68 year-old Monty Python star John Cleese is in a new relationship with the VP of marketing at Radar Magazine, 34 year-old Jane Smiley. The two went on a vacation with to Italy and Switzerland recently and the Daily Mail has quotes from both of them on their new relationship. There’s also a photograph of the two of them together, with Smiley looking a little sheepish. It’s hard to believe they would speak so candidly to the Daily Mail, and it’s possible these quotes are taken from somewhere else or even fabricated given the source. The Mail phrases things so vaguely that it’s hard to tell when they’re telling the truth or have an exclusive interview. Even a friend of Cleese who joined the couple briefly on vacation chimes in to say that he didn’t think they were hitting the sheets – before they went on that jaunt to Europe together. Cleese is going through a divorce from his third wife of over 15 years, Alyce Faye Eichelberger, and his friend jokingly calls the vacation with Smiley a “divorcey-moon.”

Cleese spied his opportunity when his old friend Michael Winner, the movie director and restaurant critic, arranged a six-day road trip to Switzerland and Italy.

The 72-year-old Death Wish director dubbed it the ‘Divorcey-moon’ to mark his friend’s split from therapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger after 16 years.

When the two men reached Zurich, Miss Smiley flew out from the US to join them, and she and Cleese continued their journey alone through Switzerland and Italy to Vaduz, Lake Como and Bergamo.

Cleese explained: ‘We met in New York at a power breakfast and spent a few days together in Switzerland and Italy and we liked each other a lot, but the problem is she works in Chicago for a magazine and I’m in California and London.
‘I am not sure when we’ll be seeing each other again. Unfortunately we are living very far apart citywise.’

Miss Smiley said: ‘We met a few weeks ago at the Regency Hotel in New York and we had this natural connection and became firm friends.

‘We’re at the stage where we are still getting to know each other.

‘At the moment it is a very close, very warm friendship.

‘He is twice my age. He’s very stimulating and extremely funny and charming.

‘I’m American and had never heard of Monty Python or Fawlty Towers, although I had seen A Fish Called Wanda.’

Winner, who dined with the couple in Zurich, said: ‘It was almost a blind date.

‘I don’t think they’d had a major consummation before that, if I may put it that way.

‘She’s delightful and definitely a girlfriend.’

Cleese has been in London working on a series of projects including recording a commentary for a new set of BBC DVDs for Fawlty Towers.

[From The Daily Mail]

If Smiley grew up in America she’s not likely to use phrases like “firm friends,” and it sounds awkward the way they have her speaking so stiffly and saying obvious things like “He is twice my age.” Maybe everyone talked to the Daily Mail assuming they’d make up and embellish shit anyway, but I doubt it. Good for these two, though. They’re both single and old enough to make a decision about who they want to date. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to work out given the way they’re presumably talking about it. It sounds like they’re interested in each other because they found a connection but that they’re not sure they’re right for each other given the age difference. That kind of spark doesn’t always evolve into a romantic relationship, but they’re giving it a chance anyway.