Like millions of people in my generation I discovered Monty Python as a teenager in the 1980's staying up late on Sunday nights watching MTV. Even though the BBC produced thousands of hours of comedy only the best ended up in America such as Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Young Ones. Each member of the Python sketch comedy team had their own voice and it was often immediately recognizable. None of them seemed to enjoy themselves on the show as much as Eric Idle.
Eric Idle is best known as Sir Robin who ran away, the man who loved the machine that goes beep and of course as the ghost who lived in Stuart Pankin's attic in the sitcom Nearly Departed. Since the entire Python troupe reunited onstage together for the first time in 17 years at the Aspen Comedy Festival, Idle has made the decision to do live tours of new and old material.
His latest live tour is The Greedy Bastard Tour. In it Idle will be doing many great sketches and of course he will be revisiting his cottage industry of the Rutland Isles, the Rutles and perhaps even a visit with the Rutland Television Network.
Check out the Greedy Bastard website for when the tour will be near you.
DRE: Are you an official greedy bastard now?
EI: I'm trying to join the greedy bastards, and trying to get with the greedy bastard program. I think that it's the Bush era and we should get with the fucking program before it's too late.
DRE: I didn't realize that you needed money at this point?
EI: Well you know, money is always handy, isn't it? If you're going to get married, it is a need. There's always a woman who thinks that you've got more than you can earn [laughs].
DRE: What are you going to be doing on the tour exactly, new or old stuff?
EI: There's a bit of the new, blue, old and something borrowed. It's like a wedding. It's the wedding of comedy and the marriage of different styles of comedy.
DRE: Who's going to be on the tour with you?
EI: I've got some guest stars. I've got John Du Prez, my musical partner. I've got Peter Crabbe, and they're going to come on and help me do things, silly things, so we tickle and amuse the audience.
DRE: What do you think that the people you've worked with in the past, like you said, stealing their stuff and putting it up on stage?
EI: Well I pay them so I don't steal. I ask. They should be so fucking lucky that I once worked with them. With the Python stuff we are a family company. So, it all goes into our pension funds.
DRE: You guys aren't collecting any pensions just yet?
EI: I don't think so, not just yet. It's very hard to retire in show business. No one ever really tries it.
DRE: Maybe John Cleese is eligible?
EI: John is eligible, but I don't think that he ever stops. He's always making movies and doing things, and I don't think that he'll ever retire. He's always got this dream of retiring to an island and reading a book. But I think that he's had that dream since he was twenty six.
DRE: I've heard that good sketch comedy comes from the comedy having a point of view, what do you think Python's point of view was?
EI: Well do I agree with that first and foremost, and I think that that's not necessarily so. I think that some people have a point of view, and I don't know how you could find the point of view of The Ministry of Silly Walks particularly. I think that good sketch comedy is about wit. It's about timing, it's about delivery, it's about being young, writing sketch comedy because it's encapsulating everything into three minute form. So, I think that the finest thing that I like to do is the argument which I think is, at it's finest, somewhere between Stoppard and Pinter because it's really fascinating. It's all about itself, and it's very conceptual and it's actually really written, I think.
DRE: You're always working as well; do you think that maybe you should relax on your laurels?
EI: I do relax. My life is more important than anything that I do. It's much more important than my career, but I like to coincide my life with things that I enjoy doing. One of the things that I enjoy doing is actually acting and performing and singing live on stage and entertaining people. What I less enjoy doing is other people's form of show business; being in people's movies or being in people's sitcoms. This is actually much more fun because I decide what we do. I decide where we go. This is an adventure, this is a tour. We're going from Boston, four thousand miles across North America in a covered wagon to end up in Los Angeles in mid December. So, this is both insane and exciting.
DRE: Why were you so obsessed with the Rutlands?
EI: Well, I had a TV show called Rutland Weekend and it came from something that John said that I really liked so I gave him a pound for the world rights. I wanted to get my pound's worth ever since. Rutland represents the small and the large. It's a parody which I sort of enjoy having. It represents for me that the tiny represents the large, and if you can satirize the small it particularizes the large. So, you can do the Rutles for example. You can do the Rutland Isles. It's just a way of looking at the world.
DRE: What other things are there that you notice always pop up in your work?
EI: I think that all my songs mention death which is interesting to me and a lot of them are filthy. So, sex and death, probably.
DRE: Do those two things still pop up now?
