Ask Me Anything with Paula BennettThis week, Paula's guest is multi-talented entertainer, Eric Idle. They discuss his 60-year career, spanning Monty Python, musicals and live shows, his cancer diagnosis, departed friends, and life in America. And Eric shares his advice for sticking around and how he's kept going in his career over the decades.
Eric brings his new stage show, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Live, to New Zealand next month.
Hello.
I am Paula Bennett and welcome to my New Zealand Herald podcast Ask me any thank you Now. One thing I've learned in life is it's never too late to lean something new.
So on this podcast, I talk to people from all walks of life.
To hear about how they got to where they are and get some advice and guidance on some of life's biggest questions. I am very excited, and I mean very excited about today's episode. My guest is founding member of Montepison, Eric Idle. Eric what a phenomenal career. He's an actor, comedian, songwriter, musician, author, screenwriter, playright.
His career spans.
Sixty three years and are we to saying your age? At the age of eighty one, he doesn't appear to be slowing down at all. He is heading to New Zealand next month with his stage show Always Look on the Bright Side.
Of Life Live. Eric Idle joins me.
Good morning, Good morning, Paula.
How are you now? You're coming to me from LA, aren't you?
I am? Yeah?
So are we?
Good morning?
Uh? We are good afternoon, we're tea time.
What do you We're good morning, well, we're just lunchtime. Let's go lunchtime. So that's all right. I came in a warm up with a quick far question. If you could go to the pub for a drink with anyone, who would that person be?
Are you asking me?
Yes?
Well, I'm a tea total now I'm not a drink for five years, so maybe somebody I'll be very envious of. Who would I like to get to a pub with. I don't know. I'd like to go to a pub with no beer.
Yeah, there's a few.
Mind, you've got zero beers and things now, don't you You know there's some quite good.
Yes, but there's no point in going to a pub and not getting drunk, is there? Really? You know what I mean? What's the point? I don't I don't know. Do you mean? Who? Do I like the company? Oh? I always like musicians, So I'm always the people who come over to my house. They always have to play guitar. We always end up having after dinner. We have a lot of what we call a ding dong and we sing all the older is. And I've been playing with a band who now play for the Monkeys and they're terrific, and we just play oldiers and we get going, and weird Al shows up and Puddles the clown shows up, and we have we have We just love playing and seeing.
Yeah, it's fun, isn't it? And gets through all together and just everyone loves it, don't they. Okay, Eric, let's chat about the show first. You're coming to New Zealand next month to perform Always Look on the Right Side of Life Live. Tell me about the show, because I hear it. It's a mix of comedy, it's got music, it's got a bit of philosophy in there.
What does an Eric Idle's stage show look like.
Well, it looks like a bit of a hybrid. It's like a one man musical. As I say, I am bringing an artificial band, artificial stupidity to put together this Monkey's band who have accompanied me, and we're going to sing the Meaning of Life. And we're going to do one or two oldies and nices of Python, Oldies and Nices and talk about things, some memories of people I've met along the way, you know, like George Harrison and Robin Williams and clips and things. And I just like to keep I like to keep it moving. I like to interest myself and make people laugh. I think that's a kind of a nice way of facing an evening, you know.
With people, and those tributes to dear friends that you just mentioned with George Harrison and Robin Williams, you know, I mean that's obviously something that means a lot to you and you want to share that with your audience.
Yes, because there were remarkable people, you know. I mean, sometimes one to be very lucky is I've met lots of very interesting people over my lifetime. And I don't know whether that's because they like python and I was the one that played the guitar and hang out and talk and have fun, or or just that they you know, it was happenstance. One got luckier. But I've met some fascinating people. I still do. I mean, I spend quite a lot of my time with Professor Brian Cox and we talk about the universe. And you know, the great thing about speculating about the universe, it doesn't matter how much you know, because they know just as little, and.
You won't know around and you won't know if you're right or wrong.
Well, nobody knows if you're right or wrong. But you are allowed to speculate, and it is an extraordinary universe, and I find that really reassuring and and interesting. Yeah, I won't be seeing the Galaxy song with Puddles the Clown, which is going to be quite good, good fun.
I love it a little really hilarious.
