Creator / Eric Idle

"And now for something completely different."

"I never think in terms of target audience. I try to write what makes me laugh, so I'm the target audience. I guess I just hope there's another person in America like me."

Eric Idle (born 29 March 1943 in South Shields, England) is a British actor, comedian and screenwriter, best remembered as a member of Monty Python, though he has also written and acted in other projects, such as The Rutles.

Within Monty Python Idle was the only member who worked alone.^note Terry Gilliam doesn't count, since his primary role was the animations. All the others wrote in duos, but he always preferred working independently and didn't mind learning a lot of dialogue for it. He often played reporters, naïve innocents or cheeky bastards. Some of the most popular Python sketches have him in it, including "Nudge Nudge". Idle is also an accomplished singer-songwriter and wrote many of the group's songs together with Neil Innes (The Bonzo Dog Band). Their Signature Song, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", originally from Life of Brian, was written and sung by Idle.

Idle's most succesful non-Python projects have been the comedic TV series Do Not Adjust Your Set, Splitting Heirs, Rutland Weekend Television and the spin-off The Rutles and the comedy film Nuns on the Run. Apart from that he appears a lot in Celebrity Cameo roles in American films and sitcoms, including Frasier, Suddenly Susan and Declan Desmond in The Simpsons. He also wrote a SF comedy thriller called The Road to Mars.

Idle also wrote the successful stage musical Spamalot, a cash-in on Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which has sold a lot of tickets all across the world, but at the same time received criticism for "selling out", not the least among some of the other Pythons. At least Idle lampshades this image too. One of his Turn of the Millennium concert tours was called Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python, and another was The Greedy Bastard Tour.

The standard IDE for the programming language Python, IDLE, was named after him.

Works

TV appearances

• Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967-1969)
• Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969–70, 71-72, 74)
• Rutland Weekend Television (1978), where The Rutles span off. He plays both the reporter as well as Dirk McQuickly.
• Laverne & Shirley: Appeared in the 1981 episode "I Do, I Do" as Derek DeWoods.
• Faerie Tale Theatre: The narrator in The Frog Prince (1982) episode — which he wrote and directed — and the Pied Piper in The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1985) episode.
• One Foot in the Grave (1991-1992): Mervyn Whale.
• Splitting Heirs (1993): Tommy Butterfly Rainbow Peace Platel
• Frasier: Appeared as Chuck in the 1996 episode "High Crane Drifter".
• Pinky and the Brain: Played Pinky's parents in the 1998 episode "The Family That Poits Together, Narfs Together".
• Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: Played Guzelian in the episode "War, and Peace and War". Also composed the song "Let's Make Peace".
• Suddenly Susan: Played Ian Maxtone-Graham, one of the regular characters.
• The Simpsons: Voiced documentary filmmaker Declan Desmond in four episodes: "'Scuse Me While I Miss the Sky" (2003), "Fat Man and Little Boy" (2004), "Springfield Up" (2007) and "The Spy Who Learned Me" (2012)
• The Masked Singer (2022): Appeared in Season 8 as the Hedgehog.

Films

• And Now For Something Completely Different (1971)
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975): Brave Sir Robin, Concorde and the man who orders everyone to "bring out yer dead". Minor peasant characters here and there.
• Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979): The cheeky man who jokes about while being crucified and eventually is brought away instead of Brian. Also Stan, who wants to be a woman, and the Jewish haggler.
• Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982)
• Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983): One of the French waiters. Wife of the Protestant man and wife of the American tourist. The singer of "The Meaning Of Life song" and "The Galaxy Song". Also the wife of the British couple visited by the Grim Reaper.
• National Lampoon's European Vacation (1983), in which Idle plays a British bicyclist
• Transformers: The Movie (1986): Voice of Wreck-Gar
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988): Desmond and Berthold
• Nuns on the Run (1990): Brian Hope
• Casper (1995): Paul "Dibbs" Plutzker
• The Wind Inthe Willows 1996: Rat
• An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1998): Alan Smithee
• Quest for Camelot (1998): Voice of Devon
• The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue (1998): Evil!Martin
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1998): Slyly
• South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999): Dr. Vosknocker
• 102 Dalmatians (2000): Voice of Waddlesworth
• Ella Enchanted (2004): The Narrator
• Shrek the Third (2007): Voice of Merlin

Theme Park Attractions

• In the Disney Theme Parks, he played Dr. Nigel Channing in Honey I Shrunk the Audience and went on to reprise the role in the second and third/current versions of the Journey into Imagination dark ride at Epcot (as a means of Arc Welding the Imagination! pavilion's attractions).
• For Busch Gardens Williamsburg, he wrote and co-starred in the short film Pirates 4-D.

