Eric Idle
Everybody has their own free choice to do what they want.Collection: Choices
Filming a pirate film is always good fun, with ships and indecent clothing.Collection: Fun
I think you often learn from failure. Success just teaches you how great you were, but in fact it's knowing what will fail that will help you to make the right choices.Collection: Thinking
Of the sparkling wines, the most famous is Perth Pink. This is a bottle with a message in, and the message is "beware". This is not a wine for drinking; this is a wine for laying down and avoiding.Collection: Drinking
I've got soggy thighs. It must be dinner time.Collection: Dinner
The next step will be for the colonists on Mars to throw off the hand of the United States. There will be this wonderful historical irony. When the people on Mars write a declaration of independence saying, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident...', the US will be rather pissed off.Collection: Writing
If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.Collection: Laughter
Elvis saved my life when I was 13 or 14. He saved all our lives.Collection: Saved
Executives do not on the whole do well with comedy. They can't understand it, they can't read it, they can't spot it.Collection: Comedy
Monty Python only became valuable when it was sold to Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in America. They didn't pay much either, but the series has been shown repeatedly, which led to lucrative tapes, CDs and DVDs.Collection: Python
Even if you've written something for print, I think it's good to try [it] out on someone because it changes. You can think it's hilarious and they can tell you it's not.Collection: Thinking
I pay taxes in three countries, but can't vote in any of them.Collection: Country
Subversion is what I do.Collection: Subversion
I'm not really a celebrity; I'm just vestigially left over from doing stuff from before.Collection: Stuff
So it became in my mind a nine-carol service; an oratorio and orchestral concert all in one, but with narration. That's something I've learned about, because it's the story that keeps you in there. I wrote a libretto and I gave it to John Du Prez. We normally don't work in this fashion but I said off you go, and he went off for about three months. He brought me back this demo which blew my mind.Collection: Fashion
Reading Alan Zweibel makes me laugh out loud. And yet it is not a particularly funny name.Collection: Reading
We never have that thought! The whole object is to bite off more than you can chew. John [Du Prez] always says, Eric thinks of something completely insane and insists we go in that direction. It's the correct way to look at things and the correct place to start, I think.Collection: Thinking
I get to be the first doctor in the family [because of the honorary degree they're giving me].Collection: Doctors
There's no gap between the writer and the performer, which is what I think makes [Monty] Python unique. Five or six people who write Python and five or six who act it. That's what makes it unique.Collection: Writing
I just believe in a huge universe of billions of miles.Collection: Believe
Writers tend to suffer from back problems because they spend their time bent over a desk.Collection: Suffering
They're a typical Hollywood audience. All the kids are on drugs and all the adults are on roller skates.Collection: Kids
I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority.Collection: Smart
What's brown and sounds like a bell? DUNG!Collection: Sound
I live in a Spanish-style hillside home in Los Angeles, California. I paid $900,000 in 1995. It's perhaps worth about $3m now. Thankfully, I paid off my mortgage before the crash because I could see it coming. I worried that I would be caught having to pay off a very high mortgage for a house I couldn't sell.Collection: Home
I always have a feeling you should move the playing field and the minute you know what you're doing, you're wrong. Therefore, I wanted us not to try to follow Spamalot immediately, but to do something different. This is perfect because it uses all the same skills, like story telling and lyric writing and music writing, but it's presenting it in a different form. And of course it gives me and John a nice chance to perform and show off which is also fun.Collection: Fun
Well we were lucky because we started in Canada where everybody has a sense of humour! We flirted a little while with Josh Groban. He was personally interested in it. He said oh I'd love to do something different, and I said well it's pretty different! But in the end the dates didn't work out.Collection: Work Out
I used to think I was like the wicket- keeper, which is like the catcher in base- ball, y'know what I mean? You can call the play a lot from behind the plate, y'know what I mean? You're not necessarily the star, you're not the one that makes the mark, but usually in the end, you're called upon to get a run when it's needed.Collection: Running
My father, who was a sergeant in the RAF during the Second World War, was killed in a hitchhiking accident while returning home on compassionate leave. As a result, my mother had to get work, as a nurse, and at seven the RAF put me into a boarding school and ex-orphanage called the Royal Wolverhampton School.Collection: Mother
I got locked into a tradition [at Cambridge] of doing comedy.Collection: Comedy
There's animals like us existing and thinking and giving interviews on Australian television.Collection: Animal
The idea that we evolved with these thoughts is actually very fascinating - to me.Collection: Ideas
I like doing live things and plays. You can perfect the laugh or extend the laugh, you can get them on a roll. Versus improv, which I hate. Put it all together. They're more vignettes. Improv makes me slightly anxious because I feel for them.Collection: Hate
You get interviewed when you're out promoting something.Collection: Promoting
Don't want to turn into mini-me.Collection: Want
I don't necessarily know much about comedy, I don't spend a lot of time watching it. Mainly because all my life for about 50 years I've had comedy.Collection: Years
I try to not to be a celebrity as much as possible.Collection: Trying
I liked doing live things, and with the Circus we had a live audience.Collection: Circus
I hate movies. They're so boring. So tedious.Collection: Hate
My wife, Tania, is very big on dogs, so I'm always paying out to animal charities.Collection: Dog
You could feel the place going crazy because we hadn't been on stage together for maybe 35 years and the audience could just feel us in the darkness come on and they went nuts. It made the little hairs stand up on the back of my neck and we sang Sit on My Face, which I thought was wonderfully appropriate for George's memorial, and then we bowed and we showed our bare asses.Collection: Crazy
Having little money to spend was a valuable learning experience. My schooling also shaped my work ethic because while other children were listening to the Goons, I was studying, which enabled me to go to Cambridge University.Collection: Children
My first professional job was appearing in a disastrous theatre production of Oh, What a Lovely War in Leicester Rep, shortly after leaving Cambridge.Collection: Jobs
When I was 23 I started writing for I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and was paid three guineas for every minute's airtime.Collection: Sorry
When, in 1966, I progressed to The Frost Report, I was paid ten guineas a minute. I was guaranteed three minutes a week, so this was good money.Collection: Frost
You could write a joke in the pub at lunchtime and watch it performed on television that evening.Collection: Writing
Monty Python paid me £20,000 to write, direct and assemble them - the cheapskates! I told them I'd never earned less in a year since leaving Cambridge. The first show sold out in 43 seconds and we ended up performing ten in total. We had no idea there would be such demand.Collection: Writing
I used to have a house in London, but couldn't face 20 more years of St John's Wood in the rain.Collection: Rain
Many years ago I also bought a house in Provence for about 70,000 francs. It had no electricity or running water, and no road leading to the house, but gradually we made improvements. It's my escape and I love it.Collection: Running