Eric Idle is an English comedian, 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 on Saturday Night Live, and the author of the Broadway musical
Spamalot.
Eric Idle was born on March 29, 1943 in South Shields, Tyne
and Wear, England. He is an actor and writer, known for Monty Python
and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979) and The Meaning of Life
(1983). He has been married to Tania Kosevich since May 22, 1981. They
have one child. He was previously married to Lyn Ashley.
Idle wrote
for Python mostly by himself, at his own pace, although he sometimes
found it difficult in having to present material to the others and make
it seem funny without the back-up support of a partner. Cleese admitted
that this was slightly unfair – when the Pythons voted on which sketches
should appear in a show, "he only got one vote", but says that Idle was
an independent person and worked best on his own. Idle himself admitted
this was sometimes difficult: "You had to convince five others. And
they were not the most un-egotistical of writers, either."
Idle's
work in Python is often characterised by an obsession with language and
communication: many of his characters have verbal peculiarities, such as
the man who speaks in anagrams, the man who says words in the wrong
order, and the butcher who alternates between rudeness and politeness
every time he speaks. A number of his sketches involve extended
monologues (for example the customer in the "Travel Agency" sketch who
won't stop talking about his unpleasant experiences with holidays), and
he would frequently spoof the unnatural language and speech patterns of
television presenters. Unlike Palin, Idle is said to be the master of
insincere characters, from the David Frost-esque Timmy Williams, to
small-time crook Stig O'Tracy, who tries to deny the fact that organised
crime master Dinsdale Piranha nailed his head to the floor.
The
second-youngest member of the Pythons, Idle was closest in spirit to the
students and teenagers who made up much of Python's fanbase. Python
sketches dealing most with contemporary obsessions like pop music,
sexual permissiveness and recreational drugs are usually Idle's work,
often characterised by double entendre, sexual references, and other
"naughty" subject matter – most famously demonstrated in "Nudge Nudge."
Idle originally wrote "Nudge, Nudge" for Ronnie Barker, but it was
rejected because there was 'no joke in the words'.
A competent
guitarist, Idle composed many of the group's most famous musical
numbers, most notably "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", the
closing number of Life of Brian, which has grown to become a Python
signature tune. He was responsible for the "Galaxy Song" from The
Meaning of Life and "Eric the Half-a-Bee", a whimsical tune that first
appeared on the Previous Record album.
On television, Idle created
Rutland Weekend Television (RWT), a sketch show on BBC2, written by
himself, with music by Neil Innes. RWT was 'Britain's smallest
television network'. The name was a parody of London Weekend Television,
the independent television franchise contractor that provided Londoners
with their ITV services at weekends; Rutland had been England's
smallest county, but had recently been 'abolished' in an administrative
shake-up. To make the joke complete, the programme went out on a
weekday. Other regular performers were David Battley, Henry Woolf, Gwen
Taylor and Terence Bayler and George Harrison made a guest appearance on
one episode.
Idle received good critical notices appearing in
projects written and directed by others – such as Terry Gilliam's The
Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989), alongside Robbie Coltrane in Nuns
on the Run (1990) and in Casper (1995). He also played Ratty in Terry
Jones' version of The Wind in the Willows (1996). However, his own
creative projects – such as the film Splitting Heirs (1993), a comedy he
wrote, starred in and executive-produced – were mostly unsuccessful
with critics and audiences.
In 1990, Idle sang and co-wrote the theme tune to the popular British sitcom One Foot in the Grave, starring Richard Wilson.
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