Caregivers, join AARP Creative Refresh for free to get a daily text with a simple activity to help you make time for yourself. Sign up here

Content starts here

Monty Python’s Eric Idle Tells All About ‘Spamalot,’ George Harrison, Mike Nichols and Life at 81

‘The Spamalot Diaries’ is a memoir as entertaining as the Broadway musical smash

Tim Appelo,

AARP

Published October 08, 2024

Eric Idle next to the book cover of The Spamalot Diaries

Photo Collage: AARP; (Source: Penguin Random House; Lily Idle)

When Eric Idle, 81, was packing up to move recently (an experience he calls “Downsize Abbey”), he found a notebook chronicling the years-long creation of his and John Du Prez’s musical Spamalot, a hit on Broadway in 2004 and again in 2023. That notebook led to The Spamalot Diaries (Oct. 8), a ripping read that feels like a ride on a scary showbiz roller coaster, and an invitation to a movable feast of the elite in the celebrity fast lane.

It’s also a fascinating self-portrait of Idle, struggling for creative independence from his Python troupe mates, whose squabblesome personalities correspond to the knights they played in Monty Python and the Holy Grail — their 1975 film that Idle magically transformed into Spamalot.

More Ways to Benefit

View All

Related Benefit 1
Related Benefit 2
Related Benefit 3
Related Benefit 4
Related Benefit 5

Most of all, it’s a book about Idle’s bromance with Spamalot’s titanic director Mike Nichols, the only man to win Emmys (for Wit and Angels in America), a Grammy (best comedy album), an Oscar (The Graduate) and nine Tony Awards on Broadway.

Idle told AARP about his unexpected trip down memory lane.

Why publish your private diaries 20 years later?

I’m proud of my Diaries and I’m glad I found them. I had forgotten I had written them. I think they tell the truth about a long and difficult process.

What did life feel like to you at 50, and now? Was there a bit left in the toothpaste tube of life?

Are you kidding me? I’m over 80. I’d give anything to be a youthful over 50. There’s a lot left of life to enjoy, but beware, if you live in America you can never retire, because you have to get more and more jobs to pay for your dentists and doctors.…

My tip: Move to Europe fast as you can.

Also, I was well over 50 when I wrote Spamalot.

Tim Curry and other performers during the musical Spamalot at the Palace Theatre in London

Tim Curry (center) stars in "Spamalot" at the Palace Theatre in London in 2006.

Donald Cooper / Alamy Stock Photo

Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin helped raise the $400,000 to film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Spamalot grossed $343 million. How much of that remains in your bank account?

Well, none. Theater is better than the movies, where the object is to make sure that none of the money ends up in the pockets of the writers, but to mount a musical costs $24 million. They cost a million a week to run! You can take a million a week at the box office and still not get anything to pay down your initial investment. Even when you finally make a profit, the creatives get only a small percentage.

Your Spamalot song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” is the most-requested song at British funerals. Why?

I have no idea. But they don’t pay royalties.

After Spamalot’s Tony-gobbling triumph, was Steve Martin correct when he told you, “[The other Pythons] will never forgive you for this?”

YES.

Most Popular

Men hanging from crosses in the film Life of Brian

A scene from "Life of Brian."

Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection

George Harrison mortgaged his house to finance your film Life of Brian. When did you become friends for life, and what did you learn from him?

He cheered me up when my first marriage was breaking up by telling me I was going to die, which is good advice. F— it. Every day you’re lucky.

Is it true that when you met him you felt like you’d met before — that he may, in fact, have been the stranger named George whom you met one day at age 5 playing on the beach across from Liverpool?

It is true that I wrote that and felt that. It is certainly not possible to prove it. It was like I already knew him and we picked up on a relationship.

Were the Beatles wise to give each member the right to veto any song? Was that Python policy too?

Yes. All Pythons always had a veto until the last three shamefully removed it from the fourth [Idle] this last spring.

What did you and Mike Nichols each bring to the party, perhaps filling in the other’s gaps?

We had been friends for 15 years, we shared a love of books, we made each other laugh, all the time.

Director Mike Nichols looks on as Monty Python member Michael Palin holds a symbolic urn representing deceased Python member Graham Chapman, actor Tim Curry and Python members John Cleese and Eric Idle (shows composer/lyrcist) take part in the opening night curtain call bows on March 17, 2005 for the Monty Python Broadway musical Spamalot

(Left to right) Mike Nichols, Michael Palin, Tim Curry, John Cleese and Eric Idle during the Broadway opening night curtain call of "Spamalot" on March 17, 2005

UPI / Alamy Stock Photo

Your diary shows how creatively you collaborated — but you also clashed and almost quit. Why did he tell you, “The laughs cannot and should not be uppermost in your mind”?

I think what he hated was, “Oh, we’re just all having a jolly good fun time” about some types of musical theater. He thought everything should have a meaning and a purpose. He said the actors must take it seriously, “because if you don’t, then why should the audience?” He would ruthlessly cut any funny business they came up with. I think Python instinctively did that, take it seriously — that’s what makes Silly Walks funny.

Mike and Elaine [May] were my favorites in the early ’60s, because their comedy was about something — relationships, mothers, adultery, all grownup subjects.

You write of your beloved mother, who was severely depressed, “She would have loved Spamalot.” What would she love?

Its success. And its sheer joie de vivre. It makes people very happy. The Kennedy Center Production is going on the road again next year. The casts always have a great time.

I have already heard from people who were part of the original show that the Diaries made them cry. Remembering the sheer good times and the joy of making something which at the end made the audience scream with laughter. The cast and producers still keep in touch with each other, which shows you what an effect it had on everyone.

Tim Appelo covers entertainment and is the film and TV critic for AARP. Previously, he was the entertainment editor at Amazon, video critic at Entertainment Weekly, and a critic and writer for The Hollywood Reporter, People, MTV, The Village Voice and LA Weekly.

AARP Membership

Join AARP for only $15 per year with automatic renewal. Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of benefits, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP The Magazine.

Join