EI: Oh, absolutely. It's a fairly filthy show. I ask the audience the why my songs are filthy and then, I look at them, and they definitely love the filth.
DRE: Do you think that your views on death have changed as you
EI: Approach it? I think that my views on death have always been fairly healthy. They were definitely by knowing George Harrison a long time who was very much the Zen master on preparing for death and watching him go through that process was painful and interesting. I think that's what you do. If you don't realize that you're going to die, you're just on cruise control and you're coming up for a big shock.
DRE: Are you afraid of death?
EI: I'm not afraid of death. I've been very fortunate to have lived a very good, long life. I've got many great things. I've got children who love me and adore me, a loving wife and a great home. These are all great things to have achieved in from where I came from.
DRE: What do people scream out at you the most?
EI: People were screaming spam last night. We don't do quite enough spam. We do come on to that, but I pretty much give them a lot of the things that they want to see. I do a lot of the stuff that you'd want to see.
DRE: What made you want to work so much in America?
EI: I live in America. I live in LA. I'm married to an American. I've been with her for twenty seven years. My daughter is partly American.
DRE: Does your daughter think that you're funny?
EI: Yeah, she does think that I'm funny. She wishes that I was home more. It's very sad. We haven't been separated much. I decided when she was born that I wasn't going to be away and do all of that show business stuff. I was going to stay home and I did. I'm doing a daily dairy on the web. It's fifteen hundred words a day. Isn't that depressing? I'm onto day fourteen at the moment. So, it's going to be eighty days. It's around the States in eighty days.
DRE: When you dress up as a woman, do you catch yourself in the mirror and think that you're good looking?
EI: No. I think that with Python, you tend to be more slaggy or slutty or more of the ugly drag. I'm not doing drag in this show, I have to say that. There's less people and so, I don't have much time to go and change. So, it's more of an intimate evening with us.
DRE: I read that some of your childhood was pretty tough?
EI: It was tough. I think that's what makes comedians. I went to a boarding school for twelve years. My father was killed just coming up in the war, and it was a bad first nineteen years, but it's been a very good forty-one since.
DRE: Everyone says that you don't know how good you are until you bomb onstage; do you think that you know how good you are?
EI: Well, we haven't bombed yet. The obvious is to avoid that. The obvious is to try and listen and be sensitive to the audience, to try to grab them, shake them and make them laugh. So far we've had nothing but standing ovations.
DRE: Have you re-watched The Meaning of Life since it was released on DVD?
EI: No, I haven't. I don't watch a lot of Python. I realize this when someone is talking about a Python sketch in which I have no memory of whatsoever. I wasn't that much of a Python fan.
DRE: Are you aware of the sketch comedy groups that you guys help begat like Mr. Show or Kids in the Hall?
EI: Yeah, a little bit. You pass on the torch. You pass on the beacon. We picked it up and we passed it on. That's what happens with life. It's like you're a good football team during those years. That's what it is. We pass on down.
DRE: Now, there were all sorts of rumors flying around about a Monty Python reunion tour after the Aspen Comedy Festival.
EI: There was a bit of a move to do that and then people changed their minds. That was when I felt finally that I could go out and perform my own stuff because there was never going to be a Python show, and that's what I've done.
DRE: Is it official that there will never be one?
EI: It is official.
DRE: Does that disappoint you?
EI: That's fine for me. I just decided to do my own thing.
DRE: What about the Merchant Ivory parody movie The Remains of the Piano you were supposed to direct?
EI: It was fun, but I wasted eight months of my life on it. So, I'm going to take a break. I'm doing a musical next year.
DRE: Is it Spamelot?
EI: Yeah, that's Spamelot after that.
DRE: How are you going to be involved with that?
EI: I've done the book and I've written the music and the lyrics with John Du Prez and we'll be working on it for about a year, I should think, and yeah, Jerry Mitchell is doing the choreography and Mike Nichols will direct and I think that it's going to be very silly show. I look forward to it.
DRE: Why do you like being silly so much?
EI: Well, I mean, when I say silly, I think that it's going to be funny. I think the Holy Grail was the most popular of the Python the work. People know that the most and they really love it, from all ages, and I think it lends itself very much to theatrical interpretation because it is just very funny and when we read it out with other people, it just got big laughs. It's funny stuff and it's surreal and yet, it's sort of able to put on a sort of Camelot type show onstage to set it up.
