Fifty years ago today John F. Kennedy made one of the most memorable and important speeches in US Presidential History.   In Berlin.

And, dear reader, I was there.

Odd, true, quaint, ridiculous, but my 20 year old self just happened to be in West Berlin when he made that historic address.

I watched his cavalcade go by,  with Konrad Adenauer the West German Chancellor and Willy Brandt, the florid faced legendary mayor of West Germany, followed finally by the smiling JFK.

How should I happen to be there?   Well it happened after this wise:

I was at the end of my first year at Cambridge and my old school friend Alan Sinfield and I were hitch hiking around Germany for the second year running.

The previous year’s adventure had almost ended in disaster when, just outside Stuttgart we were offered a ride by a flash geezer and his girlfriend in a fast Mercedes.  Where were we going?   Munich.   Happy to take you there, climb in boys, this is my girlfriend Berthe.  A tubby cheeked smiling Fraulein.  Hello, how are you, throw your rucksacks in the trunk of the car and away we go, rollicking along the autobahn at high speed nach Munchen.

Half way there we stopped for lunch and he paid for everything.  He offered to show us the famous Hoffbrauhaus in Munich and take us to dinner there.  Better yet he would put us all up at a Pensione and next day we would set off for Vienna.   Were we up for that?   Were we ever.  Wow.  This was the best lift in the world.

We checked into a delicious little Pensione, two adjacent double rooms, one for him and his girlfriend and one for us.   If we wouldn’t mind waiting with his girlfriend while he popped out to make a dinner reservation and gas the car?   Of course not. Happy to.

After about an hour when he hadn’t returned we began to worry.   Had something terrible happened?   Was he ok?   After two hours we were very concerned.  Our rucksacks were in the back of his car, passports, travelers checks, sleeping bags, clothing, everything we owned in the world.   We questioned his girlfriend.  Where was he?  She crumbled into tears.  She wasn’t really his girlfriend.  She too had only just met him.  He had picked her up in Pforzheim just before us in Stuttgart.  He had promised her the world and now done a runner.   With all our stuff.  Oh shit.  It was a Friday evening.  We had no money.  We had no passports.  The British Embassy was closed.  It wouldn’t open until Monday.  The Munich Police took a list of everything that was in the rucksacks.  They weren’t interested in us but they were quite interested in him. Turned out he was a known North German criminal from Hamburg on the run, fleeing southwards to Italy.

Broke and hungry we spent the weekend sleeping in the Munich train station before being issued with temporary passports and enough cash for us to hitch hike home.

Amazingly,  eventually, the rucksacks were returned by the Munich police.   Ah that German efficiency…

The second year (1963) we were better organized.  Mark had turned up a distant relative in Berlin.   We would hitch hike through Belgium and into Germany and see if we could get to Berlin.  We slept rough, sometimes in fields,  often in unfinished building sites which offered us shelter from the elements.  But hey it was June, the sun shone and we saw Heidelberg and visited a Schloss on the Rhine where we saw Charles Vth’s signature, the autograph of a Holy Roman  Emperor.  Nuremburg was quaint and the medieval city, which had been almost totally destroyed by the Allied Air forces, had been completely rebuilt.  We visited the Albrecht Durer museum and of course stood on the spot where Hitler had given his largest rally.

In Nuremburg we learned that we would be forced to take a bus to Berlin.  Berlin was an island, between us and it was East Germany.  And hence the importance of the Kennedy visit.  The East Germans had just built the wall separating East from West Berlin.   As they said, to keep the fascists out, but really, as everyone knew to keep their people in.

In 1948 Stalin had closed all borders into Berlin, and America and Britain had come to the rescue of the starving two million citizens with the Berlin Air Lift, an incredible exercise in supplying everything needed to stay alive by air for 18 months before the Russians gave in and re-opened the road and rail links to the West.

Now Kennedy was coming to pay his respects to the City which had stood for freedom against the Stalinist iron curtain.

And we were heading directly for it, without a clue.  We had no idea.   We had been hitch hiking for about ten days.   No newspapers.  No TV.  No radio.  We were free and on the road across Europe like Laurie Lee tra la la, tra la lee.

So, in total ignorance, we bought tickets for a bus ride from Nuremburg to Berlin.  We were the only foreigners on the coach.  Two young English boys.   At the Border Control into East Germany armed guards pulled us off the bus.  What?  Where were we going?  Why?   Menacing men with red ribboned caps grilled us.  Our fellow passengers stared mutely at us through the windows of the coach.  There was a great deal of barbed wire.  Would they let us in?   Would they let us out?   Surely we knew.  What?  Herr Ulbricht the great leader of East Germany was visiting East Berlin.   Oh.  And also Kennedy was visiting West Berlin.   Oh.

