Fawlty Towers legend John Cleese admitted he was “depressed” as he made a devastating confession about death. The actor has lost several co-stars over the years, and in a new interview with The Times the Monty Python star, 85, confessed it started to get to him. He said: “All these lovely people. Geoffrey Palmer, Joan Sanderson, Ken Campbell, Bernard Cribbins, all these wonderful people that I’d really enjoyed working with, all dead.
“Every time somebody came up and I thought, are they still alive? Dead! And I started getting a bit depressed and it was just loss, really, a realisation of the loss. I ought to warn your readers that when you get to your eighties, you’re not prepared. I think Philip Roth once finished one novel about old age by saying it’s a massacre.”
Despite his advancing years, Cleese has an anti-ageing system in place, and spends £17,000 a year on stem cell therapy. For the past 20 years he’s been splurging on the expensive treatment, telling Saga Magazine: “These cells travel around the body and when they discover a place that needs repair, they’ll then change into the cells that you want for repair, so they might become cartilage cells or liver cells.
“So I think that’s why I don’t look bad for 84,” he added in 2024. Speaking of the hefty price tag, he said: “If you’re buying yourself a few extra years, I think it’s worth it.”
He has, however, admitted he’s likely to die before his younger wife Jennifer Wade, 53, with whom he shares a 32-year age gap. He explained: “What I love is that she’s 30 years younger than I am, but she keeps me young.
“I mean, it is sad to think I shall die some time before she will, but I’m in pretty good health. I’m not fit, but the way I put it is the doctors don’t yet know what I’m going to die of.”
The actor has also had brushes with cancer over the years, and informed his social media followers in 2021: “Had a minor operation on Friday. A surgeon cut a small cancerous bit out of my leg. Very minor.
“At my age this sort of thing happens about once a week. He did a beautiful job, sewed it up and said, 'Tis but a scratch.'”
