John Cleese’s divorce woes

John Cleese seems to be convinced he is going to be squeezed until the pips squeak by his third and soon-to-be ex wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger. "Guess how much I’m paying her at the moment?" the actor asked guests at a fund-raising event for Bristol Zoo. "I'm paying her £900,000 a year. And we had no children. It really is astonishing."

Cleese then told how Eichelberger had hired a lawyer called Jacqueline Misho, "notorious for taking you for everything she can get". Added the Monty Python star: "When I told my friends she'd hired Misho, they just put their heads in their hands."

Cleese, who in recent weeks has been seen with a new girlfriend, a magazine executive half his age called Veronica Smiley, claims wistfully that his two previous divorces were relatively peaceful affairs. "We went to mediation, and it was very civilised, but this is quite different. I even spoke to Alyce and suggested that I chose her lawyer and she chose mine – that way it would be fair, and neither of us would have one of these terribly aggressive ones – but she wasn't interested."
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