eric idle talks spamalot, python, george harrison and why he likes to write alone

By Catherine Jones on Jul 23, 10 10:05 AM

You know when you meet someone and you've got so many questions but only a finite amount of time to ask them? That's the position I found myself in with ex-Python Eric Idle a couple of weeks ago.
My interview with the co-creator of Spamalot is in today's Echo - but that only really scratches the surface of what we spoke about. And what we spoke about only scratched the surface of the South Shields-born, Wallasey-raised (until the moment he was sent to a Dickensian boarding school in Wolverhampton of all places) star's life and work.

Imagine my frustration at realising, when 19-and-a-half minutes of our alloted 20 minute chat had raced by, that I hadn't yet asked him about his friendship with George Harrison!
Luckily we had time for a quick chat about the late Beatle and what it was that made their friendship click so quickly and deeply.
Anyway, here's a bit more of our chat which DIDN'T make the final article.
I asked Eric what he thinks he might have done if he hadn't joined Footlights at Cambridge, the catayst for all to come. What career might he have pursued?
"I think one didn't make a constructive choice," he told me. "You just avoided employment, effectively.
"We finished Cambridge and went on a Footlights tour with My Girl Herbert with Germaine Greer.
"And that was a perfectly wonderful way of ending your college time, and I think we got caught up by Richard Eyre and got taken to Leicester Rep where we did Oh What a Lovely War and I really learned I had no interest in being an actor.
"I can't stand it! The same thing every night. I mean, I admire actors, they are fantastic people, but it's not me."
He doesn't, though, he said, mind doing his own show if he's "talking or playing or singing."
"I learned in my last one to do stand up because I thought it was time to stretch myself. It was in America, I took a rock n roll bus from Boston 15,000 miles, three months across America.
"Stopping every night at these wonderful old theatres, putting up the show, doing the show, then back into the bus and drive off. It was great. I wrote the Greedy Bastard Diary, because it was called the Greedy Bastard Tour, and it was really fabulous.
"It was a way of seeing America which is fabulous, going across the Rockies in a big bus with my Beethoven blasting, it's amazing.
"We always did well. There are no boondocks in America any more because everyone watches TV, so they all watch Jon Stewart and Leno, so there isn't any place where they don't know what's happening.
"But what was interesting, 2003 that was, we were just about to do Spamalot, so we were able to try out a few things and ask the audience about the title and whether they would go and see it."
I wondered if he would like to do the same thing in the UK. But as far as he is concerned, he's been there and done that.
"We (he means Python) toured Britain. It's quite exciting to tour places you've never been to, but to go well tomorrow we're going to go to Sunderland, and then Wigan.....I don't rule it out entirely, but we did it with Python and had such a great time touring England."
There's stilll Spamalot, which arrives at the Liverpool Empire on August 9.
Read more of my interview, the bits that DID make the paper, here!

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-entertainment/echo-entertainment/2010/07/23/eric-idle-talks-about-spamalot-and-his-friendship-with-beatles-legend-george-harrison-100252-26913145/

watch a spot of Spamalot: