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1943 29th March : Eric Idle born in Harton Hospital,
South Shields, County Durham, England, a single child to a middle class
family whose father is on active service for the Royal Air Force in
places like India and Nassau. 1945 24th December : Father escapes the Nazi menace, only to get fatally injured on leave on British road accident hitch-hiking home to see small son (then me). Dies Christmas Eve 1945. Earliest childhood memories: weeping mother at Christmas time. Happy Christmas everyone. |
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1946-51
Eric lives in Oldham, then moves to Wallasey,
opposite Liverpool. 6th birthday - a ferry ride with
friends to Liverpool, a ride on the overhead railway (now demolished) back
to Wallasey for tea at the ABC Tea Rooms, where boy throws up on too many
meringues. This is the last meringue he will ever eat.
He
attends school at St. George's Wallasey.
1952-61
Sent to boarding school at Royal School, Wolverhampton
(Midlands). Still very Victorian in atmosphere, with bullying still institutionalized
and dormitories a hundred yards long sleeping a hundred boys at a time, the
establishment was later to be called a "semi-orphanage" by Eric and
described by Dirk as a non-exotic center of "black
country." Soot, factory, grim walks in crocodile.
A bright pupil, Eric yet manages to maintain
a steady academic progress. Boy
gets 10 O levels, 3 A Levels, 1 S Level. People tell boy boy smart. Boy not
believe people but go to Cambridge where boy learns that life can be fun.
1961
Passes the interview for a place at Pembroke College, Cambridge. It's a comedians' college (Peter Cook was there), and Eric gets through in a rather comedic way : "I had to meet three people at the interview. One was an Arabic scholar, one was a professor in economics, and one was a mathematician. And I was going to read English, right ? So we discussed what was on in the West End, which I happened to know - it was all we could talk about."
1962
Men call boy sir.
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1963 March : Gets into the Footlights Club via his own Smokers show, after being auditioned by Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie ; he will yet fail to be selected to perform in "Stuff What Dreams are Made of", the show then in preparation. Footlights Club has a bar that stays open all night. Boy stays open all night in bar. Sketches, cabaret, fun. And John Cleese. September : While Beatlemania sweeps England, Idle sweeps stage at Edinburgh festival. Performing twice nightly. Cambridge Footlights Review. Smash in festival. Eric, who appears alongside Richard Eyre and Humphrey Barclay, passes by Terry Jones, from the rival Oxford Review, without actually getting to meet him !
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1964
Writes, directs and performs in the 1964 Edinburgh effort - and meets Oxford-based Michael Palin.
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1965 Eric's lucky break : he is made president
of the Footlights. He then immediately takes the historical decision
to secure the full admission of women members (there had been female
guests before, but, in 1932, the flop of a show featuring some had led
to a severe backlash, and the 1933 show was elegantly called "No more
women") : "Several of the gay dons were in tears when women came
in, but me, in my little leather jacket at that stage, I was totally
unsympathetic." Among the women who join the club and appear in
"My girl Herbert", the 1965 show, is an Australian post-graduate student
named Germaine Greer, who will
later write "The Female Eunuch". |
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1966-67
The young comedian is called in, along with other Cambridge people, for Richard Eyre's "Oh ! What a lovely war" : "It was an amazing production where every night the cast cried more than the audience - we were all so terrifically motivated - while they left for early buses." Retained for Christmas Season in "dreadful farce" "Once For the Pot", Eric is so busy writing back stage that he misses several entrances.
He soon realises he doesn't want to put up with being an actor. His backstage scribbling has led to sketches for "I'm sorry, I'll read that again", and Graeme Garden, who shares a flat with him at the time, has got him involved in "Twice a fortnight", along with Michael and Terry J. He then joins David Frost's team, often supplying material for his Continuous Developing Monologue in "Frost report". Scripts go by taxi - writers by Tube. Moves from 3 guineas a minute to 10 guineas a minute.
