Comments Off on The Needy Bastard Diary. 16.  Peace on Perth.

By Eric Idle, March 9, 2016 3:51 pm

Episode 16. Perth
“And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space

‘Cos there’s bugger all down here in Perth.”

The line comes to me at the sound check and I can’t resist risking it in the show. Mercifully they roar with laughter. It shows they know the real line and appreciate the local change. The audiences in Perth are very smart and very quick. We have another lot in tonight and then we turn our backs on the Indian Ocean and fly East once more to our two final cities of Sydney and Melbourne and then just like that, for us Australia will be over. I have grown very fond of it over the forty years I have been coming and it is amazing to see how enormously the cities have changed even in the eight years since I was last here. There is a multi-cultural confidence now, gone are the knee-jerk inferiority complexes of the sixties and seventies. This is a big world, growing fast, that is a far cry from the old Okker world of RSL’s and old men in clubs settling things privately.

I wake up at 6 with a big cloud hanging over the horizon and a fringe of distant rain patterning the pale peach of dawn. I am faintly depressed. Maybe anxious is more close to it. The show could not have gone better last night. A crowd of 2,400 gave us standing ovations, and laughed throughout the show, but one of the things I have been doing recently is reading through the audience questions and I find them vaguely depressing. Hard to explain why. Then an unkind tweet gets to me, when somebody says that John Cleese is much funnier than I am. Well duh, I’ve known that for 53 years. It’s not a competition it’s a doubles match. What makes the show fun for both of us is that having a partner on stage removes the anxiety and stress of being alone. We cover for each other, pick up cues, interject new thoughts… It’s a surprisingly easy partnership and we get along very well. We also observe each other on stage and almost never disagree. Last night we did the Bookshop stretch better than we have ever done it. We were tight and spot on. And we both noticed.

For a start we were both very relaxed, having had two days off. In my case I had acupuncture for my torn tendon and spent hours in the pool working out my dodgy ankle, so that by the start of the show I am feeling much better. Then we had two great dinners together, one at Kailis Bros in Leederville, and the other at the beautiful Matilda Bay Restaurant, which overlooks the water, during which Jupiter rose huge and golden as we dined. I always find the Universe comforting when humanity seems frustrating. The world does seem to be at least choosing which handbag it wants to go to hell in, and here in Perth the brash Kardashian Trump world of brazen bullshit all seems so very far away. Australians, too, seem grateful for being miles away from the horrible headlines and safer from the crisis of Isis and the insane threats of the mad Korean with the silly haircut, and as we have observed before Australians are very funny and have a great sense of irony. So why am I feeling anxious?

Well Michael White died yesterday, and even though I haven’t seen much of him for many years that is the breaking of a thread which leads all the way back to the Sixties when he picked up the Cambridge Footlights revue and took it to London, which meant that I received an urgent telegram in Berlin, where I was hitch hiking round Germany to return urgently to Cambridge for rehearsals to fill in for John Cleese and co at The Edinburgh Festival in August 1963. A big break for me, singing and performing in a wonderful show, and a great chance to experience audiences, and even appear on TV for the first time. Michael White also helped put together Monty Python and The Holy Grail, though he balked when I took him The Life of Brian. He did however put on my play Pass The Butler, at the Globe Theatre in the West End, directed by Johnny Lynn, and kindly ran it for several months, despite critical abuse, until the Falklands War put an end to all of that enjoying yourself nonsense, and the country could grow grim with war.

So what do I do about the tweet I felt bad about? Do I simply rise above it all, send the Twatter a rude tweet or just ignore it? It’s difficult for me to turn the other cheek. Usually I turn the other cheeky and hand out abuse. The most sensible thing to do is to take Peter Cook’s advice from Beyond The Fringe: “Put on the kettle and have a nice hot cup of tea.”

One cup of Lapsang Chousong later.

That’s better. If I don’t look on the bright side who the hell should? I always say I’m an optimist in the morning and a pessimist at night. So:  Reasons to be cheerful Part Deux. 

