Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography

by Eric Idle

My friend Jim Beach became a lawyer at Harbottle & Lewis, and years later when we won a lawsuit against ABC and the BBC in New York for airing butchered versions of Monty Python’s Flying Circus without our approval, he advised us not to accept the two million pounds on offer but to ask instead for our masters. This brilliant piece of advice earned us everything: ownership and worldwide control over our TV series. It means that, including movies, Python now owns almost everything we ever made. We may be silly but we’re not stupid.

I think it is degrading and fantastically backward looking that women should not have the same opportunities at University as men, and it is rather sad that the Footlights lag even behind the union in this.

Python isn’t just one type of humor, it is a compendium of styles. While the cast remains the same, the writers are constantly changing, though you never notice which hand is on the tiller. So there is visual humor, verbal humor, clever humor, silliness, rudeness, sophistication, and brazen naughtiness, constantly alternating, which means there is something for everyone.

The miracle of Brian is that it got made at all, which was entirely due to the generosity of George Harrison. Asked why he mortgaged his Henley home to pay for the entire $4.5 million budget of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, he said, “Because I wanted to see the movie.” It’s still the most anyone has ever paid for a cinema ticket.

Incredibly, he had mortgaged Friar Park, his home in Henley, to pay for the entire budget. A quite extraordinary act of generosity. Denis O’Brien, his wily Bialystok, arranged for the film to become a tax loss, they formed a new company, Handmade Films, and we were on. A miracle indeed, for without George, Life of Brian would never have been made. He visited us on the set in Tunisia and when he asked me how it was going, I grumpily muttered something about how between John and Michael it was difficult getting onscreen. He said, “Imagine what it was like with Lennon and McCartney trying to get studio time.” Say no more.

When I saw The Empire Strikes Back, I was so proud. The scene they shot that morning bears the scars of the evening. Carrie lurches out of a spaceship to meet Billy Dee Williams and says, “Hi!” Harrison is still clearly drunk. I remain inordinately proud of the scene I spoiled and hope that one day George Lucas will forgive me.

Steve Martin wrote the best-ever blurb: “I laughed. I cried. And then I read the book.”

When you’re feeling in the dumps Forget about the Trumps Just purse your lips and whistle, that’s the thing

I was once coming home through LAX when a steely-eyed immigration officer peered suspiciously at me. “How long have you been a green card holder?” “Oh, I have had it for ages,” I said. “More than twenty years.” “Then why aren’t you an American?” “Erm. Er…Well…”

Is it not enough I live in your fair country and pay my taxes? Now you wish me to put my hand on my heart and pledge allegiance to a self-righteous, lying, tax-avoiding moron, and his racist, gay-bashing, environmentally dangerous, greedy-bastard, science-denying cronies, who reject evolution and the rights of women, and plunder the planet for profit to please their powerful funders, stealing the very air and clean water of their children, while tweeting insanely and lying through their teeth on propaganda TV channels that would have shamed Joseph Goebbels? No, sir! The French do not shrug at me sardonically and ask me why I am not French. The Norwegians do not stop me on their shores and insist I wear thick knitwear and a large red anorak and retire into the countryside suffering from Ibsen and ennui. The Australians don’t force me into baggy swim pants to stand on planks in orange sunscreen hurtling across their shark-infested waters singing ‘Advance Australia Fair.’ No, sir. Enough, sir. I am a taxpayer, a member of your Academy, a Grammy winner, a Tony winner, a father of an American, a lover of America, married to an American wife with an American child, but not, sir, an American!” Did I say any of that? Are you kidding me? I fear all authority.