His sole
venture into straight acting - the world
premiere of Henry Miller's I'm Just Wild
about Harry, a legendary fiasco in which
falling sets nearly maimed London critics in
the front row of the stalls - must have
convinced him that his future lay in comedy.
From 1966 Idle began to write for TV and
radio shows, most notably the innovative
BBC-Radio series I'm Sorry I'lI Read That
Again. The following year he began an
association with many of the comic players
destined to be Monty Pythons in Do Not
Adjust Your Set, an ITV comedy series that
ran to a second season. Monty Python's Flying
Circus came to BBC-TV in 1969 and stayed
for three seasons, leading to numerous spin-offs, films and concerts, in most of which
Idle took part. His limb-flapping style -
close to over-acting without getting there -
proved ideal for the far-out, innovative farces
that the Pythons created.
In the meantime,
he himself starred in Rutland Weekend
Television, which led to The Rutles, satirising
the success of the pop group the Beatles.
Film activities were largely restricted to
Python films - he was very funny as the
guard who struggles to remember a simple
command in Monty Python and the Holy Grail - until ex-Python Terry Gilliam's
spottily successful The Adventures of Baron Munchausen introduced Idle to a wider
audience as the fast-running servant
Berthold, a clown-like role for which Idle
wore appropriate makeup - and had to run
a lot. 'I read the script', he said at the time,
'and thought it was wonderful. I made the
mistake of telling Terry it was wonderful
and that he should make it at once. It's all
my fault. I'm to blame, and I've suffered
ever since by being in it.'
At much the same
time, Idle branched out into operetta by
playing Ko-Ko in a production of Gilbert
and Sullivan's The Mikado at the English
National Opera.
In 1990 Idle's long,
lugubrious features made a very acceptable
comedy team with plump-cheeked Robbie
Coltrane in Nuns on the Run, in which
Idle's brand of panic was seen to good
advantage. An American venture, Too Much
Sun, went less well - straight to video, in
fact, in Britain. But there are more films to
come.
Divorced from actress Lynn Ashley,
Idle is now married to American ex-model
Tanya Kossvitch. 'Writing humour', he said
in 1989, 'is not funny! For the past 25 years
I've managed to make a living in humour. It's
a skill you work at, and it evolves and develops with experience - like any skill. But it's
an odd business.'
eric idle
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