Eric Idle
Eric Idle is an English actor, comedian, songwriter, musician, screenwriter and playwright. He was a member of the British comedy group Monty Python and the parody rock band the Rutles. Idle studied English at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and joined Cambridge University Footlights. He has received a Grammy Award as well as nominations for two Tony Awards.
Idle reached stardom in the 1970s when he co-created and acted in the Python sketch comedy series Flying Circus and the films Holy Grail, Life of Brian, and The Meaning of Life with Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Known for his elaborate wordplay and musical numbers, Idle composed and performed many of the songs featured in Python projects, including "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".
After Flying Circus ended, Idle created another sketch show Rutland Weekend Television, and hosted Saturday Night Live four times. He also acted in films such as National Lampoon's European Vacation, The Transformers: The Movie, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Nuns on the Run, Splitting Heirs, Casper, The Wind in the Willows, An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, Ella Enchanted, and Shrek the Third.
Idle made his Broadway debut with his adaptation of Holy Grail into the musical, Spamalot, which was a critical and commercial success earning the Tony Award for Best Musical, and Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. He also wrote Not the Messiah and performed at the London 2012 Olympic Games closing ceremony.
Early life and education
Eric Idle was born on 29 March 1943 in Harton Hospital, in South Shields. His mother, Norah Barron Sanderson, was a nurse, and his father, Ernest Idle, served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, only to be killed in a road accident while hitchhiking home for Christmas in December 1945. Idle said his mother "disappeared for a while into depression" and consequently he was brought up by his grandmother in Swinton, Lancashire. Idle spent part of his childhood in Wallasey, Cheshire, and attended St George's Primary School.His mother had difficulty coping with a full-time job and bringing up a child, so when Idle was seven, she enrolled him in the Royal Wolverhampton School as a boarder. At that time the school was a charitable foundation dedicated to the education and maintenance of children who had lost one or both parents. Idle said: "It was a physically abusive, bullying, harsh environment for a kid to grow up in. I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority. Perfect training for Python."
Idle has stated that the two things that made his life at school bearable were listening to Radio Luxembourg under the bedclothes and watching the local football team, Wolverhampton Wanderers. He disliked other sports, and would sneak out of school every Thursday afternoon to the local cinema. He was eventually caught watching the film BUtterfield 8 and stripped of his prefecture, though by that time he was head boy. Idle had already refused to be senior boy in the school cadet force, as he supported the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and had participated in the yearly Aldermaston March. He says there was little to do at the school, and boredom drove him to study hard and consequently to secure a place at Cambridge University.
Career
Pre-Python career (1965–1969)
Idle attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he studied English. At Pembroke, he was invited to join the prestigious Cambridge University Footlights Club by the president of the Footlights Club, Tim Brooke-Taylor, and Footlights Club member Bill Oddie.Idle started at Cambridge only a year after future fellow-Pythons Graham Chapman and John Cleese. He became Footlights President in 1965 and was the first to allow women to join the club. He starred in the television comedy series Do Not Adjust Your Set co-starring his future Python castmates Terry Jones and Michael Palin. Terry Gilliam provided animations for the show. The show's cast included comic actors David Jason and Denise Coffey. Idle also appeared as guest in some episodes of the television series At Last the 1948 Show, which featured Cleese and Chapman in its principal cast.
Monty Python (1969–1983)
Idle wrote for Python mostly by himself, at his own pace, although he sometimes found it difficult to present material to the others and make it seem funny without the back-up support of a partner. The other Pythons usually worked in teams and Cleese admitted that this was slightly unfair – when the Pythons voted on which sketches should appear in a show, "he only got one vote". However, he also says that Idle was an independent person and worked best on his own. Idle himself admitted this was sometimes difficult: "You had to convince five others. And they were not the most un-egotistical of writers, either." He occasionally wrote with Cleese.Idle's work in Python is often characterised by an obsession with language and communication: many of his characters have verbal peculiarities, such as the man who speaks in anagrams, the man who says words in the wrong order, and the butcher who alternates between rudeness and politeness every time he speaks. A number of his sketches involve extended monologues, and he would frequently spoof the unnatural language and speech patterns of television presenters. Idle is said to be the master of insincere characters, from the David Frost-esque Timmy Williams, to small-time crook Stig O'Tracy, who tries to deny the fact that organised crime master Dinsdale Piranha nailed his head to the floor.