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Eric Idle is best known as Sir Robin who ran away, the man who loved the machine that goes beep and of course as the ghost who lived in Stuart Pankin's attic in the sitcom Nearly Departed. Since the entire Python troupe reunited onstage together for the first time in 17 years at the Aspen Comedy Festival, Idle has made the decision to do live tours of new and old material.
His latest live tour is The Greedy Bastard Tour. In it Idle will be doing many great sketches and of course he will be revisiting his cottage industry of the Rutland Isles, the Rutles and perhaps even a visit with the Rutland Television Network.
Check out the Greedy Bastard website for when the tour will be near you.
DRE: Are you an official greedy bastard now?
EI: I'm trying to join the greedy bastards, and trying to get with the greedy bastard program. I think that it's the Bush era and we should get with the fucking program before it's too late.
DRE: I didn't realize that you needed money at this point?
EI: Well you know, money is always handy, isn't it? If you're going to get married, it is a need. There's always a woman who thinks that you've got more than you can earn [laughs].
DRE: What are you going to be doing on the tour exactly, new or old stuff?
EI: There's a bit of the new, blue, old and something borrowed. It's like a wedding. It's the wedding of comedy and the marriage of different styles of comedy.
DRE: Who's going to be on the tour with you?
EI: I've got some guest stars. I've got John Du Prez, my musical partner. I've got Peter Crabbe, and they're going to come on and help me do things, silly things, so we tickle and amuse the audience.
DRE: What do you think that the people you've worked with in the past, like you said, stealing their stuff and putting it up on stage?
EI: Well I pay them so I don't steal. I ask. They should be so fucking lucky that I once worked with them. With the Python stuff we are a family company. So, it all goes into our pension funds.
DRE: You guys aren't collecting any pensions just yet?
EI: I don't think so, not just yet. It's very hard to retire in show business. No one ever really tries it.
DRE: Maybe John Cleese is eligible?
EI: John is eligible, but I don't think that he ever stops. He's always making movies and doing things, and I don't think that he'll ever retire. He's always got this dream of retiring to an island and reading a book. But I think that he's had that dream since he was twenty six.
DRE: I've heard that good sketch comedy comes from the comedy having a point of view, what do you think Python's point of view was?
EI: Well do I agree with that first and foremost, and I think that that's not necessarily so. I think that some people have a point of view, and I don't know how you could find the point of view of The Ministry of Silly Walks particularly. I think that good sketch comedy is about wit. It's about timing, it's about delivery, it's about being young, writing sketch comedy because it's encapsulating everything into three minute form. So, I think that the finest thing that I like to do is the argument which I think is, at it's finest, somewhere between Stoppard and Pinter because it's really fascinating. It's all about itself, and it's very conceptual and it's actually really written, I think.
DRE: You're always working as well; do you think that maybe you should relax on your laurels?
EI: I do relax. My life is more important than anything that I do. It's much more important than my career, but I like to coincide my life with things that I enjoy doing. One of the things that I enjoy doing is actually acting and performing and singing live on stage and entertaining people. What I less enjoy doing is other people's form of show business; being in people's movies or being in people's sitcoms. This is actually much more fun because I decide what we do. I decide where we go. This is an adventure, this is a tour. We're going from Boston, four thousand miles across North America in a covered wagon to end up in Los Angeles in mid December. So, this is both insane and exciting.
DRE: Why were you so obsessed with the Rutlands?
EI: Well, I had a TV show called Rutland Weekend and it came from something that John said that I really liked so I gave him a pound for the world rights. I wanted to get my pound's worth ever since. Rutland represents the small and the large. It's a parody which I sort of enjoy having. It represents for me that the tiny represents the large, and if you can satirize the small it particularizes the large. So, you can do the Rutles for example. You can do the Rutland Isles. It's just a way of looking at the world.
DRE: What other things are there that you notice always pop up in your work?
EI: I think that all my songs mention death which is interesting to me and a lot of them are filthy. So, sex and death, probably.
DRE: Do those two things still pop up now?
EI: Oh, absolutely. It's a fairly filthy show. I ask the audience the why my songs are filthy and then, I look at them, and they definitely love the filth.
DRE: Do you think that your views on death have changed as you
EI: Approach it? I think that my views on death have always been fairly healthy. They were definitely by knowing George Harrison a long time who was very much the Zen master on preparing for death and watching him go through that process was painful and interesting. I think that's what you do. If you don't realize that you're going to die, you're just on cruise control and you're coming up for a big shock.
