With a career spanning more than five decades, it's difficult to know where to start when a man as legendary as John Cleese answersthe phone.
His recognisably posh British accent firmly in place, just as during much of his impressive career, Cleese called the shots.
"We'll talk for about 10 minutes" he said, explaining he'd been up for 22 hours straight. "I got up at 3am in Sydney and I'm still functioning, so let's get going," he said, his "comedy" side not yet kicked in.
"I got a plane at 6am so if I'm not making any sense it's that. It's not old age," he joked.
Described by his website thejohncleese.com as "British writer, actor and tall person", Cleese is one of British comedy most iconic figures, and has always exhibited a unique take on the world. From the early '60s there's been film, television, stage, music, comedy, lecturing, workshops, animation and a lot of writing, Cleese is the epitome of Great British showbusiness, best known for his idiosyncratic turns in Monty Python's Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers.
Admittedly, lacking a little direction I took the easy option. "John Cleese, where should I start?" Thankfully, Cleese is never short of something to say. There's no hesitation, the only difference being each story is more captivating than the next .
"I guess you start with right now," he said. "The here and now. I've noticed as I've got older how much the world changes. When you're younger you think the world is very..." He paused, searching for what I expected to be a three syllable word I probably wouldn't have understood before finally releasing the word "set".
It's probably worth pointing out it was the last pause; all prior concerns about whether the strict Cleese-timed 10-minute slot would be enough were dispelled.
"You think nothing changes but I've actually discovered that from one decade to the next, I'm actually doing quite different things."
One of them is his one-man shows, An Evening With JC, which he is bringing to Dubai's First Group Theatre from Wednesday.
"A few years ago I got so fed up with the Hollywood studios," he said, his sentences rolling into one. "I wrote a couple of scripts and I thought they were both very good and so did the studios at the time, but after a while I realised I was in with a load of people who had no idea about comedy at all but they were telling me what to do with my scripts and so round about that time when I got terminally frustrated with them, a very nice gentlemen from Australia asked me to go out and tour New Zealand and I thought ‘well if I do that then nobody's going to tell me what I can and what I can't do'. Then I discovered I thoroughly enjoyed it and I did California and the West coast a few times and I did Scandinavia a couple of times, South Africa. I've just finished 54 shows in Australia and it's a jolly good way to earn money because it's fun and the audiences are always very friendly. They give me a real lift. So this is the easiest and best way to make money at the moment."
Alimony
Without plumbing the depths of bitterness, Cleese joked the tour was originally dubbed The Alimony Tour due to the dates coincidentally falling around the time he was forced to sell numerous residences thanks to a divorce settlement with ex-wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger.
"No, no that was the joke in the beginning but we decided the joke had got a bit old," he said. When Cleese met Eichelberger, his third wife, in 1990, she was living in a council flat in London with two sons from a previous marriage. In 2009, she exited their marriage with $21 million (Dh77 million).
"I mean, I've paid Alyce $17 million and I still have to pay her another four over the next four years so I can't sit at home and write as much," he added before launching into the life and times of a writer, including why your passport shouldn't give you away.
"In some countries they screw up their faces and start questioning why you want to write about their country," he said. "My passport says ‘actor'. They are light-minded creatures not to be taken seriously. Friendly and harmless. That's the thing to put on your passport."
A conversation with Cleese somehow encapsulates his entire life. From growing up in the small seaside town of Weston-super-Mare where he was bullied at school, to starring in Harry Potter, the life of Cleese is played out every night at his stand-up shows.
In the opening minutes, he pondered what he might have done with the money if he didn't have to pay Alyce — other than boosting the Botox industry — and uses a picture of her withdrawing a large wad of notes from a cashpoint.
He talks fondly of a film called Spud, shot in South Africa, in which he plays a school teacher, and says his involvement always comes down to script, alone adding he'll "never compromise".
"I read a script last night in Sydney when I was having dinner and I was told there are two very high-profile names attached to it already."
Ever the professional Cleese wouldn't reveal who, simply referring to them as "one fella and one woman" at the "top of the game".
"I read this script and after 40 or 50 pages I just gave up because it was so unbelievably awful. You have no idea how awful most scripts are, so when a really good one pops through the letter box you snap it up because you don't get many of them."
His wit and intelligence shone through from a young age and by his 20s he was writing sketches with Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam. Monty Python's Flying Circus ran for four series from October 1969 to December 1974 on the BBC and the team went on to create feature length films including Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.
Mishaps and blunders
Cleese went on to create one of the most celebrated shows in British comedy, Fawlty Towers, which followed the day-to-day running of a hotel in Torquay where mishaps and blunders were common. The title character, Basil Fawlty, was played by Cleese.
One of the most famous Brits in the world, Cleese has remained in the public eye with high-profile film roles in James Bond film Die Another Day, Shrek 2 and Shrek Forever After and two Harry Potter films.
"I love Shrek because you could show up in your slippers," he said. "You walk into what is effectively a radio studio, they show you some story boards and you just start recording. It's cheap so you can spend a lot of time perfecting it and the Shrek people really know what they are doing, which isn't something you come across very often. I didn't enjoy Harry Potter at all because it's all about special effects. Nobody knows what's going on and the only person who can tell you if what you did was any good is the special effects supervisor who's this autistic type who's lived in a cave all his life and never talked to other human beings. It's a thoroughly difficult experience."
Perhaps more strangely, Cleese was approached by GPS navigation system manufacturers Tom Tom, who requested his unique British tones for a voice option on the device.
"It's been extremely well received," he laughed. "Very bizarre recording all these concise words and directions."
And while Cleese made it very clear he wasn't a man to messed with he did reveal there's one lady in his life who can put him in his place.
"I gave it [Tom Tom] to my daughter at one point and she said ‘Dad, you know I always try my best to do the opposite of what you tell me to do, so it really wouldn't work for me.'"
Don't miss it
Tickets, priced Dh350 and Dh450, are available at the Madinat box office. Shows are daily from Wednesday until Saturday at 8pm. On Friday, there are two shows, at 2.30pm and 8pm.