And did you ever imagine when you wrote always Look on the Bright Side of Life that it would endure like it does? I mean, did I read someone that it's like the most played song at a funeral or something.
Which is the the most requested song for twenty years at British funerals, which I find really kind of touching. I find it very nice that people want to smile and laugh and sing along in memory of people who've passed, and they usually requested it for their funerals. I find that really very very very flattering.
Yeah, that's what people want at the funerals, for their family and their friends and their loved ones to always look on the bright side of life.
I want be able to be really miserable at my funeral. I think they shouldn't be at all happy or reconciled, but no, I think you do. You don't want people to go oh no and be just unhappy. They want you want them to remember you in life, as you knows, as a good person or a fun person, And that's what I think. Laughter at the funeral is actually quite a good thing because laughter and tears are very close together. And I remember Graham Chairman's funeral when I first sang it. Every bit there were a lot of laughs. But the hardest thing to do is just actually just seeing that song without crying. It was very difficult, Yeah, really emotional.
And then as you say it's you know, we remember what people worth laughter, and you can't help but reflect on Robin Williams with that massive personality and that incredible entertainer y underneath was a flawed and tormented man, as we discovered, And for me it was a shock. But you know, we're not one dimensional, are we.
Not at all? And it was a big shock with Robin because of course we didn't know and he didn't know that he had this thing called Louis Body's disease, which makes you very paranoid and depressed. And we were doing oh two at the time, and I kept saying to him, come on, we want you on stage. I've written a bit called Celebrity Blackmail. I want you to come on with a bag on your head, and people have said, yes, who it is, and he said, oh, no, I don't want to be on stage. And I should have tweaked at the time. But of course, you know, we were produce seeing I was directing the show. We were on stage, and and I never really associated that with him being in danger. Of course, that's what happens with with suicides because they hide their depression and it is a way out of a real, real torment. And even if we managed to save him at the time, he could only have been locked up in a straight jacket. So now there are becoming treatments for it. But so I think it is the you know, the funniest and most giving man in the world ends up like that. You have to it's you have to think very deeply. Oh that's really sad and tragic.
Yeah, really really sad.
And so George Harrison literally mortgaged as home, didn't he.
George did the most incredible I think anybody's ever done. We couldn't low grade backs out of making our film you Know, The Life of Brian because he read it and George kept saying, I'll find you the money, I'll find you the money. He went to New York and we went to Hollywood and it was like selling springtime for Hitler. Nobody wanted to know. It's like, forget about it, no chance, you know. So then finally said I've got the money. I said what he said. And he'd mortgaged his house and he'd mortgaged his office premises to raise money from the bank to pay the four and a half million dollars cash to film it. And I think a lot of our guys didn't really know that there was The Beatles always have plenty of money. But actually, no, that was the last throw of his dice. He put everything, he moved all in on that film. And when you think about that, that's an extraordinary thing to do. And that's the way he was.
That is extraordinary. I mean, it's not just giving your own money. You're literally borrowing money.
You're well, you're putting your property on the line, borrowing money from the bank and without a qualm because he wanted to see the movie.
Wow, and well, what a genius, as you say, incredibly talented men obviously, but then what a genius to know what life of Pride would be.
You know, he knew absolutely. I don't think he particularly read it. I mean, I think he just wanted to see the next Python movie. I mean, I think it was an act of love and an act of trust and an act of sheer. I don't think any many of us would do that.
Hey tell me about some of the early years.
I mean, you've said that they were tough, you know, and you've sort of described them as being and then of course it just leads me to go, well, how on earth did you then go to comedy and become such an extraordinary talented funny musician and man and writer and you know everything else that you've done.
I think comedy is coming to terms with a lot of bleakness. I was at the boarding school for twelve years in Wolverhampton. It was very bleak and do all. But I think you tell each other the truth and how miserable it all is, and then you figure out ways to have fun, go over the wall and fun girls and it's to the off license. But I think that when I was about sixteen or seventeen, I went to London and I saw a show call Beyond the Fringe and it had it had Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore, and they just ripped apart everything that was sort of tormenting us at school, like you know, Army Royalty religion. They just laughed at everything, and I thought, you can do this, this is allowed. And I still got the album and I learned it and from then on I just wanted to be funny. And so when I got to Cambridge, I tried to join the Pembroke College Comedy group and I was auditioned by two of the goodies. I got in, they picked me out, they put me in the show and the next term I got to perform in front of John Clees who came up, Sidy mus come and join the foot Lights, and so suddenly I was in show business and we're at the Edinburgh Festival. It was really strange.
