Comedy legend John Cleese is coming to Birmingham next year as part of a national tour, with tickets on sale today.

The star, best known as a key member of the Monty Python gang and crazed hotelier Basil Fawlty, will be at the Birmingham Hippodrome in May next year.

The comic will play two dates in Birmingham as part of his Alimony Tour, visiting the second city on May 10 and 11.

Cleese, 70, has promised an evening of stories about his life and career, which spans from the 1960s to the present day.

He said: “It is an evening of well honed anecdotes, psychoanalytical tit-bits, details of recent surgical procedures, and unprovoked attacks on former colleagues, especially Michael Palin.”

Now living in California this will be his first ever UK tour with its title referring to the financial implications of his divorce to his third wife, American psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger.

The couple married in December 1992, splitting 16 years later in January 2008.

The divorce was settled in December 2008, with the settlement leaving Eichelberger with £12 million in finance and assets.

By the time she has received an agreed £600,000 a year for seven years, she will be the richer of the two.

John Cleese started his career as a sketch writer for BBC Radio’s Dick Emery Show and then The Frost Report.

After this stardom beckoned, and Monty Python was created with Cleese co-writing and starring in four series and three films.

He went on to achieve further great success as the neurotic hotel manager Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, which he co-wrote with his then wife Connie Booth.

Cleese went on to crack the USA with A Fish Called Wanda, which he wrote and starred in with Jamie Lee Curtis. He also appeared in two Bond movies, two Harry Potter films, and the Shrek films.

Never far from the headlines, Cleese was in the news again recently after being caught up in the disruption caused by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, when he was stranded in Oslo.

He ended up taking a £3,300 taxi the 1,000 miles to Brussels, where he took a Eurostar to the UK.

The tour starts in Cambridge on May 3, moving on to Birmingham, then Salford, Liverpool, Oxford, Leeds, Edinburgh, finishing in Bristol.

Tickets for John Cleese’s Alimony Tour are on sale priced between £20 and £32.50 available on 0844 3385000, or at www.birminghamhippodrome.com