'Melancholy' John Cleese and third wife Alyce separate after 15 years of marriage

It is the third marriage to end in failure for the actor who has been described as 'exhausting to live with'.

Cleese and American-born psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger, 63, are said to have been living in different rooms in their Californian home for months.

Friends say they plan to move into separate homes after "falling out of love".

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One told the Mail that Cleese, like many comedians, could be "a difficult and complicated person".

The friend said: "The divorce is not a huge surprise to anyone who knows them both. This is by far the longest marriage John has had and some of us are just so surprised it kept going for so long.

"They both seem genuinely sad about it. There is no anger between them and no third parties are involved.

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"In the end, for both of them was the sad resignation that a long marriage had come to an end and that they were not going to spend their twilight years together."

The couple, who wed in December 1992, both have children from previous marriages, but they had no children together.

They met following the breakdown of Cleese's second marriage to Barbara Trentham in 1990.

Cleese's first marriage was in 1968 to actress Connie Booth, with whom he wrote Fawlty Towers. Their partnership ended in divorce after ten years.

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One report yesterday suggested Cleese, 69, had recently been suffering "bouts of melancholy" brought on by the deaths of several close friends.

It was claimed this might have been a catalyst in the breakdown of the relationship.

However one close friend, Michael Winner, who not only went to the couple's wedding but also actually joined them on honeymoon, rubbished the idea that Cleese was depressed.

He said: "It's reported that he's been melancholy but I had a long chat with him when I saw him in London at the end of last year and I also had a long chat with him over New Year when I was in Barbados and didn't find him that way at all. I thought he seemed very optimistic."

Mr Winner went on: "Something has happened within the marriage. Something apparently happened very recently and I can only wish the both of them happiness going their separate ways if that is what they do.

"Alyce is very gregarious and a very buzzy person and most of the time they got on very well.

"But I suppose in any marriage you occasionally rub each other up the wrong way - there's nothing unique in that."

Friends in Santa Barbara, where the couple live, said they had seldom been seen out together socially in the past year.

They added: "They were both spending increasing amounts of time apart, with John often leaving Santa Barbara for LA film projects and Alyce going to London."

Cleese rose to fame in the 1960s in television series including The Frost Report and most famously Monty Python's Flying Circus.

He has continued to be one of the country's favourite comedians.

Former comedy partner Michael Palin told the Mail: "It's sad news. It's really their business and as such I don't really have anything to say."