Wow, how old were you then?
What do you think i'd been about nineteen or twenty? Yeah?
What an experience.
Yeah, I mean it was just I mean sometimes life is very well written as Barry Kraft then, you know. But I spent the rest of my time I came he is doing comedy and learning from people who did it and how to write and to do cabaret. And that's how you do comedy. By trying it and learning it and performing it. And so that was really my big part of my education was just doing that. And I became president of the Footlights, which is an old club and in night it was eighteen from eighteen eighty three and they didn't allow women, and I thought that was completely stupid. So I changed the laws when I was president and allowed women to join. Yay, And the first woman through the door was Jermaine Grea. Oh, really a good honor and she was hilarious, hilarious, came straight from I think Australian University where she was and she was doing a doctor in a PhD. And she was just really really very funny. And she came to the door with Clive James.
Oh wow, what a story.
Hey, So Telly, what do you put the success of Monty Python down to.
It's still a surprise to me. I think what it was was that our show was written by us, six of us and five of us are writers, and ones an American animator. We created a show that we wanted to see. There were no executives. They just said do thirteen come back and you get on with it. And so we had had our we'd had a lot of experience writing for other people. We know, the two Ron heirs. We'd done Frost reports and things, so we made something that we wanted to see and we messed about with the audience. We would do strange jokes on them. We pretend it's a pirate film starting it was the wrong program. So we played with the form a lot, and it was clear that we were messing with them, and we didn't and so I think that spirit came across and we always stayed true to writing just what we wanted to do next. We didn't try and please them, We didn't listen to dermographics. We just got on with it. And it was late on a Sunday night and we had no idea who was watching. And I think about two years later we did a live show at a Coventry Arts festival and suddenly all these people came and they were fanatics, and they knew all the words, and they were dressed up and it was like, what just happened?
You know?
So we didn't know that, because you know, if you're doing television, you do it, record it and then it goes out into the etho and who knows do you think?
I mean, it's the unexpected right as an audience watching it, you didn't know what was going to happen. Nixt so often think that's the sort of glory of it, and we don't see enough of these days.
Taking ourselves seriously, I don't think we were trying to be stars. We didn't bill ourselves. We didn't know who anybody was except for John Clees, who had already done TV shows. We didn't. We didn't. You know, it wasn't a show busy kind of show. It was very much and we pretend to be intellectual. You know, you'd be summarizing Proost, but it wasn't really intellectual. It's just silly jokes, a lot of it. And there were five writers and you never knew which writer was on, so there were different strains of humor. So well people would say, oh I liked a lot of it. It was dependent on who was writing. They liked a certain strain of comedy, and they were quite wildly different forms of comedy written by Chapman and Clees was different from Paynan and Jones, which are different from the things I was writing. So it was like a Milan shoot and that I think that was that also was of interest.
So did you produce it?
So I read that you predominantly wrote alone while the others wrote in peers.
Is that correct? And is that your creative creativity?
That means that you are better if you like when you're sort of playing with your own mind.
I don't think it's to do with better. I think I'm still with me. I think that I like writing. I like exploring what's in my brain. I do it every day. It's an exercise. I start off the day by writing, and I think I was intrigued by wordplay. I think I sidetracked into writing lyrics and scripts and songs and it was an interesting position. And when I met George Harrison, he was in a similar role in his group because he was between Lendanon McCartney and that's between Please Chapman and Palin Jones. And so we sort of bonded like that, you know, because we were kind of the outsiders in a group formed of outside Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
You know you've had pank creator cancer and a few years ago, and you didn't tell anyone about it.
Do we overshare these days?
I mean, god, it feels like every celebrity needs to tell you everything that's going on.
With them.