The second-youngest member of the Pythons, Idle was closest in spirit to the teenagers who made up much of Python's fanbase. Python sketches dealing most with contemporary obsessions like pop music, sexual permissiveness and recreational drugs are usually Idle's work, often characterised by double entendre, sexual references, and other "naughty" subject matter – most famously demonstrated in "Nudge Nudge". Idle originally wrote "Nudge, Nudge" for Ronnie Barker, but it was rejected because there was 'no joke in the words'.
A talented guitarist, Idle composed many of the group's most famous musical numbers, most notably "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", the closing number of Life of Brian, which has grown to become a Python signature tune. He was responsible for the "Galaxy Song" from The Meaning of Life and "Eric the Half-a-Bee", a whimsical tune that first appeared on the Previous Record album.
Post-Python career (since 1973)
After the success of Python in the early 1970s, all six members pursued solo projects. Idle's first solo work was his own BBC Radio One show, Radio Five. This ran for two seasons from 1973 to 1974 and involved Idle performing sketches and links to records, playing nearly all the multi-tracked parts himself.On television, Idle created and wrote Rutland Weekend Television, a sketch show on BBC2 with music by Neil Innes. RWT was 'Britain's smallest television network'. The name was a parody of London Weekend Television, the independent television franchise contractor that provided Londoners with their ITV services at weekends; Rutland had been England's smallest county, but had recently been 'abolished' in an administrative shake-up. To make the joke complete, the programme went out on a weekday. Other regular performers were David Battley, Henry Woolf, Gwen Taylor and Terence Bayler. George Harrison made a guest appearance on one episode.
A legacy of RWT was the creation, with Innes, of the Rutles, an affectionate parody of the Beatles. The band became a popular phenomenon, especially in the U.S. where Idle was appearing on Saturday Night Live – fans would send in Beatles LPs with their sleeves altered to show the Rutles. In 1978, the Rutles' mockumentary film All You Need Is Cash, a collaboration between Python members and Saturday Night Live, was aired on NBC television, written by Idle, with music by Innes. Idle appeared in the film as "Dirk McQuickly", as well as the main commentator, while Innes appeared as "Ron Nasty". Actors appearing in the film included Saturday Night Live John Belushi, Bill Murray and Gilda Radner, as well as fellow Python Michael Palin, and also real musicians of the 1960s such as former Beatle George Harrison, as well as Mick Jagger and Paul Simon. Idle wrote and directed the Rutles comeback in 2008 for a live show Rutlemania! to celebrate the 30th anniversary. The performances took place in Los Angeles and New York City with a Beatles tribute band.
In 1986, Idle provided the voice of Wreck-Gar, the leader of the Junkions in The Transformers: The Movie. In 1987, he took part in the English National Opera production of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Mikado, in which he appeared in the role of the Lord High Executioner, Ko-Ko; a performance of it was taped by Thames Television for broadcast, directed by John Michael Phillips, and subsequently released on DVD by A&E. In 1989, he appeared in the U.S. comedy television series Nearly Departed, about a ghost who haunts the family inhabiting his former home; the series lasted for six episodes as a summer replacement series.
Idle received good critical notices appearing in projects written and directed by others – such as Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, alongside Robbie Coltrane in Nuns on the Run and in Casper. He also played Ratty in Terry Jones' version of The Wind in the Willows. However, his own creative projects – such as the film Splitting Heirs, a comedy he wrote, starred in and executive-produced – were mostly unsuccessful with critics and audiences.
In 1994, Idle appeared as Dr. Nigel Channing, chairman of the Imagination Institute and host of an 'Inventor of the Year' awards show in the three-dimensional film Honey, I Shrunk the Audience!, which was an attraction at the Imagination Pavilion at Walt Disney World's Epcot from 1994 until 2010 and at Disneyland from 1998 until 2010. The film also stars Rick Moranis and other members of the cast of the 1989 feature film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. In 1999, he reprised the role in the short-lived second incarnation of the Journey into Imagination ride at Epcot, replacing Figment and Dreamfinder as the host. Due to an outcry from Disney fans, the attraction was reworked in 2001, reintroducing Figment into the ride while also retaining Idle's role as Nigel Channing. Idle is also writer and star of the 3-D film Pirates – 4D for Busch Entertainment Corporation.
