Veteran comedian John Cleese is to host a new weekly show for GB News from early next year.

The star, who turns 83 later this month, is known for two of the most iconic British comedies of all time - Monty Python's Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers - and has a career in the comedy industry stretching back to the early 1960s.

GB News confirmed that the new one-hour show "will feature John in conversation with his choice of guests on a wide range of areas that interest him" and will be developed by satirist Andrew Doyle, who presents Free Speech Nation for the channel and exec produces the nightly Headliners programme.

Talking to Amol Rajan on Radio 4, Cleese said: "I was approached [by GB News] and I didn't know who they were. And I don't know much about modern television because I've pretty much given up on it... and then I met one or two of the people concerned and had dinner with them and I liked them very much.

"It's a free speech channel and I am working with a young fellow, Andrew Doyle, who's a stand-up comic."

"Well, the nice thing about talking to the GB News audience is that they may not be used to hearing the sort of things I'll be saying," he continued.

"I mean, the BBC have not come to me and said 'would you like to have some time on our shows?', and if they did I would say 'not on your nelly, because I wouldn't get wouldn't get five minutes into the first show before I'd been cancelled or censored!'"

Doyle added: "John will have complete creative freedom to have the conversations he wants to have with the people who interest him most.

"Like John himself, it will be far from predictable."

News of Cleese's new show comes amid a wave of new incomings at the fledgling broadcaster, with Michael Portillo, Andrew Pierce and Camilla Tominey also having joined in recent months.