Eric Idle
Eric Idle
Eric Idleis an English comedian, actor, voice actor, author, singer-songwriter, musician, writer and comedic composer. Idle is a member of the English surreal comedy group Monty Python, a member of The Rutles and the author of the Broadway musical Spamalot...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionComedian
Date of Birth29 March 1943
people dinner these-days
I'm not careful with my money at all these days. I buy people a lot of dinners!
america fund pension
I don't invest in the stock market, but I have pension funds - some in America and the UK.
three frost week
When, in 1966, I progressed to The Frost Report, I was paid ten guineas a minute. I was guaranteed three minutes a week, so this was good money.
people looks trump
People who are interested in money are really uninteresting people. They look like Donald Trump.
writing python years
Monty Python paid me £20,000 to write, direct and assemble them - the cheapskates! I told them I'd never earned less in a year since leaving Cambridge. The first show sold out in 43 seconds and we ended up performing ten in total. We had no idea there would be such demand.
home california house
I live in a Spanish-style hillside home in Los Angeles, California. I paid $900,000 in 1995. It's perhaps worth about $3m now. Thankfully, I paid off my mortgage before the crash because I could see it coming. I worried that I would be caught having to pay off a very high mortgage for a house I couldn't sell.
jobs war leaving
My first professional job was appearing in a disastrous theatre production of Oh, What a Lovely War in Leicester Rep, shortly after leaving Cambridge.
sorry writing three
When I was 23 I started writing for I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and was paid three guineas for every minute's airtime.
writing television evening
You could write a joke in the pub at lunchtime and watch it performed on television that evening.
children cambridge-university work-ethic
Having little money to spend was a valuable learning experience. My schooling also shaped my work ethic because while other children were listening to the Goons, I was studying, which enabled me to go to Cambridge University.
mother father war
My father, who was a sergeant in the RAF during the Second World War, was killed in a hitchhiking accident while returning home on compassionate leave. As a result, my mother had to get work, as a nurse, and at seven the RAF put me into a boarding school and ex-orphanage called the Royal Wolverhampton School.
fashion years mind
So it became in my mind a nine-carol service; an oratorio and orchestral concert all in one, but with narration. That's something I've learned about, because it's the story that keeps you in there. I wrote a libretto and I gave it to John [Du Prez, Idle's co-writer of many years]. We normally don't work in this fashion but I said off you go, and he went off for about three months. He brought me back this demo which blew my mind.
suffering problem desks
Writers tend to suffer from back problems because they spend their time bent over a desk.
song real school
We learnt a lot because we got in with real choreographers who tell you what they need from a song, because a song has to advance the story. Then real directors like Mike Nichols tell you where you can have 'B themes' and 'C themes', and we go oh yes, B themes and C themes! So we were taught in the finest school amongst the finest people. And also by the school of experience.