I just I didn't because you know, first of all, obviously your family knows and they and you know you're relieved to be over it. And then I think I just didn't. I didn't come out with it until I think I did the mask singer, and I thought they asked me to do it, and I thought, I wonder if I can still do this, because you know, do I have any energy? And so when I did that and it was time to sort of do a bit of publicity, I thought, you know, it's time I spoke up and said I was fortunate to survive this. It is survivable, and it can bring optimism and hope to people who are also in similar positions, and you know, also do a bit of good work raising money and consciousness about it because we can now test it. You can get it from blood tests and it was very early on and I had a brilliant doctor who spotted it through a blood test and that was very fortunate.
Yeah, but what a strong message you gave out there.
You were right, What a strong message to either those go and get tested or if you have got it, life is not necessarily over.
It's a big life, a here to you.
I think it was a big deal for me. I think it was a smart decision. I think it was a good decision. It only good came from it. And I do go every year and I meet all the survivors and they are a growing number, and the percentages of the survivors are growing, and I really like that. I think we can conquer these things are very smart species.
Now, so you live in la as we've seen, and you've been here for like forty years?
Is that right?
I've been here thirty years. But I do spend my summers in Europe if I possibly can, because I like it.
Yeah, So what made you move to America?
I think first of all, you know, we had a kid and she was getting to be three or four, and you had to put him in school, and I couldn't face sixteen winters in Saint John's would have rain and cold, and my wife's American, she's from Chicago, and we thought, well, I like the idea of California. It's a beautiful place, you know. So it was a good decision. I mean, it's much nicer to drive your kids to school in California than it is in Saint John's would really And we also had to make any sort of interesting choice between do we bring up an English girl or an American girl. And I thought that, well, you know, American goes a state of the art at the time. So and by the way, I don't think we'd make that decision today because of all the guns. Oh that was that was not a problem then, but it is a problem now. And the idea that you should be fearful of taking your kids to nurse it kindergarten because somebody might kill them but is absolutely insane.
Yeah, and very real, right, I mean, we.
Are very very real. They're taught safety procedures and that's that's you know, very scary. And that's not freedom to own rifles. That's insane. Yeah, you see year olds with the deign sixteen year olds should not be allowed to possess military grade weapons.
And I mean, you've got elections coming up this year, of course.
Can you see change in the horizon.
Or do you think that it's just a trajectory of the level of American freedom and my right to bear arms and the being any kind of I can't see it changing.
I don't disagree with you. I'm not American, and I don't get a vote so I am coming to New Zealand during the election. But I do think that the gun in American history is an iconic thing that captured the web, you know, the Remington that the law man. The gun is a very it's a straight it's a strange and powerful position in the in the image of themselves. And this has got somehow modeled up with freedom. I mean, you really wouldn't want, you know, a sixteen year old to have a nuclear weapon, would you. I mean, there's no limits to how much. So I think there's got to be a point in which you say this is this is insane. We're killing kids once and I think that's the point. I mean, it happened in Australia and that they stopped it overnight. It happened in Scotland, they stopped it overnight. But I think in America, I don't think you have that sensible appeal. You know, you see all over Florida they say, you don't take my gun from me, you don't take this and that and the other. I don't think that's a freedom. I think that's that's that imposed impinges on the liberties of other people to stay alive.
Yeah, But as a politics like because at the moment, I mean, imagine if you were doing a Monty python s get on it. I don't think I don't think you would could have been ludicrous enough. And I never thought i'd say it about No.
I think that's true. I think you're right. I think that something's just Begar belief, and that the idea that some of these people say what they say would be just comedy back in the day when we were writing it and you said, no, that's too far, I don't think they say that far. But you know, and I think there are comedians now who call it out. So I think comedy is about being young. I think it is that being singers. You know, when you were teenagers, you have favorite singers, you have favorite comedians, and they move up with you that you stay with them, and that's your generation. And I think we were in a generation where a sort of absurdity was was fine and it can still appeal, but we're not actually speaking to the generation. Really.
Yeah, yeah, very true.
Okay, when we come back, we're going to chat about sticking around and get some advice because that's something that Eric is very good at. So we're going to take an air breaking with me back really shortly. Okay, we're back with Eric Idle, and I want to get into your incredible career and I think the key to longevity. I mean, we see so many come and go, and you have reinvented yourself continuously, music all the way through. I mean, you've been in Showbaz since nineteen sixty one, So what keeps you going?
