This is a never-ending tabloid free-for-all. First, John Cleese’s “27-year-old” girlfriend Barbie Orr did a tell-all interview where she talked explicitly about Cleese’s anatomy. Then we found out that Barbie is not anywhere near 27 years old – she’s 45, something she is still denying. Then Cleese unceremoniously dumped Barbie. Now he’s trying to do damage control.

I really like John Cleese, though this whole situation has made him seem like an old fool. He’s trying to defend himself in the press while he should just quietly wait out the storm. He spoke to Hello! Magazine, and The Daily Telegraph has the details, which are still too much information:

Speaking about his split with American comedian Barbie Orr, the Monty Python and Fawlty Towers star told Hello! magazine that the pair met on a film set last year and they dated a few times, perhaps six or seven in total.

He said she had made him laugh, but a couple of months ago he told her he thought they should “just be friends”.

Asked about claims that the 69-year-old went to great lengths to look good, Cleese told Hello!: “All that was nonsense. When you get to my age, you do running repairs. I had my fourth hair transplant as it means I don’t have to wear wigs in a movie – I hate wigs. It only takes four hours, it’s really easy – so much easier than wearing those horrible things on set.”

“My teeth were terrible – I had a remodelling of my mouth about two years ago. I can’t tell you how many teeth I’d cracked and had to have replaced – it all works really well now. All of this I had done before I even met her.”

Last month, Orr, who is more than 20 years younger then Cleese, gave a detailed interview to the Sunday Mirror in which she said Cleese had a “nice package” and took lots of vitamins as well as working out.

Cleese is working on a stage musical adaptation of his hit movie A Fish Called Wanda with daughter Camilla, 25, from his second marriage to Barbara Trentham.

Three-times-married Cleese said that he could do the work he wanted to do for the first time in a while.

He told the magazine: “Now that I’m not married any more, my earning requirement has dropped rather dramatically – I can now do the work that I want to do, which has not been the case for a long time. I’ll write about my divorce eventually.”

Cleese, who said his latest divorce after 16 years of marriage to Alyce Faye Eichelberger, was nearly settled, cast doubts over whether he would marry for a fourth time.

He said: “The question is, what’s the point? If you’re having children I think it’s a very, very good idea to get married, because it means that it’s much harder to break up, and you should give it absolutely your best shot when you have children.”

“If you’re not going to have children I seriously query, if you’re not religious, what the point is.

“When I look back, I think getting married to Alyce Faye, I did it really because it meant a great deal to her. It didn’t seem as significiant to me.”

From The Daily Telegraph

Yeah, it’s not really the classiest thing to defend yourself by belittling your ex-wife, who never gave an explicit interview about your anatomy. I don’t really care about the hair plugs or the new teeth, I put that under the general heading of “maintenance”. But all of that stuff Barbie said about his package and how he was near death? When will he do damage control about that?

Note by Celebitchy: I read that Hello! Interview and Cleese says that Orr told him she was 35, which is still 10 years younger than her supposed age. He also said that she staged a hug with him after a date in which he told her he just wanted to be friends and that “A few days later the pictures [of the hug] were in the press. I think because she knew it was over she was trying to resuscitate it using the media.”

John Cleese is shown in the header on 5/3/08. Credit: PRPhotos