Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography

by Eric Idle

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

My father’s grave is in an RAF cemetery. The dead are lined up in neat white slabs, forever at attention—name, rank, serial number, and date of death: December 24, 1945. Above, the Latin words of the RAF motto: Per Ardua ad Astra. “Through hard work to the stars.”

By that time a tall, gangly, pipe-smoking Graham Chapman had joined the cast. He had studied medicine at Cambridge and was now at St. Barts Hospital, where he was learning to become a fully qualified alcoholic. He also became a doctor, something he frequently warned us about. “Always remember doctors are just ex-medical students.” He was very funny, and odd in a deeply serious way.

The next day, East German leader Walter Ulbricht visited East Berlin, and the day after that tensions were high as we slipped though Checkpoint Charlie on a closely guarded tour bus to visit the bleak industrial workers’ paradise, which did so much to make one grateful for the West, where you could be theoretically left-wing without having to suffer for it.

We naturally checked out our rivals, the Oxford Revue. Where we appeared bright and frothy onstage, they were cool and sardonic. They also had girls. Bastards. They did something called Rejects Night, where they took sketches that hadn’t quite made it, and tried them out on an audience after their main show. This meant we could go along after our own show, and it was here that I first met the lovely, funny Terry Jones. Dark-haired, deadpan, handsome, with the looks of the movie star Anthony Newley, he too brought a tremendous seriousness to everything he did, including singing a song which sounds like an early precursor of “The Lumberjack Song.”

Next summer Terry would go on to star in the West End in the Oxford Revue Hang Down Your Head and Die, a bitter polemic against capital punishment. Oxford, as always, was far more serious about everything.

Albeit unknowingly, by September 1964 all the future Pythons (save for the wild-card American animator) had met and admired each other.

George Harrison once said to me, “If we’d known we were going to be the Beatles we would have tried harder.” I think the same could be said of Monty Python. How on earth could we possibly know we would become them?

Additionally, we were both the writers and the performers, though the writers were definitely in charge. Importantly, the show is encyclopedic. 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.

Six large men, three over six foot, occupying a BBC office were enough to intimidate the bravest program planner, even if we hadn’t already established on our show that we considered them foolish, ignorant, hopeless idiots, without degrees … The fact is, we scared them. We didn’t know what we were doing, and insisted on doing it.

We were the antithesis of the satire boom of the previous generation. Nothing was topical (so it could last) and the comedy was generic: types not individuals. But it was our attitude that came across. Python was in your face, challenging, and very silly.

The finest example of this was a three-sided record, The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief, where we ingeniously cut double grooves on Side Two, to create two shorter, parallel sides. Which track played depended on where the needle dropped. There was no announcement or warning.

Just look at the work we managed to achieve in the fourteen years between 1969 and 1983. Five movies, forty-five TV shows, five stage shows, five books, and countless records, including a hit single. So yes, we did okay, but fame still beckoned.

To say the response was underwhelming is an understatement. The audience stared at us openmouthed. This very same material that had just carried us across Canada on gales of laughter was greeted with total silence. Two British men in drag screaming at each other about a dead cat? We were from another planet. It was short, it was fast, and it was fucking hilarious. We did the half hour of material in twenty minutes and then ran outside, where we collapsed on the grass screaming with laughter. It was hysterical. I think it’s one of the best laughs I have ever had. There is nothing funnier than nobody laughing.

The evening progressed with beer and sausages, and after a couple of hours my attention was drawn to the sight of Terry Jones appearing onstage. He took the baton from the claw of the conductor and advanced on the audience. He had a glint in his eyes I recognized. Oh no. He began performing a strip tease, flapping his jacket back and forth across his body like a stripper, then provocatively removing it and twirling it above his head before flinging it away. He removed his tie, salaciously rubbing it between his legs, before chucking it tantalizingly into the audience. People in the hall were beginning to notice what was going on, half fascinated, half horrified. He began unbuttoning his shirt, bumping and grinding to the beat of the band, and then, turning around, he slowly removed it. He spun back round, arms high, revealing his naked chest, demanding applause, and then put his tongue out and began playing with his nipples. He moved inevitably to his trousers. Shit, he’s going to take his pants off, I thought. We’re going to get killed. Slowly and to some encouragement he removed his belt and then began to slide down his zipper. He unbuttoned his trousers and began to slip his pants down when the irate conductor raced onto the stage, grabbed him, and physically dragged him offstage. “We have to go,” I said to our hosts. “Get the car.” I raced to the side of the stage and managed to hustle Terry out of the hall, away from the Nazi table, who were indignantly watching this ...

We began by doing research, reading biblical history, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Apocrypha, some of the weirder books that never made it into the Bible. We screened some of the hilarious Hollywood movies made about Christianity: The Robe, The Shoe, Ben-Him, Ben-Her, you know the sort of thing. They were magnificent mainly for the appalling acting of major Hollywood stars that made us laugh a lot.

One nice footnote to the Brian controversy: in our movie, 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.

Perhaps even more irritatingly, he has turned himself into not just a nice person but a morally fine, caring, thinking, teaching, incredibly generous, wise, and loving human being.

I made quite a good living writing scripts, and for many years Hollywood paid me handsomely, providing me with an enormous income developing things that never got made. In the end frustration got the better of me, and I quit. I was tired of being lied to at lunch. I will say, however, that while I am not a very good writer, I am a good rewriter, and I learned that particular skill in Hollywood.

Originally Terry Gilliam was going to join me onstage to accept the award and then we were going to sing “Sit on My Face,” but the Bowl nixed that naughty song, saying it was inappropriate for a gala, and so, sadly, Terry Gilliam pulled out. He has very high moral standards when it comes to low moral songs, so that moment of particular public tastelessness would have to wait.

Subj: Re: Two weeks of rehearsal Date: 11/1/2004 8:08:46 AM Pacific Standard Time From: Terry Jones To: Eric Idle Sent from the Internet Dear El Ah the magic of the theatre … sounds wonderful … warm and inviting and arousing … it’s the girls in leotards bending and stretching that really convinces me that the whole thing is going to be a thundering success. I wish I could get over … but on the other hand, if Bush gets in tomorrow I think I’ll give the US a miss for another four years. I hear the extra week has sold out already—can this be true? Fingers crossed all over my tense yet still young body. Lots of love Terry xxoxo

I think I prefer the fake to the real. Hardly surprising: I am in show business, which is all about faking the real.

One of the tabloids has insisted for many years we all hate each other, despite all evidence to the contrary, so when it came to his final chapter about the O2 Farewell, I was a little concerned. What might John say about me? I needn’t have worried. He gushed. I blushed to read what he had written. It was the kindest and most personal review I have ever read, from someone who means the most.

Laughter is still the best revenge. One day the sun will die, one day the galaxy will die, one day the entire Universe will die. I’m not feeling too good myself. So, what have I learned over my long and weird life? Well, firstly, that there are two kinds of people, and I don’t much care for either of them. Secondly, when faced with a difficult choice, either way is often best. Thirdly, always leave a party when people begin to play the bongos.