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
soccer baseball nice
I love being an older comic now. It's like being an old soccer or an old baseball player. You're in the Hall of Fame and it's nice, but you're no longer that person in the limelight on the spot doing that thing.
film found enjoyable
I've always found bad films more enjoyable than good ones.
trying different audience
I listen to the audience and try and bounce with them. All audiences are different. But they are all homo sapiens.
ambition interesting may
Talent is always more interesting - ambition is not interesting. If you have talent, you have to find ways of expressing it, but you may not be a success in the world's terms.
bells circus sound
What's brown and sounds like a bell? DUNG!
nudge-nudge circus bats
A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat!
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.
writing television evening
You could write a joke in the pub at lunchtime and watch it performed on television that evening.
fun nice moving
I always have a feeling you should move the playing field and the minute you know what you're doing, you're wrong. Therefore, I wanted us not to try to follow Spamalot immediately, but to do something different. This is perfect because it uses all the same skills, like story telling and lyric writing and music writing, but it's presenting it in a different form. And of course it gives me and John a nice chance to perform and show off which is also fun.
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.
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.
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.
work-out lucky littles
Well we were lucky because we started in Canada where everybody has a sense of humour! We flirted a little while with Josh Groban. He was personally interested in it. He said oh I'd love to do something different, and I said well it's pretty different! But in the end the dates didn't work out.
rain years house
I used to have a house in London, but couldn't face 20 more years of St John's Wood in the rain.