I suppose we convinced them that two English spies would not be so dumb as to claim they didn’t even know about these events making headlines round the world, for, finally, they let us back on the bus and we travelled the barbed wire fenced AutoRoute through the Democratic Socialist Republic of East Germany into the glittering city of Berlin.  Which was en fete.   Everyone was happy and excited. The great Kennedy was coming to visit.  He would see for himself the Berlin wall.

Mark’s distant relatives turned out to be a charming couple with young children in a nice house in a pleasant leafy suburb of Berlin.  We were comfortable, fed and welcomed.   Next day we joined the throngs heading for the center of town.   And there we waited for a long time with a patient crowd with little German flags and little American flags until finally a huge cavalcade of cars came into view along the linden tree lined street.  Big Cadillac’s, buses packed with Press Corps, big wigs stared at us.  Not since the Nazis had there been a parade this size.  And then finally in an open necked car, the President himself, JFK, larger than life, with that huge head of hair and that glowing healthy color of wealthy men who spend time on Yachts.

Kennedy smiled the Kennedy smile and the crowd went wild and he waved at us and suddenly they were gone and we all went home happily to watch the rest of the show on TV.

“Ich bin ein Berliner.”

Eddie Izzard is wrong when he repeats the gaffe that it means “I am a Doughnut” in German.   It’s a good joke.   But it’s not true.   It’s perfectly good German.

The real point is that within half an hour the Berlin streets were filled with merchandise and glossy handouts of a smiling Kennedy with the legendary words underneath.   Somebody knew this was coming.

Next day we went through the Berlin wall via Checkpoint Charlie into the cheerless world of the workers’ paradise.  But that’s another story.

On the way back we were once again pulled off the bus by East German guards and heavily grilled.  They went through our stuff and confiscated every single picture of The Wall.  Really?  You think in the West we don’t know it’s there?   Finally they let us go.  Cheerio then.

But still, isn’t it odd to think that I was there fifty years ago today, for a single moment in history in just the right place at just the right time.

It’s been awhile since I blogged and I apologize for my temporary absence from the misinformation highway, but it has been a time of great busyness and great elation for all Idles.

If I may share a little of a Father’s pride, my daughter Lily graduated, cum laude, from Whitman College, Walla Walla, and should by now be safely in Sasquatch.   I had the great joy of handing her her diploma and receiving a daughter’s hug of delight.  I had earlier accepted an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities, and in my Commencement Address (it’s on the web if you care) I said my wife was thrilled she was finally married to a Doctor, and I was also thrilled, as I could now prescribe my own medical marijuana.

According to the College President a web site had ranked me Number Three in Commencement Speakers, behind Oprah and Obama.  But neither of them sang Always Look On The Bright Side of Life with a College Band, so an Oregon newspaper put me at Number One.   Sadly on The Huffington Post link you cannot hear the band or the crowd at all, only my voice and guitar.  Pity that as everyone was in splendid whistling form and the band arrangement was wonderful, written and conducted by a student (oh irony) by the name of Jesus.  (Not Brian.)

The day before I did an hour presentation talk with Q and A which went very well and is also on the web if you want.   I showed a clip of Philosophers Football including my goal as Socrates on the old Bayern Munchen Ground (!) and we sang The Philosophers Song and my kids presented a huge Holy Grail to Varsity Nordic, the Whitman College comedy club, for having the worst name for a Comedy Group since Monty Python’s Flying Circus.  There was a huge audience, some Q and A, and then a long signing.

I had a nice email from Doctor Cleese congratulating me on becoming a Doctor, and wondering what all the fuss was from that Doctor Chapman.    Actually I think I must certainly be the last Python to receive a Doctorate??

My son very kindly flew in from Brisbane to be with the lovely Tania and me, and we wine tasted and partied with the best of them.   It has been very sad to see him return to Australia last night, and my daughter head off to her new home in another town.   Proud tears, but sad ones.  The nest is empty.  The kids have gone.   Actually the nest isn’t entirely empty, as the dogs are here, and a bunch of rats seem determined to nest here too.   There are more rats in Hollywood….

Actually there are currently masses of the rodents here in LA since we are all namby pamby liberals and use humane traps, which means we simply release them elsewhere, and of course they multiply elsewhere and then come back.  We found one nest in my wife’s car.  They apparently love Lexus wiring.  Ah that Japanese wiring.   It’s like noodles to them.  Perhaps we can use the rodents for recycling, or their gases to power our vehicles.

