WATCHSPOTTING: Comic legend John Cleese on his silly little watch and ‘unbelievable’ watch prices

Felix Scholz

Last night one of the elder statesman of comedy, John Cleese, appeared on Channel Ten’s prime-time news panel show The Project. Ostensibly Cleese was there to discuss a new stage version of Farty Owls – sorry, Fawlty Towers – but things got a little off track when one of the presenters asked him about his brightly coloured Swatch. Turns out this timepiece, which Cleese picked up for about £12 at a London airport is his perfect holiday accessory: “What I like about it is that it’s plastic. If you go off to the sun and sweat a lot, as you do when you get old, it rots the leather. So a silly little watch like this is much nicer.”  Cleese continued: “People are crazy about watches these days, aren’t they? The prices are unbelievable.” From this we infer that John isn’t a regular reader of Time+Tide.

Check out the video for yourself – the watch chat starts three minutes in. Perhaps Cleese could take some wrist pointers from his peer across the pond, Bill Murray, spotted on screen by eagle-eyed Nick from Deployant  wearing a very fine Audemars Piguet perpetual calendar with a great back story.