Why do you love it?
I think it's a fascinating metier. I think why people like things, and I think, of course you get involved with longer and longer form things. I got suddenly into the musical. You know, Spam a Lot led me into a whole other world of which I found fascinating. You have different problems to solve, and in fact, they're just publishing my Spam a Lot diaries, which I discovered last year. I'd kept, I'd forgotten completely, and then we read it and going, oh my gosh. Because what's nice about a diary is you're day to day, you don't know it's going to become a success. You think, oh is this going to work? Oh my gosh, what do we do? Oh my gosh. And so there's a sort of tale in it which I find is actually quite interesting, because until we hit the audience in Chicago, we don't know if we're funny, and we certainly don't know how they're going to embrace the show and love it. And last year I got the very great, wonderful delight of seeing it again on Broadway. That's two times in my lifetime, which is which is a great honor and a fabis feel that you think, well, this is actually going to go on. People will be doing this long after I'm gone, and I like that because I like making people laugh and happy.
So do you make opportunities or do you take opportunities?
I don't quite know. I mean, I write, I've been working on a book for five years. I pick it up, I throw it away, I pick it up. Some books come easily and effortlessly. I like to write. That's what I do. Basically, if I didn't have to go out and unperform, I would be okay, because as long as I can go and write first thing in the morning, I'll find out what's inside your brain. I think that's quite that's a kind of a luxury. And I've learned a bit about how to do it, And so you pick up a few tips and what you need and you meet one. For people like Mike Nichols, who's in throughout my diaries, who is the most inspiring person I've ever worked with, and he was of the most helpful, and he says things that preach the moral. If you're doing anything, you must preach them. You must. There's so many tips and things I learned just simply working with him. He said in the music All the Street, most important things are the play, the play and the play. And that's also fascinating to me. You know, it isn't about a bunch of songs put together. Everything has to develop the story, the plot, because narrative is how we teach each other or tell each other about the world we live in.
Yeah, that's storytelling.
That storytelling absolutely, and.
You're taking me along as an audience member.
And it makes sense to me if you have actually got that narrative, and I understand it here.
And I even do that on my stage show. I try and make it about a couple of things I'm interested in once that one's the meaning of life, which I sing the song about and then talk about, and the other is mock and roll, which I find something I've stumbled on, which is I think that Monty Python was the first group, you know, with the Beatles had done everything, they did this and the other. They ended up at the Hollywood Bowl. Well, Monty Python became the first group to become mock and roll and we started to play bigger and bigger stadiums. We played the Hollywood Bowl. We finished up at the O two for ten nights, eighteen thousand people. This would be unheard. This was unheard of when we began as comedians. So I think nowadays we're used to it because people comedians can play football stadiums, they can go on tours. But I think it was new when we first did it.
Yeah, and groundbreaking and so did you just take those opportunities as they came up, and even though no one else had done it, you just sort of went, we can.
I think so, I mean, certainly as far as the Hollywood Bowl is concerned, I think when we did O two, we had no idea and we were sold out the first show in thirty four seconds. It's eighteen thousand tickets. So then we said, they said five won't sold out by the end of the morning. They said, do you come and do five? So I mean I think We could still have been doing that around the world, you know, but Michael didn't really want to tour, so we turned down lots and lots of money.
Well and that has vault all right, Well, well that's out there properly now, it's for sure. With the success of Monty Python you just touched on it, you would have thought that these royalties would keep rolling in.
But it hasn't been. The great kesh Cow has it No.
Because I tell you why, because people have now found ways to avoid paying royalties. Don't really pays music voralties anymore. Because Murdoch went off shore, he went up into the satellite said, oh, the laws don't apply. YouTube steals everything, spotifyce pays nothing, support organisicians get nothing, They don't get any of their royalties. And even you know, even then, once you've got the streamers like Netflix, they don't tell you how much money they're making or how many people are watching. They just take it. So you've got a few billionaires and it's not been read around. And I think that's something that the next lot need to sort out, really because a lot of it's theft.