Revolver released. Keen interest in fab four. First plays pop music for Tony Palmer. Palmer very impressed with The Who - "I can see for Miles -" decides to become the Ken Russell of Pop. Happy days in BBC rehearsal rooms with twenty writers.
Professional writing career blooming. Writes TV series for Ronnie Corbett ("No - That's me over there"). More Frost work. Constantly. Boffoes. Quiperoos. CDM (continuous developing monologue - Frostspeak for his gags.) (Cleese calls it OJARIL - old jokes and ridiculously irrelevant links.)
He also scripts Ronnie Corbett's sitcom "No
- That's me over there".
1968-69
Humphrey Barclay, producer of "I'm sorry, I'll read that again", asks Eric to participate in a new comedy show in the same vein, but mainly aimed at children : ATV's DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET. No member of the team (Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Denise Coffey, David Jason) has any children, but they all can remember very well having been ones, and, despite being shown in the late afternoon, the programme rapidly achieves a cult following among adults. And, on this occasion, Eric meets and befriends a cartoonist named Terry Gilliam.
The show, which also comprises a musical side provided by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, is given two seasons - in the winter of 1968 and the spring of 1969 -, the second being produced by Ian Davidson and aired by Thames TV. Meanwhile, Barclay has gone on to produce another show, hosted by Frank Muir, with sketches and appearances from Eric : WE HAVE WAYS OF MAKING YOU LAUGH. "We didn't," was later to comment Eric.
1969
As a result of their recent success, Thames TV want their comedy team to evolve into a grown-up version of Do Not Adjust Your Set. But at the very same time, producer Barry Took is thinking of some Oxbridge cocktail for the BBC : an experiment combining Cleese/Chapman with Palin/Jones. Now, John had always wanted to work with Michael. And, as Thames is still fussing over time slot problems, Cleese has phoned Palin, and the former has brought along Graham Chapman while the latter has come up with Eric and Terry G...
13th May : The six members of the Monty Python's Flying Circus's team to be first meet.
7th July : Idle scives off first week of Python filming to get married. (To Australian actress Lyn Ashley) Honeymoon in South of France. Also present on honeymoon - Marty Feldman and wife. Honeymoon lot of laughs.
August : Series One of MPFC starts to be recorded.
5th October : MPFC first broadcast on BBC 1, around 11 pm. It will be aired until January, 1970. Pythonmania sweeps Surbiton. Weeks of standing on the Yorkshire moors dressed as a woman inures young man to the ridiculous.
1970
Eric writes "Hello Sailor". But, unhappy with the horsebetting publishers that he meets, he decides not to deal with them.
June : Series Two of MPFC starts to be recorded.
September : Series Two aired till December.
October : End of Series Two recording.
1971
December : Series Three of MPFC starts to be recorded.
1972
May : End of Series Three recording.
October : Series Three aired till January, 1973.
1973
Son Carey born on film. A scar is born.
Python tours Canada, for reasons never entirely made plain. Python previously tours England on "First Farewell Tour." For Cash. Richard Nixon does not mention Python in various speeches he makes but he also denies knowledge of Watergate.
1974
John Cleese has now left Monty Python, and Eric is the most reluctant to move ahead with a depleted team.
Python on stage Drury Lane England for smash limited season. Monty Python and the Holy Grail filmed in Scotland in wet wool armour for five weeks of rainy misery unpleasantness. Next Python film written for desert. . .
October : Series Four aired till December.
1975
April : "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is released, both US and UK. While promoting in New York, Eric meets pal Paul Simon, who introduces him to most of the Saturday Night Live crew : Lorne Michaels, Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd.
August : Following the New York premiere, Eric flies out to the West Coast with Terry G to get on with it. Less than spectacular opening of Holy Grail with Gilliam. LA profoundly uninterested in unheard-of English comics. Unheard-of English comics profoundly uninterested in LA.
But one who's interested goes by the name of George Harrison , whom Eric meets backstage at the Directors Guild in L.A. It's friendship at first sight. Fun commences. Nights of fun and madness continue: hopefully forever. And, long before the video clip days, Eric organizes and directs a couple of films for George, "Crackerbox Palace" and "True love".
