British comedian John Cleese is shown with Sebastian the Carpet Python at Taronga Zoo in Sydney on Jan. 6, 2006. Cleese is to perform in Toronto and Montreal in the coming week. (Associated Press)

John Cleese says there's not much hope of a reunion of all the cast members of Monty Python's Flying Circus in honour of the former BBC-TV show's 40th anniversary this year, but denies there's a rift among the crew.

"I don't see any reason to get back together. We've speculated about it. We very nearly did a stage show a few years ago but Michael was the one who dropped out," he said in an interview with CBC's Q cultural affairs show on Thursday.

Cleese, who is in Toronto this week to host a gala at the Just for Laughs festival, said their attempts at working together over the past few years, including a new movie project, have always fallen apart.

"Nobody really wants to work together because we're all doing our own thing," he said.

A few events may be scheduled to mark the 40th anniversary, he said, but reports of a big reunion are blown out of proportion.

Works to help fund 2 divorces

Cleese himself, who went from the Silly Walks skit to playing Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, now lives in Santa Barbara, Calif., and is cultivating a new generation of fans through his website, blog and video podcast.

"I thought of it at one point as a like having your own private television station. If you thought of something funny, you could go in and record it and put it up because normally, if I have something funny, I have no way of getting it out," he said.

At 69, Cleese admits he does gigs such as Just for Laughs in part for the money. From the Toronto festival, he'll go on to host a gala in Montreal.

"The trouble is I've had two very expensive divorces. The first one was nothing. It was £2.5 million [$4.6 million Cdn]. But this one is $13 million [US], plus a million in alimony per year for seven years," he said.

"There's a certain amount of money I need to earn each year. And I need to keep working a bit, this year less than last year."

Cleese said he tried to make enough staying home and writing comedy, but found that producers were frightened of anything he considered truly funny.

"It's very frustrating. I had to go back to performing partly because it's so much better paid than writing, but ultimately because if you write you're handing it over to people who most of the time don't know what to do with what they've got," he said..

Cleese called himself "lucky" to have made TV in the 1960s to '80s, when there was less political correctness and producers weren't as frightened of anything unconventional.

"We were a bunch of school boys and we did things just for the hell of it," he said of the Python crew, who wrote all their own material.

"That's why it was so free and naughty. If we thought it was funny, that was it. There was no kind of demographic [worrying about], 'Do we have the 24-year-olds?'"

Influenced by greats

Cleese said he loves physical comedy, and considers stars such as Harpo Marx and Laurel and Hardy his comedy influences.

But he's no big fan of his Silly Walks skit.

"There are other bits I am much more fond of like the Cheese Shop, an extraordinary sketch where I just stand there naming cheese after cheese, after cheese. That has always struck me as a genuinely funny and original piece of material.

"In fact, the happiest moment that I ever had in the whole of Monty Python was when we read that out — [the late Graham] Chapman and I had written it — and we read it out together, and Michael Palin laughed so much he fell off his chair."

Cleese is working on a musical version of his film A Fish Called Wanda with his daughter, Camilla.

He'll perform Saturday in Toronto and in Montreal next Wednesday at Just for Laughs.