Firstly it is my son’s birthday and maddeningly even though he lives in Australia I’m on the wrong side of the Continent for it. However he is going to come and visit me in May. So Happy Birthday son, you brought light and love into my life and I’m grateful to your Aussie mum for giving you an Australian heritage and the chance to live in Queensland, where she was born.

  Secondly my wife is arriving in Sydney on Saturday and she is always very sweet on the road, supportive, thoughtful and very lovely. It does seem amazing we have been together for 39 years and though John snorts contemptuously that it reeks of lack of ambition to be still with the same woman, I am grateful to be with the gal I fell in love with at first sight in January 1977, a startled young Chicagoan whom I told I would never leave, and then stuck to like glue. Thanks Tania for all those years. It would be an understatement to say I can be a difficult bastard, but the great thing about having a wife is you only get to disappoint one woman. And women on the whole are nicer and far more forgiving.

So finally I went back and re read the tweet that had upset me last night and guess what, there are three other tweets from the same guy saying how much he loved the show, how singing along to the Bright Side was a highlight of his life and how grateful he was for the show. So there. It was my mood. It’s odd what we look for. Insecurity is never very far from the performer. Show me a man on stage without some self doubt and I’ll show you an asshole. And I do mean Donald Trump.

So now if this rain cloud will also pass I can get in the pool and have my acupuncture and not forget to laugh and smile and dance and sing.

Comments Off on Episode 13.  Wild Life in Canberra

By Eric Idle, March 4, 2016 3:01 pm

Jamala Wild Life LodgeSaturday 5th March.

I’m woken to a golden sunrise by the screeching a of a dozen white cockatoos, standing in the tree outside my room, head feathers held high. In the distance lions roar. In the lobby, some closer ancestors, two large colobus monkeys with long white feathered tails try and pretend it isn’t morning.

Thursday afternoon we came bouncing into Canberra via Melbourne through some heavy thunderclouds and dramatic flashes of lightning, and were left sitting on the Tarmac for a while, as it was deemed too dangerous for the ground crew to approach our Qantas flight. Even when they let us off it would be another two or three hours before anyone was permitted on to the apron to unload our bags. Fortunately for us St. Simon whisks us into a People Carrier and sends us barrelling off down the road beyond Canberra to our extraordinary destination, a wild life safari lodge perched beside the dam of a beautiful reservoir. For the public it’s the National Zoo and Aquarium of Canberra, but for we lucky few who get to stay here two whole nights it’s the Jamala Wild Life Lodge, where for the even more fortunate you can get to share your quarters with a Bengal tiger, brown lions, a brown bear, a sun bear or a cheetah. Richard Tindale the owner has built special bungalows with glass walls abutting their dens where your animal sleeps right beside you. We sit in one with an extraordinarily beautiful Bengal tiger who doesn’t bat an eye as he lies napping on his straw. After all this is his place. We are the visitors. You can take a bath beside him if you book this bungalow. In fact the place is so popular you can only stay three nights. John brilliantly found it in the Qantas Magazine and being, let us say, less than enamoured of the charms of Canberra suggested we stay here. Mercifully we got the last two rooms, John in the Lemur suite and me the Hyena. I haven’t yet even seen Canberra, though according to our personalised tour guides we play there tonight at a sold out Royal Theatre.

Our day off begins with breakfast on the terrace. Two very beautiful spotted hyenas idly watch us. Shortly we will get to feed these beautiful and friendly animals, who are not the only ones to have received a vile reputation from Hollywood. Meanwhile beneath us we watch four white lions released roaring from their pens each with huge chunks of meat in their mouths, which they take off into separate patches of shade in their pleasant grassy wooded enclosure. Next it’s another pair of white lions, a brother and sister, who romp into their own world. I watch the huge white male patiently ripping apart his fresh meat breakfast, his extraordinary jaws crushing and tearing the food, licking and probing, crunching and chewing, until nothing remains and they sit contentedly licking their chops. Both John and I have a picture taken with Jake, while Misha, the most beautiful female sits placidly by. You’ll be able to see the pictures we took of our trip on their website jamalawildlifelodge.com.au or more likely their face book jamalawildlifelodge.  It might take me a while to get mine over to them but they’ll probably post the Python Feeding Time picture soon.