"Hello Sailor" published. "It didn't do big in hardback, but it did over 20, 000 in paperback, which in those days was quite a lot for a first novel."
Divorces from Lyn Ashley.
During MPFC, Eric has produced, written and starred in his own radio series, "Radio 5 on Radio 1". "I used to come on to Radio One, which was the pop music station, about as hip as Dick Clark, and do an hour's show a week. I had lots of different voices which I'd prerecord, with rock music playing in between. It would take me hours - it would take me ten hours to record one hour's worth of material, because I had to play all of the voices, and in those days the technology was really primitive, and we didn't have anything like dubbing. If you were doing both voices in a sketch, you had to lay all that voice down and time yourself back and forth."
These days in the life of a fake radio station broadcast by a genuine one get him to do his own thing for BBC 2, with Neil Innes from Bonzo Dog Band fame as his partner in crime. RUTLAND WEEKEND TELEVISION is a weekly half-hour which carries the Monty Python technique of television parody to its ultimate, purporting to be the programme output of Britain's smallest independant station. Eric writes the scripts and directs virtually everything, while Neil performs original music. "Rutland Weekend Television" entertains three insomniacs in the Home Counties. Fails to entertain Ringo Starr.
Idle in South of France, tiny shack in empty Provencal hillside; writes Rutles joke. Speaks to Innes on phone. Innes writes Rutles song.
The Christmas special features the only Idle-Harrison song ever, "The Pirate song", sung by George at his silliest. "We were pissed through most of it."
I want to be a Pirate
A Pirate's life
for me
All My friends are pirates
And sail the BB - C
I've got a Jolly Roger
Its big and black and vast
So get out your skull and crossbones
And I'll run it up your mast.
What a wasted education.
1976
May : Despite an incredibly low budget of 30, 000 pounds a series or so (the whole thing is staged in a tiny studio too small to admit an audience, then in a studio in Bristol !), RWT has a second season. The Rutles first appear.
October : A comedy album, "The Rutland Weekend Songbook", and "The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book" are released as brilliant by-products. Methuen publishes "The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book," which also contains The Rutles. 250,000 copies printed. Many still left unread. Many more left unsold.
23rd October : Eric hosts Saturday Night Live for the first time. The show, at the beginning of SNL's second series, includes a clip of some mock Beatles singing a mock Innes song called "I must be in love". Thanks to the Rutles, Eric is on the verge of cracking the American market.
Commences publicity tour of Canada, for book. Decides never to do publicity tour again. Canada still Canada.
December : Spends Christmas in Barbados with SNL producer Lorne Michaels. Michaels says don't do Rutles story with BBC2. Make it with dollars. Idle agrees to spend NBC's money instead. Ends up spending much of Michaels money as well. Michaels still friendly.
1977
January : Meets Rikki Fataar on the beach. Fataar later becomes Stig. End of Jan 1977. Idle reluctantly leaves Barbados - having only one for Christmas. Having too good a time to write. In N.Y. loft off the Bowery writes The Rutles Story Synopsis underneath the rythmic stomping of the Carol Conway Dance Company. "And two three four, One and Kick and..."
Loft inhabited by Aykroyd from Saturday Night. Aykroyd inhabited by Martians. Idle uninhibited with inhabited Aykroyd.
20th February : A special issue of SNL, "Live from the Mardi Gras", is aired from New Orleans with guest stars Penny Marshall, Buck Henry, Henry Winkler and Randy Newman. As for Eric, he's doing a remote broadcast from a location where absolutely nothing's happening. New Orleans superb time. Show not quite so superb. The parade (six miles of glittering pageant with Henry Winkler) fails to arrive for even one minute of the hour and a half program. Buck Henry convinced of conspiracy. Idle avoids the nightmare of commentating live in the Apollo Ballroom with a thousand dragsters. Penny Marshall doesn't.
