Monty Python legend Michael Palin opened up about his friend and co-star John Cleese, 86, during a recent Q&A, Michael Palin On A Roll, Lightly Toasted By John Lloyd on Monday April 27 in London. Speaking on stage to his friend, legendary comedy producer John Lloyd he responded to a story John shared about a man who claimed to be John Cleese's psychiatrist sending him jokes for Spitting Image when he worked on it.

Laughing, the 83-year-old star quipped: "John got through quite a few psychiatrists didn't he? They couldn't stand the pace. John's so very sharp and bright, anyway, but also I think John with a psychiatrist would run the agenda," he joked. "He would know exactly what he wanted to ask himself. The person who's asking the question quite redundant. John knows what he wants to get. He knows what the answer is - that everything was his mother's fault," he continued as the audience laughed raucously.

"That was what John always said, 'I found out this after 17 years of intensive therapy. It's my mother. It's my mother, this or that the other.'

"And the great thing was that John's mother was one wonderful lady. She lived to over 100 and John just wanted to get rid of her from 83 onwards," he concluded the story to rapturous applause.

John has been very open about his visits to psychiatrists saying in the past he has spent a "large part" of his life in some form of therapy, particularly to address issues in his relationships with women, which he traced back to his upbringing.

He didn't seem to share Michael's opinion of his mother describing her in his autobiography, So Anyway... as a "tyrant".

In it, he penned: "It cannot be a coincidence that I spent such a large part of my life in some form of therapy and that the vast majority of the problems I was dealing with involved relationships with women.

"My ingrained habit of walking on eggshells when dealing with my mother dominated my romantic liaisons for many years."

He has also acknowledged experiencing a "two and a half, three months of a nervous breakdown with suicidal thoughts" following his divorce from his third wife, American psychotherapist and author Alyce Faye Eichelberger. During this time, he was helped by a "mild dose of an antidepressant".

In a 2025 documentary, he said he was "glad" the 2008 breakdown happened because it gave him a "much more realistic grasp of what was important in life".