All the staff led by Maurits de Graeff are charming and helpful but today our guides are Russell Jackson and Renee Osterloh, and they show us through the huge sea water tanks of sharks and the indoor aquarium, and then help us feed two most endearing spotted hyenas. Soon they whisk us away from the public where John is politely denying he is a zoo animal to tourists  wishing to photograph him and we head off on a golf cart to see the new areas under construction. As well as Emus and Elands, and capuchins and giraffes, and lemurs, and Tree Kangaroos from New Guinea, and a wonderfully odd Tasmanian devil, we get up close and personal with two adorable young dingos, we wander amongst the patient wallabies, and then get to meet a cheetah. That’s right. We get to meet a cheetah. Kyle and Amanda give us safety instructions and then we’re in through the gates, patting this most beautiful creature as he chews on a large leg. Luckily not one of ours. Sadly there are only 3,000 of these amazing animals left in the wild, and in fifteen years they may well become extinct. Kyle McDonald and Amanda Hadley explain that this petting programme is part of an outreach programme to teach people about these creatures, who are being killed off by farmers in Namibia and South Africa to protect their goats and sheep from predation. Perfectly understandable he says, and the only way we can save them is from a new programme of providing the farmers with a large breed of heavy dog, which protects the herds and which will see off any cheetah and predator. These dogs are provided free, and food and all vet costs are also supplied by the programme, and so far it appears to be working. No cheetah will risk an attack on a herd which is protected by a large dog, and will go elsewhere. You can contribute to this programme. John and I are considering a suitable name for a dog.

After many moving moments with the cheetah we pose inside the pen for pictures as Pythons, awaiting feeding time. Someone has thoughtfully provided a can of spam. We mug away, and the cheetah comes and sits behind us, perhaps puzzled by the antics of these antique comics. He makes a wonderful purring noise. We do what we can to spread the word. After all surely we cannot let all these wonderful animals just fade into extinction. This place is not only a tourist resort and a zoo, but also part of an integrated conservation programme, so please if you can, support them in the amazing work they are doing. Or imagine a world with no animals.

As a reward for being fed Spam for the cameras we are led to the bear enclosure where we spoon feed sweet food to a gentle and affectionate brown bear, who has, like many of these creatures, been rescued from a Circus. There is very little chance of John and I being rescued from our particular flying circus, but our hosts treat us so kindly and spoil us so much that we spend all day either being fed or feeding animals. Our final exploit of the day is in the Aquarium where an enormous tawny nurse shark is basking on the sand at the bottom of his tank, but is soon wakened by a kick on the side of the glass by Renee and comes racing up for a bucket of crayfish, which he eats with a loud plosive plop, the noise he makes as he sucks in the squid with extremely powerful suction from the reefs where he lives. John gets down and pats this very friendly but enormous tawny shark.

I don’t have time to tell you of all our adventures here, or all about the kind and friendly people who work here, or the great food served up by Sarah, and the amazing Chef, but thank you Teneal and everyone I haven’t mentioned for making us so at home. I can only encourage you all to come and visit this extraordinary place. I wish I was a bit more competent technologically to transfer our many great pictures to this blog, but I can’t dammit. We are going to try and show a few tonight in our stage show, and I’ll tweet a few but I have to rush right now, as it is feeding time with John Cleese and then sadly we have to pack up and run off back to join the Flying Circus…..

Comments Off on Chapter Seven Needy Bastard Diary

By Eric Idle, February 22, 2016 2:19 pm

    It’s dawn in the rain forest and all is clear and still except for the echoey calls of large birds, in the woodwind range, who natter and chatter around the still damp woods It’s not yet steaming hot. Screened windows open to the morning freshness.

It rained in the night. Huge gushing drops shredded through the leaves of the trees and ran down the tin roves into the gutters which collect the fresh rainwater and pour it into the cement water vats and the metal overflow vats.