23th April : Shakespeare's birthday. Eric hosts SNL for the second time. Musical guest Neil Innes performs a very Lennon-like "Cheese and Onions", from the Rutles, as well as "Shangri-La" (later to be found in the Rutles' "Archaeology" CD).
After great ratings, NBC advances the money and facilities for a full length documentary on the Rutles. An extremely scrupulous and sophisticated parody, THE RUTLES (subtitled "All you need is cash") follows the Beatles story very closely, exposing the shortcomings of the media as much as the mismanagement of the group. Innes furiously writes nineteen "new" Rutles hits.
June : Idle appendix removed in Arab Hospital in St. Johns Wood. Idle celebrates exit from hospital with major fun at Harrisonhome: Cracker Box Palace. Idle returns to hospital having celebrated too soon. Ten days of drip feeds and plastic things down back of throat - Idle leaves hospital once more, fifteen pounds slimmer: Does not celebrate too furiously too soon. Survival of the fittest.
July : Writes final Rutles script. Gary Weis arrives.
August : Rutles commence shooting. Neil Innes, having finished all songs, recording them in record two weeks. Rutles shoot one week London, one week Liverpool, one week London. Three weeks of fun and dressing up.
September : Idle arrives for last week of the Hamptons season. Rubs cocktail with New York society. Editing commences. The Warner Brothers (Reg and Stan) flip wig over Rutles and decide to market 25 records. Derek Taylor becomes overacting Rutles Press Officer. Basil Pao and Eric Idle put together 20 page booklet story of the Rutles one mad weekend for album. GH, the Rutles guru, pleased with events so far, introduces them to Mo (Ostin). Further shooting (three days in New York, one day in New Orleans one day in London) and the thing is, as they say, "in the can."
1978
22nd March : "The Rutles" first broadcast on NBC. Ratings are disappointing, but it's roundly praised as an artistic triumph.
9th December : Eric hosts SNL for the third time, just after he returned from filming Life of Brian in Tunisia. His outlook on the country is summed up in a Tunisian monologue.
1979
Writes his first play, "Pass the Butler", in France. Sir Charles, Minister of Defense, has got a foul family who conspires to switch his life support system off. But a police inspector, masquerading as a journalist, then a journalist, masquerading as a police officer, soon interfere... Sir Charles will be killed, but the murderer will be discovered, as well as the family secrets. "Funny play. It goes on all over the time, I get royalties from all over the world. It's the longest-running play in Sweden, and Oslo had two productions of it on in three years, or something like that. It's very big in Scandinavia."
20th October : Eric hosts SNL for the fourth and last time, despite a heavy fever and a beard. But, to him, the programme has by now become chaos. Though he acknowledges the performers as brilliant, he's hardly a fan of their self-indulgence in rehearsing : "That show was always more hype than humour, in my opinion," he laughs. "There was a lot of hanging around at SNL, and then chaos. It was just quite different. They seemed to be proud of working very late hours... But Python worked office hours. By and large, it's more efficient to work nine till five, get some stuff done and rewrite it, and then look at it and look at it. They sort of pride themselves on doing a very bad dress and trying to pull together a very average show for air."
1981
Marries American model Tanya Kosevich.
Lorne Michaels invites Eric to guest star on "Steve Martin's Best Ever Show", but, instead of travelling all the way to America, Eric takes a crew down to Stonehenge, where he shoots "Did the dinosaurs build Stonehenge ?", an academic parody he'll send to the US edited on video.
3rd November : "Pass the Butler" first presented by the Cambridge Theatre Company, University of Warwick, Coventry.
1982
26th January : First London production of "Pass the Butler" at the Globe Theatre, directed by Jonathan Lynn.
Shelley Duvall asks Eric to write and direct his version of "The Frog Prince", with Robin Williams and Teri Garr, as the very first programme of her "Faerie Tale Theatre". It wins an Ace Award.
