John Cleese, who as Basil Fawlty once gave his car a ‘damn good thrashing’ with a branch, is to be the calming voice of a new in-car navigation system.

Drivers have long been able to customise their GPS boxes with a series of exaggerated characters, such as the Cockney wideboy or German psychoanalyst, but Cleese is to sign such a deal.

Customers of electronics company TomTom will be able to pay €10 (around £7) to download his voice.

TomTom’s chief executive Harold Goddijn said: ‘As a personal fan of the Monty Python sketches this is really fantastic news, and from a TomTom perspective this emphasises the fun we are bringing to satellite navigation”.