Cliff Notes – Eric Idle: ‘Monty Python spats are a pity – but I haven’t done any spitting’
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Eric Idle reflects on the ongoing tensions among Monty Python members, attributing them to business disagreements rather than personal animosity, stating, “I haven’t done any spitting.”
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Despite the divisions, Idle maintains a positive outlook, emphasising the importance of humour in overcoming fear and the value of living each day as a gift, especially after his battle with pancreatic cancer.
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Idle acknowledges the evolution of comedy and societal norms, admitting that some of his past work, like “I Like Chinese,” may no longer be appropriate, but he continues to create new material for his audiences.
Eric Idle: ‘Monty Python spats are a pity – but I haven’t done any spitting’
Eric Idle talks Monty Python spats, what keeps him on stage, and why it’s important to Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (Picture: Supplied)
Half a century since Monty Python burst into the comedy scene with Beatles-esque impact, the six members of the legendary sketch group are seemingly more at odds than ever before.
‘People say, “You’re having a spat,” and I say, “I haven’t done any spitting!” Eric Idle tells Metro, as he’s set to bring his Always Look On The Bright Side of Life tour to the UK on September 10, marking almost six decades since Python originated in a 1969 Oxbridge haze.
Formed by John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, Python made some of the most quotable cultural moments in British comedy history, winning a Bafta and global acclaim along the way.
‘I don’t really talk about it,’ Idle insists on the divisions between the Python stars since their final goodbye show at the O2 in 2014.
Now that’s not strictly true. In recent years, Idle has criticised the management of the group – and his now-apparently dwindled finances – as a ‘disaster’ and admitted he no longer wishes to be friends with Cleese.
Idle has enjoyed over 50 years in the spotlight since Monty Python first formed in 1969 (Picture: Supplied)
He is now touring Always Look on the Bright Side of Life LIVE (Picture: Supplied)
His daughter Lily congratulated Idle on social media for ‘finally starting to share the truth’ and said he ‘has always stood up to bullies and narcissists’.
Meanwhile, Fawlty Towers star Cleese took to social media and said of Idle: ‘We always loathed and despised each other, but it’s only recently that the truth has begun to emerge,’ which he later said was a joke.
Joke or not, it appears there are farts being made in each other’s general direction. Does Idle feel sadness that Python’s close-knit veneer is now besmirched, perhaps forever?
‘If I have to turn any more cheeks, my pants will fall down,’ Idle says of the spit-free spats. But while his conscience is clear, Idle thinks the fallout of his former colleagues is a shame.
‘I think it’s a pity, I think it’s only to do with business,’ he says, adding cryptically: ‘I have a saying, “People can either get old and bitter or old and bitter, and there’s your choice.”‘
It is true that Python members, who (mostly) aligned in their comedy, certainly have diverging sociopolitical views in an increasingly polarised world.
The comedian and songwriter has two sets of friends: musicians and comedians (Picture: Supplied)
Eric Idle; John Cleese; Terry Gilliam; Michael Palin and Terry Jones are pictured here circa 2014. Since, relations appear to have soured (Picture: Tristan Fewings/WireImage)
While Cleese obsesses over wokeness with the determination of a ravaged dog on a now-meatless bone, Idle once said (not of Cleese): ‘I do not believe in freedom of speech for fascists. That’s like putting diesel in a Tesla.’
Has this widening of viewpoints impacted Idle’s relationships as he’s got older, I ask, somewhat trepidly…
‘We haven’t done anything for 40 years,’ Idle says, erring on the verge of exasperation. ‘They’re not my family. You know, you don’t have to stay with them. You don’t stick with them.
‘It’s up to them, what they feel or think is not really up to me. I know what I think and feel, and who I love and what I believe in.
‘Sometimes you go, “Really, did you have to say that?” But it doesn’t hold me back.’
But these questions about Python don’t bother him, Idle insists. (Generally, Python politics aside, Idle does have a likeable, friendly disposition.)
‘I think there used to be a time when Python questions would drive you crazy because that’s all [journalists] would talk about, but it’s so long ago now,’ he says.
