Interview: Eric Idle

Eric Idle is one of the country's most loved comedians. Born in South Shields, the comedian, actor, author, singer, and writer first rose to attention in the children's television comedy series Do Not Adjust Your Set, before going on to be part of the groundbreaking comedy team Monty Python. Since then Idle has starred in countless films, several Monty Python features, played in his own rock band, albeit a spoof one, and had an asteroid, 9620 Ericidle, named in his honour. In 2005 Monty Python's Spamalot, a musical comedy "lovingly ripped off from" the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, for which he wrote the music book and lyrics for, first opened in Broadway and has since toured all over the world. This February sees Spamalot reach the North East with six nights at the Sunderland Empire. Brian Beacom caught up with the comedy legend.

Monty Python's Eric Idle on his musical 'Spamalot'

Forty years after Eric Idle first delighted and confounded the nation as one of the Monty Python team, the celebrated writer of 'Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life' is still game.

Eric Idle on how Susan Boyle is bumped off in Spamalot

Eric Idle has offered Susan Boyle the best seats in the house for hit musical Spamalot - so she can watch herself being bumped off on stage.

You're on a hiding to nothing dramatising the Monty Python story: try as you might, you're never going to be as funny as your subject. Undeterred, Roy Smiles undertook the challenge in Pythonesque, which centred on Graham Chapman's battle with booze and his early death from cancer, told in the style of those overarching comedy gods.

Written for last year's Edinburgh Festival, it probably worked better on stage, and the tone of over-egged jocularity grated somewhat. Devices such as having Eric Idle, in full "Wink-wink nudge-nudge" mode, audition Chapman and John Cleese for the Footlights were simply irritating.

For all the pastiches, even the ones that worked, it was Chapman's sombre closing speech that was truly memorable: "I was proud to be gay, proud to conquer my alcoholism, proud to be a Python, proud to write with John Cleese, and proud to play the lead in two of the funniest movies of all time. I enjoyed a full life and I was loved by many. What more can a man ask?"

Why Eric Idle is happy to revisit his Python past

At the height of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Eric Idle made a promise to himself. When the performers went their separate ways in 1983, and when the Ministry of Silly Walks had been closed for good, he would in the spirit of the show prepare to do something completely different. As it turned out, things didn't quite work out that way.

Eric Idle - Mr Bright Side

The former Python talks about Spamalot, Life of Brian as an opera and whether the old team will be getting back together.

Thirty years after the release of the heretical masterpiece Monty Python's Life of Brian - and a few weeks since RT readers voted it the best comedy film ever - Sanjeev Bhaskar investigates how and why the Pythons did it. The movie was conceived when Eric Idle announced, for a laugh, that the follow-up to Monty Python and the Holy Grail would be called Jesus Christ - Lust for Glory. That throwaway gag ended up as a heartfelt, intelligent, rationalist satire where every scene is a quotable moment. As Terry Jones, Carol Cleveland, producer John Goldstone and others reminisce, it's a chance for fans to celebrate - and for those who dismiss the film as blasphemy to discover what it's really about.

Forty years ago this week, Nixon was withdrawing troops from Vietnam, Je T'Aime topped the charts and Concorde broke the sound barrier. And then for something completely different: the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus aired on BBC One. We never looked at comedy - let alone Spam, parrots or lumberjacks - in the same way again. This new film celebrates the anarchic troupe's Ruby Jubilee and marks the first time the surviving Pythons have come together for a project since 1983's The Meaning of Life. It's archly subtitled The Lawyer's Cut and those Beeb briefs have been busy because it's slimmed down from a six-hour series screened in the US (as Terry Jones says, "a record so complete and faithful to the truth that I don't need to watch it") to just 60 minutes. Directed by Alan Parker, it features new interviews with Jones, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Eric Idle, as well as archive chat from the late Graham Chapman. All tell the story of how they met at Oxbridge and The Frost Report, created trailblazing television, made the transition into films and ultimately became a British institution. Which, like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expected.