Books and other writings

• The Two Ronnies: In 1971, 1976 and 1978 he wrote the scripts of 10 episodes.
• Hello Sailor, a 1975 novel.
• The Quite Remarkable Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat, a 1996 children's book/album combination featuring original songs by Idle and John Du Prez.
• The Road to Mars, a 1999 science fiction novel drawn from an unproduced screenplay from The '80s.
• The Greedy Bastard Diary, a 2003 record of his experiences on The Greedy Bastard Tour.
• Spamalot: Wrote the libretto and (with John Du Prez) music. He also provided a prerecorded "No Talking or Phones" Warning for it, plus the similar voiceover for God in the U.K. and touring versions.
• Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, a 2018 "Sortabiography" (read: memoir) of his life and career.

Albums

• Monty Python's Flying Circus (1970)
• Another Monty Python Record (1971)
• Monty Python's Previous Record (1972)
• The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief (1973)
• Monty Python Live at Drury Lane (1974)
• The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
• Monty Python Live at City Centre (1976)
• The Monty Python Instant Record Collection (1977)
• Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)
• Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album (1980)
• Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
• The Final Rip Off (1988)
• Monty Python Sings (1989)
• The Monty Python Instant Record Collection, Volume 2 (1991)
• The Ultimate Monty Python Rip Off (1994)
• The Instant Monty Python CD Collection (1994)
• Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python (2001 live album)
• The Rutland Isles (2003 solo cabaret, ostensibly "an award-seeking documentary" travelogue)
• Spamalot (2005)
• The Hastily Cobbled Together for a Fast Buck Album (unreleased)

Eric Idle's work provides examples of...

• Affectionate Parody: His project The Rutles, with Neil Innes (The Bonzo Dog Band) is a comedic parody and homage of The Beatles. Idle loves the band and George Harrison was a huge fan of the film, even playing a reporter in one scene. Harrison also helped bankroll the Python movies.
  • Idle also did a short parody of Tommy by The Who, called Pommy, about a boy who became deaf, dumb, and blind after watching a Ken Russell movie. ^note Russell directed and wrote the screenplay for the movie version of Tommy. This also involved Neil Innes & was done for Rutland Weekend Television
• Anti-Christmas Song: "Fuck Christmas" combines this with Cluster F-Bomb.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor:
  • Rutland Weekend Television was unnecessarily crippled by a miniscule budget granted by a parsimonious BBC. Idle, Innes, Woolf and Batley ended the first series on a bitter spoof song about the mean and miserly attitude of the BBC, where the male characters sat naked on a row of stools in a bare studio, with only minimal modesty-saving towels (Gwen Taylor was absent for this one).
  Hello, I bet you're wondering why we're here
  Sitting on our bums, without a stitch of gear
  For as it happens, the budget has expired
  And everything's gone back to the place from whence it's hired...
  • In the 1970s Idle appeared in TV commercials for the chocolate brand Breakaway. When he performed the Monty Python stage shows and did the Nudge Nudge sketch he brought the crowd to roaring laughter and applause by suddenly taking a bit from a Breakaway piece of chocolate and shouting: "Ugh, Breakaway!" It did cost him his exclusive contract with the company though....
• Borrowed Catch Phrase: It was actually Idle who first said "And Now For Something Completely Different" in Monty Python's Flying Circus, but the line was used most by John Cleese.
• Celebrity Cameo: He plays an polite English tourist in National Lampoon's European Vacation.
• The Coconut Effect: Ironically, in a major sense-of-humour failure, Idle threatened to sue an independent film-maker who used the "That's not a horse - you're using coconuts!" gag, claiming he had originated it for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Saner counsel prevailed when it was pointed out to him exactly how old the gag was, and that (for instance) a radio comedy show Idle himself had written for had used this gag way back in the 1960s - ten years before Holy Grail. And the BBC radio comedy archives preserved older examples still....
• He Also Did: Idle has written a lot of songs and even sang the opening and closing theme of the British sitcom One Foot in the Grave.
• Lyrical Dissonance: Many of his pep talk songs sound perky and upbeat... unless you're listening to the lyrics!
• Motor Mouth: Idle has a lot of sketches where he just rambles about something. The most famous ones are probably the "Money Song" sketch and the "Mr. Smoke-too-much" skit.
• Pep-Talk Song: He has written a lot of subversively cheery songs, of which "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" is the most famous.
• Punny Name: Exaggerated for humor in Monty Python's "Travel Agent" sketch, where Eric Idle plays an eccentric man named "Smoketoomuch". He's completely oblivious to the fact that his name is a pun, apparently believing it to be a perfectly normal name. Even after the travel agent makes the Obligatory Joke, "Well, you'd better cut down a little!", he claims that it's the first time he's heard anyone joke about his name.
• The Something Song: "The Galaxy Song" and "Penis Song" from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life were written by him.
• Symbol Swearing: "I Bet You They Won't Play This Song On The Radio" from Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album, which is all bleeps and sound effects. No two bleeps are the same, though.
• Wholesome Cross Dresser: After Terry Jones Idle may be the second best drag performer of the Pythons. The wife of the American tourist and the Protestant housewife in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life are very convincing portrayals. What makes him unique is that his imitations of women aren't as shrill as the others, just a mellowing of his natural voice.

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