In 1995, Idle appeared in Casper opposite Cathy Moriarty and voiced Rincewind the "Wizzard" in a computer adventure game based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. In 1996, he reprised his role as Rincewind for the game's sequel, and composed and sang its theme song, "That's Death". In 1998, Idle appeared in the lead role in the poorly received film Burn Hollywood Burn. That same year, he also provided the voice of Devon, one of the heads of a two-headed dragon, with Don Rickles as the other head Cornwall, in the Warner Bros. animated film Quest for Camelot, and as Slyly, the albino Arctic fox in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie.
In later years Idle provided voice work for animation, such as in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, in which he voiced Dr. Vosknocker. He has made four appearances on The Simpsons as documentarian Declan Desmond. Idle provided the voice of Merlin the magician in the DreamWorks animated film Shrek the Third with his former Python co-star John Cleese, who voiced King Harold. He also narrated the audiobook version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.
In late 2003, Idle began a performing tour of several American and Canadian cities entitled The Greedy Bastard Tour. The stage performances consisted largely of music from Monty Python episodes and films, along with some original post-Python material. In 2005, Idle released The Greedy Bastard Diary, a book detailing the things the cast and crew encountered during the three-month tour.
File:Nudge, Nudge O2 Arena.jpg|thumb|Idle and Terry Jones performing the "Nudge Nudge" sketch at the Python reunion in 2014
In 2004, Idle created Spamalot, a musical comedy based on the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The medieval production tells the story of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table as they journey on their quest for the Holy Grail. Spamalot features a book and lyrics by Idle, music by Idle and John Du Prez, direction by Mike Nichols, and choreography by Casey Nicholaw.
Idle's play What About Dick? was given a staged reading at two public performances at the Ricardo Montalbán Theatre in Hollywood on 10–11 November 2007. The cast included Idle, Billy Connolly, Tim Curry, Eddie Izzard, Jane Leeves, Emily Mortimer, Jim Piddock and Tracey Ullman. The play returned on 26–29 April 2012 in the Orpheum Theatre, most of the cast returning except Emily Mortimer, who was replaced by Sophie Winkleman. Russell Brand also joined the cast. The play was made available for digital download on 13 November 2012.
Idle performed at the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony at the Olympic Stadium in London on 12 August, singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life". He was the creator and director of the live show Monty Python Live – One down, Five to go, which was performed at the O2 Arena, London, between 1 and 20 July 2014.
In December 2016, Idle was the writer and co-presenter of The Entire Universe, a "comedy and musical extravaganza with the help of Warwick Davis, Noel Fielding, Hannah Waddingham and Robin Ince, alongside a chorus of singers and dancers", broadcast by BBC Two.
In 2020, it was announced that Idle would adapt his script for Spamalot into a feature film for Paramount Pictures, with Nicholaw directing and Dan Jinks producing.
In 2022, Idle competed in season eight of The Masked Singer as "Hedgehog". He did a cover of the Beatles' "Love Me Do" with help from the USC Trojan Marching Band. When eliminated in the first episode alongside William Shatner as "Knight" and Chris Kirkpatrick as "Hummingbird", Idle mentioned to Nick Cannon that he had to get approval from Paul McCartney to do "Love Me Do" for a competition, in exchange for telling McCartney what the competition was so that he can avoid it. In addition, Idle did an unmasked performance of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" from Life of Brian.
In February 2024, Idle made headlines in the UK after revealing that he was still working at the age of 80 for financial reasons, saying "Python is a disaster. I never dreamed that at this age the income streams would tail off so disastrously", but also "I don't mind not being wealthy. I prefer being funny". In July 2025, he told NME in an interview that his relationship with the other Pythons was "poor to terrible", adding that "they don't talk to me. I haven't seen them for 10 years so it doesn't really matter. Apparently they say rude and nasty things but I don't read them." His first solo UK tour since 1973 was organised for later that year.