I’m hiding in the hills. Sorry, holidaying, which for me is the same thing. I’m staying with my son who lives up here and it’s a dream escape into the hinterland hills inland from the Coast, away from the crowding mad. He has built a wonderful guest house in the bush and I get all manner of birds and calls and cries. I have named one The Buildabird because it sounds exactly like a near-by power drill, and I am very disappointed when my son tells me it is indeed a near-by power drill.

I have a few days off before the tour.

Yesterday’s we went hunting for opals at Opals Downunda off the Bruce Highway. The nice lady there asked me if I was Richard Attenborough. I thought it impolite to say poor Dickie has been dead a couple of years, and in any case I think she had me confused for Michael Palin and she had him confused for David Attenborough. That’s the best explanation I can offer I’m afraid.

One of the worst approaches to celebrities is “Are you who I think you are?”

I mean that’s just impossible to answer isn’t it. One can waste a lot of time coyly sorting that one out.

Usually I say “No I am not Kylie Minogue” which slows them down a little as they wonder how I could possibly imagine they had mistaken me for the plucky Aussie chanteuse.

If they say “Are you Eric Idle?” I usually say “occasionally” in the hope of delaying the inevitable selfie. John is brilliant at this. “Can I have selfie” they ask. “No,” he says “I don’t know you.”

 I usually pretend I have to hurry up to be with him and that of course normally I would stop for hours while they fumble with their I Things but just today I have to run and join John.

My son has been an assiduous guide taking me to a host of small places with improbable names. We passed a road sign outside Brisbane which said “Nudgee, Nudgee Beach”. We have been to a variety of Nambours and Mooloolabas and Caloundras. I am perpetually lost but my son dashes us around to unlikely places, where we meet very nice people.

We visited the Eumundi Saturday market, where a large lady all in pink was selling hula hoops. Elsewhere were hand made items and gems and rocks. I was tempted but I am rather overstocked with tie-died crocheted bikinis. It’s not a flattering look for me in the first place because sagging is a problem, and that’s just me. Once the crochet gets wet, well it’ll look like the last surviving oldie at a Burning Man festival.

There were however some nice comedy flags for sale, however, one of which is definitely worth nicking:

    “The trouble with political jokes is occasionally they get elected…”

I shall definitely ad lib that answer to any Donald Trump question on the tour.

There is an excellent bookshop too in Eumundi called Berkelows with plenty of lovely second hand books too heavy to haul on tour, but there in the window was Gilliamesque Terry Gilliam’s autobiographical attempt to turn himself into an abstract noun. It’s a nicely designed book with lots of his drawings and I couldn’t resist autographing it with my name and replacing it on the shelf. Was this an act of pure comedy vandalism or does it increase the value of the book? We shall see. I have a very rare copy of an unsigned Michael Palin book somewhere, but I doubt Terry G. will be down here to sign his. So I think I have done him a favour.

Then we visited Chinresig, a large Buddhist retreat (for large Buddhists) where the Dali Lama came to visit a couple of years ago. For that occasion my son and his pals built a shrubbery in our family name, complete with a plaque.

 I hope his holiness appreciated the joke.

 When John Cleese came face to face with the Dali Lama they both laughed heartily at each other for five minutes.

You can’t go very far in Australia without some example of humour. One ducks crossing we saw said “Slow down for ducks sake.” And a Church we passed said “Early Service 8. Not that early really..”

We leave this paradise Wednesday for the Gold Coast tomorrow and the real start of our tour. But this has been a sweet retreat, and a delight to see my lad. We have played guitar loudly till late at night, when one of the neighbors asked us to turn it up! They couldn’t hear properly they complained… We even make more noise than the flying foxes who are surprisingly vocal. I am assured they are bats but they don’t seem to have bat attitude, since they make a lot of noise communicating and go to roost at night. The very opposite of a good battitude. Perhaps David Attenborough will enlighten me.

Two nice moments of humour. I got a surprise Twitter note from Mark Gattis who said:

“You really suit that beard, maestro! X”

To which I replied: “it’s beginning to grow on me.”

And I was happy at the airport the other day to see that the very attractive young woman from the Telegraph had put in a gag I’d ad libbed which I’d forgotten.

