By Richard Ouzounian
"You can call me Canadian Idle, if you like."
Eric Idle, one of the sextet of British comedians who created Monty Python's Flying Circus, is at Massey Hall for the next two nights, performing what he cheekily calls The Greedy Bastard Tour.
He slips into one of those toffee-stuffed BBC accents the Pythons loved to flagellate.
"It's a rather attractive mélange of the complete Idle oeuvre along with some impromptu scavengings from the works of Peter Cook and Marty Feldman."
In other words, the indefatigable Idle (accompanied by John duPrez, Peter Crabbe and Jennifer Julian) will be delighting the crowd with Monty Python faves, gems from the Rutland Isles and assorted comedic tidbits.
All of this in an exhaustive 44-city tour, which began in Rutland, Vt., last Friday night and finally shudders to a conclusion with its Los Angeles show on Dec. 20.
But for the moment, Idle is content to sit back in a comfy corner of Bistro 990, discussing his past in between forkfuls of sautéed trout.
"Shall we start at the very beginning, or is that just too Julie Andrews for words?" is his way of easing into a life story that has its major sting right near the top.
Idle was born on March 29, 1943 in South Shields, Country Durham, England.
His father was on active duty in India with the Royal Air Force, but came home on leave to see his family for the holidays, only to be killed by a passing auto while hitchhiking on Dec. 24, 1945.
"My childhood ended that day. My mother went into a complete meltdown. Happy Christmas, everyone." He pushes a piece of trout aimlessly around on his plate, then puts the fork down.
"My mother vanished from the picture. I was sent off to my grandparents. I didn't know what I had done wrong. Maternal abandonment. The source of inspiration for most great comics."
And things would get worse before they became any better.
"Then I was put into a Dickensian boarding school in the Midlands. It had the laughably grandiose name of The Royal School but we all referred to it as `Colditz.' I was there for 12 years, from the age of 7 on and it was pretty damned grim... really horrible.
"But I learned how to compensate. I did puppet shows. I played the guitar. I formed a little group and we all sang black resistance songs."
He closes his eyes and dispenses some British soul.
"If you're white, you're alright
If you're brown, stick around.
But if you're black, oh brother, get back, get back."
He's the first to realize the absurdity of the juxtaposition.
"It's very bizarre when you realize we were this little band of white boys in the middle of England, and there wasn't a black face for hundreds of miles. But we did feel oppressed and we sang with all our hearts."
He sighs with relief as he leaves that all behind him. "My life didn't really begin until I was 19 and went to Cambridge. I started doing comedy and discovered that people thought I was funny. So I auditioned for the Footlights Club." Within a few years, Idle was running the place himself and his initial act was to insist that its all-male membership rules be abolished to allow females.
The first woman to be admitted was future feminist Germaine Greer, who sang a madrigal with Idle. "I do it in the show now," he grins, "just to remember her by."
After Cambridge, Idle drifted into the world of BBC-TV comedy, writing and performing on shows like Do Not Adjust Your Set, gradually meeting the other personalities who would join Idle to form Monty Python's Flying Circus: John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam.
The program first went on the air on Oct. 5, 1969 and immediately acquired a cult following, although as Idle wryly observes, "We were lucky. We never got big until we were finished, so it didn't influence the work."
The material is still popular over 30 years later, and Idle feels the reason is that "we were the first comedy show to really come out of the TV generation. We knew how to use the medium. It's still amazingly up-to-date in many ways.
"Some people call the Pythons `undergraduate humour.' Rubbish. It's postgraduate humour; we all had degrees. We were in our late 20s when we did the shows, not young blokes in the first flush of nothing to say."
Then, after three seasons, Cleese decided he wanted out of the show. "It happened during our first Canadian tour in 1973," Idle recalls, "on an Air Canada flight to Vancouver."
Why did he quit? "John gets bored easily and he's a very difficult man." Idle muses. "I think he's so funny because he never wanted to be liked. That gives him a certain fascinating, arrogant freedom."
After Cleese's departure, the Pythons staggered on for another half season, then disbanded. But they came back bigger than ever with their films Monty Python And The Holy Grail (1975), Life Of Brian (1979) and Monty Python's Meaning Of Life (1983),
After that, except for the odd concert reunion, they parted ways. Idle devoted himself to TV comedies like his Beatles satire, The Rutles (1978) and film appearances in romps like Nuns On The Run (1990).
In recent years, Idle has known some disappointments. He was the original book writer for the musical Seussical, only to be forced out after producer Garth Drabinsky was removed from Livent. And another Drabinsky-Idle project, a Merchant-Ivory spoof called The Remains Of The Piano, dissolved this past summer when the Stratus Film Company failed to come up with the necessary funds.
So now Idle is turning his attention to Spamalot, a musical version of Monty Python And The Holy Grail, which has attracted the attention of iconic director Mike Nichols and is slated for the 2005 Broadway season. "I want it to be like a giant panto," says Idle, eyes glowing. "Funny and witty, like The Producers, only with sword fighting."
Idle has recently turned 60, but when asked what his favourite recent memory is, he has no hesitation in providing it.
"At the memorial concert for George Harrison at the Albert Hall, the Pythons sang `Sit On My Face And Tell Me That You Love Me,' then we all bent down and showed our bare asses. Being with those guys gave you that extra bit of bravery. I loved it and yes, I miss it."