1985
Following the success of "National Lampoon's Animal House", a "European Vacation" is given to the Griswald family. The film includes brief but savory cameos of Eric as an innocent and stoically polite English bike rider, who bravely faces continuous mindless knocking around from equally sweet American Chevy Chase. Something you might well call "a shock of cultures"... Eric's last appearance is speechless, as he had lost his voice singing all night with (sweet ?) Keith Richards just the day before the scene was shot.
After this endearing performance, Eric spends some time with Chevy Chase writing a script for an unfilmed entry, National Lampoon's Vacation Down Under. "It had some nice shark gags, but I can't pretend it was in any way finished..."
Shelley Duvall calls on Eric again, after David Bowie's cancelled his participation to The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Eric takes over and injects serious, majestic dramatics in his composition. "In performances, I thought it my Richard IVth !"
1986
After all his setbacks with The Pirates of Penzance (he had tried to put it on film in the early eighties), Eric is happy to star as Ko-Ko in Jonathan Miller's English National Opera production of The Mikado. He has admired Miller's work since the days of "Beyond the fringe" and is "sort of" a Gilbert and Sullivan fan, but worries about his singing. "It was really fun, because I clearly wasn't an opera singer. I had to rehearse the whole show with the opera company, but they were very supportive". Both Eric and Miller will get very good reviews.
6th December : A special appearance by Eric as a British customs officer on a SNL show hosted by the "Three Amigos" (Chevy Chase, Steve Martin and Martin Short) to promote their film.
1989
NBC's six-hour adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days , starring Eric as Phileas Fogg's French servant Passepartout, is aired over three successive nights on American television - about the same time as Michael Palin sets off to do his real-life version of the novel. The film was shot in London and on location in Macau, Hong Kong, Thailand and Yugoslavia, which appealed to Eric's cosmopolitan tastes. "But it didn't quite work out. Pierce didn't quite make it, he didn't quite pitch his performance in the right way, I think he should have been funnier all the way through. I think they threw out a lot of comedy. It's the hit-and-miss stuff."
April : As a result of his involvement with NBC, and because "I was being cute as Passepartout", the channel offers Eric a regular TV series of his own. It will be Nearly Departed, whose plot is borrowed from a 1937 classic, "Topper" (Eric's character is named Grant, carrying on from the first film's star, Cary Grant), and deals with a young couple killed in a car crash refusing to die and continuing to live in their old home, despite new owners. Sadly, depite positive reaction, NBC decides not to screen the last two episodes from a season of six, and cancelled the series just when another eighteen were almost on the cards.
Eric finishes the script for "Splitting Heirs".
1990
Eric's starring role in Cambridge pal Jonathan Lynn's Nuns on the run, produced by George Harrison's Handmade Films, proves to be his biggest success in many years, though he remains dissatisfied with the financial aspects. Michael Palin was to co-star, but, as he was unavailable, Robbie Coltrane takes over to become Eric's partner in crime. An accurate expression, as they are both playing bad guys forced to masquerade as nuns in a convent to escape the police and Triad rivals.
October : All six recorded Nearly Departed shows are screened in UK on BBC1.
1991
Eric stars again in Robert Downey's Too much sun, pleased with the opportunity to play an American and to work with his friend Jon Lovitz (who finally backs out). "I like my character, who is a gay guy who has to jump on women.... I mean, how do two gay couples have a baby ? It's almost a Shakespearian idea, but it needs far more skill on the text, and that, ultimately, is where it was just a drag." He now looks the film as a great story with enormous potential, which was ultimately wasted.
1992
Cameo appearances in Greg Beeman's Mom and Dad Save the World. "My particular part was not full of SFX - it was very Python. It was chained to the wall of a dungeon, a lot of facial hair, and smoke blowing in your face. Instead of Graham Chapman, it was Jeffrey Jones."
1993
Splitting Heirs finally happen, four years after the script was finished.
1998
Eric's book for children, The Owl and the Pussycat (carrying on from a poem by Edward Lear) is nominated for a Grammy award - and probably missed it only because "Winnie the Pooh" got it !