“I’m having my dick cryogenically frozen, in case someone can revive it in a future life.”

Comments Off on The Needy Bastard Diary

By Eric Idle, February 12, 2016 2:41 pm

Chapter Four: Still here. 

The fourth day of this damn Tour diary and I still haven’t left home.

Yes, I’m still here.

Pathetic isn’t it?

Apparently it doesn’t actually start until the 25th of February on the Gold Coast, and I’ve obviously been preparing to leave for too long. But at least my wife has noticed that I am leaving. She’s started saying things like “I’m going in to Beverly Hills. I’m really going to miss you.”

“But you’re only going to Beverly Hills.”

“No you idiot. When you’re gone.”

I really leave on Monday. Grammy night. Mercifully I shall miss the Academy Awards. There’s nothing I like more than missing Award Shows. I find them tedious. And of no value. In fact the only Awards of any value are the ones they give me. Although I do like the Grammys. At least they perform. They should make some of those bearded repeat Oscar winners (“This is his 32 Oscar for sound effects editing and he still hasn’t shaved…”) they should make them sing or something. Anyway for me this year it’s just an honour not to be nominated, although after 39 years I feel I might qualify for a wifetime achievement award.

What has left is my guitar, in its brand new custom-made shipping case, which I had specially made. . It looks like this:
  

 Beautiful isn’t it? 
I wish they could make one for me to be shipped in.

I shan’t meet up with this lovely Taylor until the appropriately named Gold Coast.

I was given my first Taylor guitar by Clint Black after he recorded The Galaxy Song. He didn’t like singing “Whenever life gets you down Mrs. Brown” and he asked me to write him a new Intro. I wrote him a kind of cowboy opening and we recorded it together in his home studio in his marbled palace in LA.

When you’re feeling inside out and insecure

And life keeps getting you down

When all life’s daily worries

Hurry through your head

You don’t wanna even get up

You just lie around in bed

When you feel you just can’t take it anymore

And you wonder what on earth it is all for

Your love life’s like a war zone

Your TV’s on the blink

It’s enough to drive a drinking man

To stop and take a think.

Recorded with Clint Black for Delectrified in 1999

I think we even sang it together at a Grammy event on a tennis court for Music Cares. Later he flew me down to the Taylor factory, in a tiny private plane, where we were shown around the factory and then taken to the board room to meet Bob. Here they broke out the guitars and we played. It was the nicest corporate experience. We got to try a variety of their latest instruments.

Taylor have always kindly looked after me on the road, and they supplied two very nice guitars for JCAEITAALFTVFT which is the handy little acronym I have invented to remember our tour title: John Cleese and Eric Idle Together Again At Last for The Very First Time.

It has been nominated for longest title in an old farts on the road tour.

In case you are having trouble with the acronym here’s an easy way to remember it.

Julius Caesar always eyes Italian totty and adores lovely females to very frequently touch.

That will help you remember JCAEITAALFTVFT and then it’s a simple matter of substituting letters.

As well as the guitar I have shipped shipping three outfits for the stage and a Tour travel bag filled with Teas*, Tea making devices, make up and two outback corky hats, because of course we shall be doing the Bruces for the very first time in Australia.

*Lapsang Sou Chong, Buddha’s Cup, Genghis Khan and another first flush Darjeeling.

We may have to censor ourselves a little as I think Rule 4 “No Pooftah’s” is probably incorrect. I certainly cut it from my 2003 tour. Yes I know it’s satire on the then (70’s) over blokish culture of the drinking Australian male, but things have come a very long way since then, and thank heaven for it.

King Lear to Jester: Shut up that’s incorrect.

Which reminds me that once Prince Charles asked me to become his jester. He really did. He was choking with laughter at Billy Connolly’s Scottish house over dinner, with Robin Williams and Steve Martin so I must have got off a good one.

“Eric” he said with tears in his eyes “You should become my jester.”

“Now why would I want a fucking awful job like that?” I said, which set him off even more.

I actually think it was a perfect jester’s response. Reminding the Prince of how unenviable his position really is. Even the fucking jester doesn’t want the job….