Yeah it is, And certainly we've had some big artists that are speaking out and actually developing their own platforms so that they can and see it happening.
But it's Taylor Swift, you know, God, that's absolutely her. I think she deserves everything she gets because she has been so brave courageous to go and say no, I'm going to rerecord all my songs. You cannot take my music. You may not do this, And I think that a few more people need to come out about that because they're not. I think that one of the metaphors for show business is the goose that laid the golden egg, and if you don't feed the goose, you don't get the golden eggs. I think you have to. It's just a little bit of corn. But they need some incentivization to make sure that their work is rewarded.
Yeah, and equally. And it is related, as you know, because those platforms are more they're more or less cowboys and writing their own rules as they want to. And certainly we're in New Zealand have been very focused on trying to put some limits in place because some of the content that they're doing, you know, recording people live, shooting someone, you know, like how obscene and as we know, unfortunately there's people that will go out there just to be seen and you know, to not have any controls. I think is something that society needs to start getting its head around.
I think law is an important thing and that it doesn't need to be done. I start my show with a new song I've written court Please don't film my show tonight stick it on YouTube, because they do. And the point is that's just completely unfair because you can't just and then YouTube. So you've got to come and complain about it. Well, that's completely wrong. They did. They just get rid of all all of responsibility and people can come and put it on and start getting money from your show. Well that's wrong. That's playing out wrong.
Yeah, it is.
It is.
But the answer to it is going to be people like Taylor Swift and others like yourself standing up calling it out.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
So do you prefer live to recording or you know, do you like the live show? I?
You know what we do in the industry, have a lot of musicians get together and we have a ding dong, So I love that. That's my most happy. We just play oldies and we play and sing along but doing it and I'd love to do that sometime with a band. But I've only got a I've used artificial stupidity, and I have a virtual band and they're on screen, so they come with me and they're the Monkeys band. The people have played with the Monkeys, so they're kind of rather nice and they play very well, so I play along with them, so it's quite nice.
Yeah, I absolutely love that.
So we're expecting you in New Zealand in just a few weeks.
How long are you here for?
I'm not here very long. I do three gigs, I think, and then I do a tour. I got to go to Hobart I've never been. I got a chamce Mania Chazzy, and then I do a tour of Australia for most of November, and then and then I go and see my son who lives up on the Sunshine Coast.
Ah. That's awesome. Okay, So a last piece of advice then from you? You've been married I read forty three years.
I'd be with my current wife forty seven years.
Have you?
As I say in my show, I gave that woman two of the best years of our life.
Not concurrently, well, not.
Now, oh no, obviously, Well, I do feel rather proud that we've actually stayed together for forty seven years. I mean, it was love at first sight. On my part, I said, I'm never going to leave you, and she said she thought, yeah, right right right, you know, but I never have so, and you know, I think being able to create a relationship with someone for that long is it's hard work for both. It takes work. But I think it's it's pleasant. It's nice.
Yeah, absolutely is. I always liked the song which is if you Leave Me can I Come to?
That's a very good Cowboys song. I like it.
And our parting segment on the podcast, I would love to know what do you think is some of the best advice that you were given.
Hm in life? You mean, or in show business or well.
Yeah, you've got the microphone.
My first my first agent, it was called Roger Hancock and he was the brother of a comedian called Tony Hancock, and his only advice was be available. I thought that's rather good advice. You be open to other things. Just be available. And if they say that this is they well maybe I'll do that or yes, let's I'll do that. So I quite like that as a bit of advice.
I like that because We've got too many young people that think that the world should revolve around them, when actually, if we turn up and we're available, goodness knows, more opportunities actually open for us.
I think that's good. It's just take your chances and you know, be available to new things, which I think it'd good.
I really like it. Okay, Eric Hardilek you so much of joining me today. It's been a real treat. You can catch Eric and his stage show Always Look on the Bright Side of Life live in October. He's touring Auckland, Wellington and christ Church. Tickets are on sale now. And that's it for another episode of Ask Me Anything. If you have enjoyed this episode, please follow Ask Me Anything on iHeartRadio or rarely get your podcasts. While you were there, you got some of our past episodes. Planning to choose from. I'm Paula Benich Ask Me Anything. Goodbye,