I’m ambivalent about rats, having learned to love them when I played the Pied Piper for Faerie Tale Theater, and even had them crawl all over me.   I’ve had worse.   Some of those producers….don’t start me.   Actually they were specially trained Hollywood rats and were flown to Toronto for the filming, and when finished they were donated to the local zoo to feed the snakes.  I know.   Some kind of metaphor for the film business there.  Work with a Python and then eaten by one.

And talking of rats, back in Camelot The Grail on Sunday, (nudge nudge) has been preparing another gas attack. I don’t know what they are preparing to publish but from experience I’m guessing rubbish.  Lest their vile bile and poisonous untruths should sully the public record let me state quite clearly that I don’t recall a time when the Pythons have got along more harmoniously.  Last month we all met up and reminisced happily for a couple of hours about The Meaning of Life.   No, the movie.   This was an hilarious two hour re-union and I joined them at 3 in the morning from California via Skype in my pajamas.  I also had a cameraman filming me, and now it’s all cut together and it looks great and will be released in the Autumn/ Fall.   We also sensibly determined to undertake a review of all our holdings in the face of this never ending lawsuit by a greedy bastard.  The case has been with the judge since January and it has cost us a small fortune to defend ourselves against some large lies.  Happily the plaintiff is bankrupt so if he loses we are going to ask for the death penalty.  (Warning:  This is a Joke.  Jokes should not be read by unaccompanied journalists and in any case are highly toxic and dangerous to handle. They should be used only in the hands of qualified experts.)

So that’s it.  Jolliness and fun, and special thanks to Tasha, (I am her Dogfather), Alix and Katy, who came all the way with us, and made the Marcus Whitman Hotel a happy center of celebration.  Now I must put on my opera shoes on and head for New York.   But first a little visit from Professor Brian Cox and his lovely wife Gia….

Gillian Frew: 17 Funniest Lines from Monty Python Star Eric Idle’s Commencement Speech 5/22/13 8:27 AM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gillian-frew/17-funniest-lines-from-monty-python-star_b_3315378.html

You may sing of the song of the cuckoo

Say olé to the lay of the lark

You may thrill to the rill

Of the nightingale’s trill

Which awakens your heart after dark,

But the song that you never will hear of

And alas and alack how I wish

That somebody somewhere would sing of

The glorious song of the fish.

Whose heart hasn’t stirred at the call of a bird

Or the purr of a cat that’s well fed?

And if the lone strain of a far distant train

Doesn’t move you, then frankly you’re dead.

But there’s one thing you never will hear of

A song that is long and delish

From the soul of the sole

In the sea or the bowl,

The heart breaking song of the fish.

Oh maybe they hail the young dolphin

Or tell a tall tale of a whale,

But nobody sings of herrings and things

Like whiting, or sea bass or snail.

No one sang of the pang of the penguin

As he sat on the long winter ice,

There’s no news of the mews of the poor kangaroos

As they waits for their mates to be nice.

It’s only the birds

Who get all the words

Those poets go on and on,

For the rest of the animal kingdom

Lyrics and songs there are none.

c) Eric Idle  2013

I just found this nice quote from Graham Chapman which I had written on my wall in London in the late 70’s.

“Life is like a yacht in the Caribbean….  it’s alright if you’ve got one.”

Also I came across this piece of unused Python material, in my handwriting.  It might have been written for one of the records.

MAN

Just where do ideas come from?

Indeed where did I get the idea to ask you just where do ideas come from?

What is an idea?

Is it an idea to ask you “what is an idea?”

And, if so, where did the idea to ask you what is an idea, come from?

Well, we could have the idea to look up idea in the dictionary, but where did the idea to look up “idea” in the dictionary come from?

Not to mention who had the idea to write a dictionary with the idea of defining the idea of ideas in the first place.

And is it a good idea anyway?

Do I have ideas?    Or do ideas have me?

Do I think or do I merely think I think?

Who am I?

Am I the I who asks who the who is?

Or am I really the who, the object that the subject “I” is asking about?

Indeed in the question, “who am I?” who the who is who?

Am I a member of The Who?

Which came first the egg or the mayonnaise?

How many roads must a man walk down before he knows he’s a man?

Why do fools fall in love?

What does become of the broken hearted?

How deep is the ocean?

Where have all the flowers gone?

How much is that doggie in the window?

Am I nuts?

Should I be locked up?

Would you like a nice nut?

Shall I show you my nuts?

I should leave now.