripted the show may be, but it doesn’t lessen the contempt, the vitriol, as he gives the ex-Mrs Cleese both barrels with waspish digs, the tone one of distemper rather than humour.

A night of comedy could not be sustained on such ill feelings, and Cleese moves on to a slick-pattered chronological account of his beginnings in a Weston-Super-Mare family once called Cheese.

Next come his law studies at Cambridge University and that first comedy enterprise in the Footlight, where, hard as it is to believe now given his immense physical presence, all eyes were on Goodies-in-waiting Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor. But then again, Cleese always considered himself a writer first, performer second.

As he progresses through the years, with the aid of family photos and television and film clips, he sketches the story rather than giving fulsome insight into working with David Frost, writing for Peter Sellers, and the birth of Monty Python and his writing partnership with the late Graham Chapman, whose tribute from Cleese is the night’s most poignant moment.

He delves a little deeper at the outset of the second half when analysing his awkward relationship with his mother and their mutual black humour, the comedy of squirming discomfort, then returns to anecdotal mode for the origins of Fawlty Towers. As chance would have it, co-star Prunella Scales, Sybil to his Basil, is in Saturday’s audience and in a lovely touch, Cleese cajoles her to her feet to take the generous applause.

He concludes with reminiscences of A Fish Called Wanda, a somewhat abrupt ending when a summing-up befitting his piercing intelligence would be appropriate for a consistently amusing, nostalgic guided tour that nevertheless feels like he might prefer to be doing something else.