‘For a while, we did some really interesting work, I think, and it’s odd because it’s not a normal group. You wouldn’t expect these people to be together, let alone to get on as long as they sort of did. I think it’s a blessing,’ he reflects.
Their farewell tour came in 2014, and Eric remembers the 2012 Olympics fondly as the proudest moment of his career (Picture: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)
Idle also wrote a book on his adventures with the Pythons (Picture: Supplied)
Beatle George Harrison and Idle grew close over their shared position in their respective groups beside these powerful and sometimes eclipsing forces, which for Idle was between the camps of Cleese and Chapman, and Palin and Jones.
‘They would outvote you, and show you were a sort of little floating individual,’ Idle remembers.
One time Harrison, who died from lung cancer in 2001, asked Idle how everything was going.
‘I said, “It’s kind of hard often to get on screen, with John Cleese and Michael Palin.” He said, “Imagine what it was like trying to get in the studio with Lennon and McCartney?” I said, “Say no more.”‘
All these years later, while Cleese seems not to have quite grasped the logic behind so-called ‘woke’ criticisms over jokes that punch down instead of up, Idle seems more clued up.
He also doesn’t believe in cancel culture, which seems to keep Cleese – in an ironically heightened Basil Fawlty fashion – up at night.
He explained to Metro that while he gets asked about ‘spats’ within the Pythons, he hasn’t done any spitting himself (Picture: Supplied)
Idle and Cleese have butted heads over the past few years (Picture: Radio Times via Getty Images)
‘The small mocking the large is always funny,’ Idle says, reflecting on the best of Python, when an insignificant character takes on Christianity, for example.
And if the audience isn’t laughing? Well, Idle says it’s simply not funny and you must move on.
But Idle’s work isn’t without controversy when you put those garish 2025 hindsight spectacles on.
Idle reflected in a recent interview that his song I Like Chinese doesn’t have a place in 2025, with its lyrics peddling offensive racial stereotypes.
‘You can’t sing I Like Chinese, you can’t do that anymore. So there’s one or two songs. But I write new ones, which is quite a nice challenge,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life.
Pressed on this, Idle now admits: ‘That’s just one of the songs I wrote, and it was always a bit weird. I mean, it was actually banned in Birmingham at the time, and then went to number two in Australia. So make of it what you will.
‘It’s like, well, am I supposed to say, “I hate Chinese”? What? Where’s the offence here? But, you know, we did it, I think at the O2 was the last time we did it. I like it because it’s got a nice, cheeky tune.’
It’s true some ideas – and songs – are best consigned to the past. But for Idle, his proudest memory of six decades was performing at the 2012 Olympics.
Here from left to right is Terry Gilliam, musician and supporting player Neil Innes, Eric Idle, and Terry Jones (Photo by Pierre Vauthey/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)
Idle reflected on how his pancreatic cancer diagnosis changed his outlook on life (Picture: Supplied)
‘It was just one of those moments where you go, “This is live, here we go.” There’s two billion people out there, 80,000 in the stadium. I felt that was quite something, for me anyway,’ he remembers.
Idle is also forever moved by his closing Life of Brian tune Always Look on the Bright Side of Life knocking Frank Sinatra’s My Way off the top UK funeral songs spot.
‘Doing it My Way isn’t a very good funeral song anyway, because look where you are,’ Idle quips, before explaining how you don’t get royalties for funerals, which makes it feel like even more of a gift from Python to the world.
Fear keeps him touring, Idle says. The fear every comedian has: that they will stop laughing.
‘Comedy is a way of dealing with fear, and it is also a way of helping people get through fear, because if you say something that releases that tension, they laugh, and you diminish tyrants,’ he says.
For Idle, living is his ultimate gift, after he almost died from pancreatic cancer in 2019 (which has an exceptionally high mortality rate compared to other cancers).
‘To me, every day is a reprieve. It’s like a gift. That’s the way I think you should live, anyway. It’s not so bad being a jester, is it?’
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Live! is touring the UK this September for eight dates, finishing at the Royal Albert Hall on Sept 27. Tickets: https://ericidle.com/tour/
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