DRE: Are you afraid of death?
EI: I'm not afraid of death. I've been very fortunate to have lived a very good, long life. I've got many great things. I've got children who love me and adore me, a loving wife and a great home. These are all great things to have achieved in from where I came from.
DRE: What do people scream out at you the most?
EI: People were screaming spam last night. We don't do quite enough spam. We do come on to that, but I pretty much give them a lot of the things that they want to see. I do a lot of the stuff that you'd want to see.
DRE: What made you want to work so much in America?
EI: I live in America. I live in LA. I'm married to an American. I've been with her for twenty seven years. My daughter is partly American.
DRE: Does your daughter think that you're funny?
EI: Yeah, she does think that I'm funny. She wishes that I was home more. It's very sad. We haven't been separated much. I decided when she was born that I wasn't going to be away and do all of that show business stuff. I was going to stay home and I did. I'm doing a daily dairy on the web. It's fifteen hundred words a day. Isn't that depressing? I'm onto day fourteen at the moment. So, it's going to be eighty days. It's around the States in eighty days.
DRE: When you dress up as a woman, do you catch yourself in the mirror and think that you're good looking?
EI: No. I think that with Python, you tend to be more slaggy or slutty or more of the ugly drag. I'm not doing drag in this show, I have to say that. There's less people and so, I don't have much time to go and change. So, it's more of an intimate evening with us.
DRE: I read that some of your childhood was pretty tough?
EI: It was tough. I think that's what makes comedians. I went to a boarding school for twelve years. My father was killed just coming up in the war, and it was a bad first nineteen years, but it's been a very good forty-one since.
DRE: Everyone says that you don't know how good you are until you bomb onstage; do you think that you know how good you are?
EI: Well, we haven't bombed yet. The obvious is to avoid that. The obvious is to try and listen and be sensitive to the audience, to try to grab them, shake them and make them laugh. So far we've had nothing but standing ovations.
DRE: Have you re-watched The Meaning of Life since it was released on DVD?
EI: No, I haven't. I don't watch a lot of Python. I realize this when someone is talking about a Python sketch in which I have no memory of whatsoever. I wasn't that much of a Python fan.
DRE: Are you aware of the sketch comedy groups that you guys help begat like Mr. Show or Kids in the Hall?
EI: Yeah, a little bit. You pass on the torch. You pass on the beacon. We picked it up and we passed it on. That's what happens with life. It's like you're a good football team during those years. That's what it is. We pass on down.
DRE: Now, there were all sorts of rumors flying around about a Monty Python reunion tour after the Aspen Comedy Festival.
EI: There was a bit of a move to do that and then people changed their minds. That was when I felt finally that I could go out and perform my own stuff because there was never going to be a Python show, and that's what I've done.
DRE: Is it official that there will never be one?
EI: It is official.
DRE: Does that disappoint you?
EI: That's fine for me. I just decided to do my own thing.
DRE: What about the Merchant Ivory parody movie The Remains of the Piano you were supposed to direct?
EI: It was fun, but I wasted eight months of my life on it. So, I'm going to take a break. I'm doing a musical next year.
DRE: Is it Spamelot?
EI: Yeah, that's Spamelot after that.
DRE: How are you going to be involved with that?
EI: I've done the book and I've written the music and the lyrics with John Du Prez and we'll be working on it for about a year, I should think, and yeah, Jerry Mitchell is doing the choreography and Mike Nichols will direct and I think that it's going to be very silly show. I look forward to it.
DRE: Why do you like being silly so much?
EI: Well, I mean, when I say silly, I think that it's going to be funny. I think the Holy Grail was the most popular of the Python the work. People know that the most and they really love it, from all ages, and I think it lends itself very much to theatrical interpretation because it is just very funny and when we read it out with other people, it just got big laughs. It's funny stuff and it's surreal and yet, it's sort of able to put on a sort of Camelot type show onstage to set it up.
By Daniel Robert Epstein
VIEW 21 of 21 COMMENTS
he was the voice of the juck robots leader, eric idle with a computer voice
G.
edited to say that this is too weird: i'm sitting here debating whether to turn in and i'm flipping through the channels. and there's this really bad show on called suddenly susan on and who do i see but the man himself: erick idle. now i have to watch it just cause he's on it. and yes... he's funny as hell already.
[Edited on Nov 20, 2003 by Alisa]