Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography

by Eric Idle

Of course I have faults, but you won’t read about them here. I’ve glossed over all my shortcomings. That is after all the point of Autobiography. It is the case for the Defense. But I will own up to not being perfect. I have British teeth. They are like British politics: they go in all directions at once.

Writing about yourself is an odd mix of therapy and lap dancing; exciting and yet a little shameful.

There’s something a little chilling about turning up for work and finding a cross with your name on it. Oh sure, they weren’t using nails, and we had bicycle seats to perch on, but it makes you think, hanging up there for three days in your underpants, gazing out at the desert.

And don’t think the irony escaped me. I have always known this last little giggle at my expense lies somewhere in the future. I only hope there’s a good turnout.

In the Junior School, Miss McCartney whacked me across the hand with a wooden ruler because I didn’t understand a math problem. Surprisingly, I remained bad at math.

So, I learned very early on that if you’re brazen, nobody questions you.

Down in the south, well, Egypt has had a pretty nasty spell of it recently. Seventeen or eighteen days ago it was frogs followed by lice, flies, and last Tuesday, locusts, and now moving in from the SSE, boils. Further outlook for Egypt, well, two or three days of thick darkness lying over the face of the whole land, followed by the death of all the first born. Sorry about that, Egypt.

Scan not a friend with microscopic glass You know his faults now let the foibles pass Life is one long enigma my friend So read on, read on, the answer’s at the end.

I soon learned the Quiet One never stopped talking. He spoke about everything and everyone and was never shy to voice an opinion. The only thing we never agreed on was religion, but we agreed to disagree, for it was so much a part of his being, this ex-Catholic who had embraced Hinduism, sought enlightenment in Rishikesh, learned to play sitar, and single-handedly influenced the culture of the world by introducing Ravi Shankar and Indian art, music, and literature into Sixties Britain. All this from a guitarist in a rock group.

Harry never really recovered from the Beatle praise from John Lennon: “Harry Nilsson is our favorite group,” but he certainly wrote and sang like an angel until all this boozing and schmoozing and smoking and snorting finally put paid to his golden voice, and in the end, far too soon, it put paid to him. He died on the eve of the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which struck in the middle of the night while he was lying in his casket in an Agoura Hills funeral parlor. When the 6.7 tremblor hit, he was thrown clean out of his coffin. A perfect Harry thing to do. Still falling off the stage.

We were making headlines round America every night. There was no need for us to fly to the States and do publicity. There’s only one thing you can’t do, and that is stop Americans watching what they want. Hey, even pornography is called Freedom of Speech. So, while the movie was being pulled from cinemas across America, people would simply drive across state lines. This pattern repeated itself everywhere. Half of the U.K. banned it and the other half flocked to it. Sweden advertised it as the movie so funny that Norwegians weren’t allowed to see it.

Sue Jones-Davies, a Welsh actress, played Brian’s revolutionary girlfriend Judith. She was fiercely naked in one of the scenes. When the movie was first released in her hometown of Aberystwyth in North Wales, the local council banned the film from public screening. Thirty years later she became the mayor of Aberystwyth and overthrew the ban. Isn’t that great?

Steve Martin, a philosophy graduate, said that life exists so the Universe can experience itself.

“Always look on the bright side of life” has probably been my subconscious motto throughout my life, but I never thought it would be a hit. And not just in the Top 10 charts. On January 20, 2009, it officially became the number one most requested song at British funerals, replacing Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” It has remained there ever since. Beating out even Elvis. You’ve got to love the Brits. First of all, who would even have such a chart? And secondly, of course you don’t get paid for funerals, but hey, you take it where you can. It probably replaced “Spam, Spam, Spam” at Viking funerals.

John Cleese, the memorial had become a roast. He brilliantly broke the somber mood and turned solemn grief into relieving laughter with an outrageous parody of their “Dead Parrot” sketch. “Graham Chapman is no more. He has ceased to be. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. He has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. And I say good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard. I hope he fries. And I say that because if I hadn’t said something inappropriate he would never have forgiven me.”

Once you become a celebrity, in today’s culture, not only do people feel they have the right to bother you or shoot you, or demand you pose for “selfies,” and scribble your name on grubby bits of paper, but they get your identity wrong, confuse you with other people, tell you shows you weren’t in, and then ask you what your name is. I always tell them I’m Michael Palin and to go fuck themselves, so I can help ruin his reputation for niceness.

Back home, David invited Tania and me to visit him and Coco at their Swiss villa in Vevey. One night they took us to dinner with Oona Chaplin. Here we learned the story of how after Charlie Chaplin died, and was buried locally, two Polish men had the idea of digging up and kidnapping his corpse. They called Oona and demanded two million dollars for the return of the body. “Keep it!” said Oona brilliantly.

There was a huge bouquet of flowers from Mike Nichols, and on his card to Tania he gave her excellent advice for her wedding night: “Act surprised.”

“We should never forget that DNA backwards is AND.”

This is from his book I, Me, Mine: “The thing that most people are struggling for is fame or fortune or wealth or position, and really none of that is important because in the end death will take it all away. So, you spend your life struggling for something, which is in effect a waste of time…I mean, I don’t want to be lying there as I’m dying thinking, Oh shit, I forgot to put the cat out.”

I was on an island somewhere when a man came up to him and said, “George Harrison, oh my god, what are you doing here?” And he said, “Well, everyone’s got to be somewhere.”

I tried out a new song John and I had written called “Fuck Christmas.” It was like throwing a hand grenade into the crowd—the audience response almost blew us offstage. Each line killed. Especially the end: Go tell the Elves To fuck themselves It’s Christmas time again.

Once, in San Paul de Vence, we passed an art gallery selling a sculpture by Salvador Dali. Mike stopped and went in. “How much is that Dali in the window?”

The beauty of ancient places is accidental; the ugliness of Vegas is planned. Yet to stand in front of the phony Doge’s Palace at eleven and hear the chimes of Big Ben from London, the pealing of the bells from Paris, and the explosion of a volcanic waterfall is to experience something unintended. A random Universe created by a thousand monkeys. It makes you ask, “Why am I here?” The answer is Spamalot.

Prince Charles said to me, “Eric, why don’t you become my jester?” Everyone looked at me. No pressure. “Why would I want a fucking awful job like that?” I said. He laughed his head off.

immediately after I sing “The Galaxy Song,” he appears on-screen complaining about my lyrics on the riverbank at King’s College. In the middle of his complaint he is run over by Stephen Hawking in his wheelchair. Brian is such a good sport, he was totally up for this. He emailed Stephen to ask if he would consider doing it, and Stephen immediately responded yes,

Life would never be the same again. In conversation, he was so fast you could barely get a thought out before he would seize it, gloss it, show you the opposite, turn it upside down, show you the left and right of it, run multiple variations on it, and then, properly examined, hand it back to you. It was like Mozart improvising on a theme.

(about Robin Williams)

Fuck “Selfies” And all those stupid gits Who want Selfies They just get on my tits Fuck grinning like a lunatic With people you don’t know It takes them half an hour To get their fucking phones to go And then another fourteen other people Fucking show! So, tell those selfish selfie pricks Next time they bloody ask To take their fucking selfie sticks And shove ’em up their ass.

“It’s an honor,” they said, which in England means “no money.”

“The art lies in concealing the art.”

Though I did want it to say on my tombstone: I’D LIKE A SECOND OPINION…