Monty Python star John Cleese is retiring from writing and performing sitcoms because he believes he will never top the success of Fawlty Towers.
Cleese's announcement is perhaps not such a big surprise to those who have kept track of his career. His first US TV sitcom, Wednesday 9.30, was axed in 2002 after just two episodes.
Since then, the 66-year-old has focused on the big screen, from starring as Q in two James Bond films and Nearly Headless Nick in Harry Potter to writing a screenplay for Aardman Animations.
In whatever free time he now has, Cleese who lives in Santa Barbara, California, plans to become a "professor of comedy", giving aspiring stand-ups master classes on how to make people laugh.
He is already a visiting professor at Cornell University in New York state.
He also plans to write a history of comedy, starting with silent cinema stars such as Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, subjects of comedian Paul Merton's current BBC 4 series Silent Clowns.
The book will end with Cleese's critiques of contemporary comedians such as Eddie Izzard and Ricky Gervais.
