Old age seems to be a construct in our minds

“I do a lot of writing,” says John. “The trouble is that it’s not terribly well paid.

“Acting on the other hand is very lucrative. So you find when you have an expensive divorce you have to do a lot of acting but it’s not as exciting and creative as writing.”

John wed fourth wife Jennifer, a jewellery designer and former model, in the Caribbean in 2012. But as he’s still paying for his previous splits, he is returning to acting.

He stars in new BBC sitcom Hold the Sunset with Gavin and Stacey’s Alison Steadman – who was in Clockwise with him.

They play Phil and Edith, old friends who plan to get married and find a place in the sun before a wayward son disrupts things.

It is the first British sitcom he has been in since Fawlty Towers and in 2015 he said there was “no way” he would be seen on the BBC again. But speaking from Nevis in the Caribbean ahead of the launch, John reveals how he was tempted back.

“He’s a nice character, Phil, I loved the chance to play him,” he says. “He’s not the sort of part I get offered a lot. I’m very fond of the writer, Charles McKeowan. We worked together on Monty Python.

“The funny thing about our business is that there’s a lot of good actors but not many good writers. It’s the best script I’ve seen for decades. I remember 10 years ago the BBC rang me up and asked if I’d like e to do a sitcom with Richard Griffiths.

“I adored Richard and thought it would be great fun to do something with him. Then they sent the script and it was absolutely dreadful.”

John wrote Fawlty Towers in 1975 5 with first wife Connie Booth and Basil became an iconic comedy figure, helping him pick up the 1980 BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance. Despite there being only 12 episodes, , Fawlty Towers has stood the test of time e and is regularly named the best sitcom om ever. But John says if it were pitched now, it might not make it. He says: ays: “I was lucky when I worked d on TV as people knew what they were doing and trusted their heir own judgment. The current nt lot seem to be dependent on audience figures.

“If you do anything origi- igi-