JOHN Cleese turned up at the Grand Opera House in deep-wintry January in jeans, summer jacket and shoes, and no socks, exposing tanned legs.

The weather might have caught up with that Californian look by the time the self-styled “most senile member of Monty Python” returns to York for two shows this weekend.

The show’s name has changed since his promotional visit too, John Cleese’s Alimony Tour being replaced by one of those titles of the It Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin variety: An Evening With The Legendary John Cleese.

It will still be “an evening of well-honed anecdotes, psychoanalytical tit-bits, details of recent surgical procedures and unprovoked attacks on former colleagues, especially Michael Palin.” And yes, it will still be paying off the alimony to wife number three, Alyce Faye Eichelberger.

Was calling it The Alimony Tour a joke or serious?

“It’s true but it’s also a joke because to be perfectly honest I don’t think I’d be doing this if I didn’t have to provide a million dollars alimony every year,” says Cleese, 71.

“Because what I really enjoy doing best of all is writing. Writing is always what I valued and performing, which is what people know me for, is just closing the circle. So once I’ve written something I think I might as well perform it because it’s better paid than writing and I won’t screw it up because I understand why I’m doing things.

“So that’s what I would be doing, but if you need to earn this sort of money then this is about the nicest way of doing it. Which if you go out in front of an audience now that I’m old is pre-selected because nobody said, ‘We can’t stand him, let’s buy two tickets’.

“Almost everyone out there likes what I’ve done and so there’s a very warm and affectionate response which totally relaxes you and you know they are going to like the kind of jokes you are doing because that’s why they’re there.”

Cleese has already presented similar evenings in Scandinavia, America and elsewhere, so choosing what to feature in the show back home in Britain “wasn’t very complicated”.

“I have done a lot of charity shows in America. What I tend to do there is introduce a Python film or Wanda; I walk off and have dinner in the restaurant round the corner and then I come back and do a Q&A for an hour.

“And people love to hear what it was like to be part of the Monty Python group; what the hotel in Torquay was really like that Fawlty was based on, or the hotel manager,” he says. “So a lot of that stuff was already half polished in my mind.”

Cleese did 25 shows in Scandinavia where he is “huge”. “Quite seriously. Huge! I can walk down the street in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and they have no idea who I am. If I go to Northern Europe – Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia and even the German-speaking countries – I will be recognised,” he says.

“And to my surprise I am really quite, quite big in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. I used to say it’s northern Protestant Europe, but of course the Poles are Catholic. There seems to be some sort of fault line and north of that they like the BBC comedy shows and see a lot of them, and south they don’t really want to know about British humour.”

Why is that?

“I don’t know if there isn’t some deep temperamental difference that the Latin folk have that is at some deep psychological level different to the Nordic folk, but it’s hard to say.

“People generalise about America, but the American sense of humour is completely different in the Bush states from what it is in the east and west coast and Chicago, who have the same ironic sense of humour that we do.

“People say ‘I love British comedy, Monty Python and Benny Hill’. But wait a moment, they don’t fall in exactly the same category, so it’s more complicated.”

In the second half of the show, Cleese branches out from reflecting on his career to “analysing black humour and offending audiences”. “I talk about where you draw the line, why some people laugh at some kind of jokes and other people are horrified,” he says.

“It’s quite an interesting subject. I think it comes from the fact my mother and I shared a very black sense of humour. I think I’ve always had that.”

What else features after the interval?

“We get on to Fawlty Towers. I talk about Graham Chapman dying and what an extraordinary eccentric chap he was. Then A Fish Called Wanda… then I look at my watch and go home,” he says.

For many years, home has been America, but Cleese could be on the move, with a new woman in his life.

“Is America still home? I don’t know. I’m selling up in America. I decided when I was in Scandinavia so it was only a few months ago. For two reasons: two years ago 80 per cent of my income was from America, now 80 per cent is from outside America and that’s not anything I’ve done; that’s the way the economies have changed,” he says.

“The other thing is I think America is going absolutely crazy. Whatever agreement Obama manages to make with the Republicans, it’s not dealing with that deficit for one moment because no American politician wants to talk about the deficit because they’ll get voted out straight away.

“I think the place is teetering on the edge of collapse.”]

• An Evening With John Cleese, Grand Opera House, York, tomorrow and Sunday, 7.30pm. Tickets: £21 to £33.50 on 0844 871 3024 or grandoperahouseyork.org.uk