My friends and I were Monty Python fanatics growing up - Eric Idle was always among everyone's top three of the group, along with Michael Palin and John Cleese (everyone recognised Terry Gilliam's directing skill and Graham Chapman's ability as a leading man but they weren't favourites and no one really was into Terry Jones). Idle was instantly likeable with his cockney (?) voice ("say no more, nudge nudge") and instantly funny face - he was a real strength in a group with few weaknesses. His specialty was song writing and he came up with classics notably "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".
Python was something of a pop group - complete with adoring fans, break ups, constant pressures to reunite - and Idle was the most pop star like of them: paying his guitar, having numerous famous friends (notably George Harrison and Lorne Michaels but also Robin Williams, Steve Martin, Billy Connolly, Mike Nichols), jetting around the world on various exotic trips (down the Nile on John Cleese's yacht with Peter Cook, Stephen Fry and William Goldman among others, attending the Tour de France with Williams and Michael J Fox), swapping Python quotes with Elvis Presley. It's fun to be a celebrity.
Idle's life began with great tragedy - his RAF father was killed hitchiking in an accident on leave, sending his mother to a nervous breakdown; she shunted Idle off to a boarding school for RAF orphans which he hated (I can imagine what it was like) but he was smart, and got a scholarship to Cambridge. He fell in love with writing and performing and in what seems alarming rapidity started writing for TV shows for David Frost and the like, eventually being part of Monty Python. Idle was something of a lone hand in the group - Graham Chapman and John Cleese were one writing team, Terry Jones and Michael Palin the other - but he still fitted in brilliantly and became one of their most recogniseable faces, helped by the singing.
It was Idle who went "American" biggest and most of all, who seemed the least temperamental, who was most keen to get the band back together - Cleese and Jones were more temperamental, Chapman's life was more chaotic, Palin more seemingly focused on England while Gilliam was focused on movies. Idle moved to the US first of all and seems to have the most US credits (though Cleese may match him by now) - mostly small/supporting roles, though he had the lead in The Rutles which has become a major cult, starred in Nuns on the Run, and made a studio comedy, Splitting Heirs, and had a role in Suddenly Susan he doesn't write about here. He regained a bit of status with the huge success of Spamalot - I'm surprised he wasn't used for more musicals because his songs are very catchy. No doubt he tried. For the last twenty years his main gig seems to have been touring and performing.
This is a highly entertaining book packed full of fun stories - hanging out with Harrison and the light that makes it seem to be fun to be famous. Idle quotes a lot from his speeches rather than his sketches and songs - speeches about John Cleese and so on. There's probably too much about concerts and different productions of Spamalot - they were successful, we get it. I would have liked to have read more about the less successful ventures like Splitting Heirs. Still a great romp.
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