I was expecting an icy reception, that clipped bark, for John Cleese to peer down his nose at me with his head back, his ramrod spine scarcely containing his boundless, simmering fury.

Because while John Cleese the comedian/actor/writer, should not be mistaken for Basil Fawlty or any of his more imitable characters, he is coming to Oxford to raise money for Hacked Off, the campaign for a free and accountable press, so I’m aware that journalists aren’t his favourite people.

And yet John Cleese is as utterly cheerful, charming, insightful, honest and lovable as ever, disarming me immediately. We have spoken a few times before, the latter in the New Theatre on the advent of his Divorce Tour where he regaled me with ghastly tales of his third ex wife whose eye-watering matrimony claims had forced him back on the road.

Today he’s talking to me from his ‘little’ flat in Sloane Square which he shares with fourth wife Jenny, a jewellery designer, as they prepare to move to a larger house in Bath, and where he will continue to spend his time writing, campaigning, doing the odd TV part and advert and generally enjoying life as his 80th birthday looms.

“It’s delightful in London but I’m looking forward to the spaciousness of the West Country. So it’s really exciting to be moving, to get a fresh start.”

It is after all where he’s from, born in 1939 to Reg, an insurance salesman, and his wife Muriel in Weston-super-Mare. John then won a scholarship to Clifton College, a public school in Bristol, went on to study law at Cambridge, and the rest is history.

He has also just finished filming Edith, his first BBC sitcom since Fawlty Towers, playing Phil, an old boyfriend of the titular heroine (played by Alison Steadman) who dreams of marrying his lady love and moving to the sun, which is due to be broadcast at the end of the year.

“For an old lag, I found it exhausting to be filming every day. I just don’t have the energy any more,” he sighs with genuine regret.

So to be appearing at Oxford Playhouse for one night only is not only a coup but something he feels strongly about?

“Well I have a special place in my heart for Oxford Playhouse and a soft spot for Oxford, after all Python was made up of two from Oxford (Michael Palin and Terry Jones) and three from Cambridge (Graham Chapman, Eric Idle and Cleese). I came here with Footlights and it was my first real taste of a live audience.

“I performed there in 1962 with the likes of Chapman and Miriam Margoyles. We were doing a sketch about reading football results with the wrong inflections and I suddenly realised “Christ I’m supposed to be on stage. I hurtled down the stairs and landed on stage in the empty spotlight with the quip, “and just in, some late results.” I think it was my best ad lib ever actually,” he laughs.

“And anyway, it will be nice talking about something other The Holy Grail even if it is the easiest money I’ve ever made

Still basking in the glow from a more recent trip at the Oxford Union he says he enjoyed the erudite audience, a far cry from the hay bales turning in Cleveland Ohio, he assures me. “Oxford got my jokes the first time.”

But surely it wasn’t his first time at The Union. “I’ve been asked before but it’s been so hard to plan that far in advance with screen and script commitments,” he says modestly.

Let’s just stop and reflect on that workload for a moment shall we? He co-founded Monty Python in the late 1960s, which resulted in the sketch show Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the four Monty Python film. In the mid-1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the award-winning Fawlty Towers.Later, he co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda (much of which was filmed in Oxford) and Fierce Creatures, both of which he also wrote. Then came Clockwise, two James Bond films as R and Q, two Harry Potter films, and the last three Shrek films.

So how far does he think intellect aids comedy? “Well there’s a lot of bad comedy out there. Very few people are good at it actually. I suppose because it’s very difficult to get right. If it was easy everyone would be at it. And people make the mistake of thinking that serious means solemn but you can make jokes about serious subjects.”

Like the press? “They are so very dreadful. It’s about time we stood up to them. How dare they criticise everyone else while being unable to take any themselves. And they prey on the fact that most people have a skeleton in the cupboard or two, something that happened 30 years ago and that scares people. I don’t think I have any left though,” he says almost sadly. “All my skeletons were brought out ages ago.”

Cleese hasn’t been spared numerous public slatings which may explain his vitriol. His three divorces, remarriages, problematic children and money issues send the red-tops into a frenzy of pagination. “The standard of journalism, in London at least, is appalling, and littered with mistakes. They get it all wrong,” he tells me as I make a metal note to check all my facts and then recheck them.

“Good journalism is very hard work and I’ll be talking about that at the Playhouse, alongside comedian, Kate Smurthwaite who is funny, energetic and full of ideas, so it;s going to be fun. It feels right because Oxford gave me a taste of what proper laughter actually felt like and how fast you have to work an audience, how to make changes, however subtle. So I am optimistic. I like making people laugh.”