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TOGETHER AGAIN AT LAST…FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME

Shortly after the Python farewell, John Cleese asked me if I would interview him for Writers Bloc Presents at the Alex Theatre, Glendale, about his new autobiography, So, Anyway… Of course I would, though I read his book with some trepidation. We are all pretty good at giving out stick. One of the tabloids has insisted for many years we all hate each other, despite all evidence to the contrary, so when it came to his final chapter about the O2 Farewell, I was a little concerned. What might John say about me? I needn’t have worried. He gushed. I blushed to read what he had written. It was the kindest and most personal review I have ever read, from someone who means the most.

John’s book event at Glendale was sold out. Fourteen-hundred eager fans were waiting, and the black-market price was over a couple of hundred dollars each. I know, because I sold ’em.

John and I met up at the stage door of the Alex, our tall daughters immediately bonding backstage.

“What on earth are we going to do?” I asked him.

“Oh, just go on, we’ll be funny.”

We walked straight on, bowed, and then walked straight off again. It was Footlights time. We sat in two red, comfy chairs, and began to chat. Two hours flew by. Memories, anecdotes, jokes; John even threw some sketches at me to cold-read with him. The audience loved it. I loved it. Our daughters loved it. I had known this man since 1963 and here we were back onstage, simply chatting.

In February 2013, on the anniversary of our meeting, I had written a blog about our fifty years together. I think it was the first time he read what I really felt about him. I’m not sure he knew before. He called the next day and talked animatedly on the phone for an hour. Now we could be both touching and funny about each other onstage. And more important, we could be on the road together for months, because our two-hour Glendale chat went out on the Internet and picked up such a tremendous response that John asked me if I’d be interested in touring Florida with him. Sure, why not? I’d never been to Florida. This was pre Merde-a-Largo time, and the alligators hadn’t yet come in to drain the swamps. With the prospect of some fine fall weather, and some pleasant places to visit, we could find an audience who were even older than we were. We called the show John Cleese and Eric Idle, Together Again at Last…for the Very First Time, and we based it on our first encounter in Glendale, adding some less familiar sketches from the 1948 Show, inserting plenty of funny clips, and telling our joint story. We claimed to have met at Trump University and gone on from there…

In the second act, we separated. John did some of his solo tour material and then I came on and sang some tasteless songs. Oddly, this was the first time I had ever sung a solo set with just me and a guitar (wot no band?) and so it was in line with my own belief that you must always be trying something new. We finished the show together doing Q&A, ad-libbing happily with the audience, before we ended with “Bright Side.”

I loved being back onstage doing sketches with John. We could both make each other laugh and I’m afraid we did. We giggled a lot through Florida. Towards the end of our tour we engaged a large rock-and-roll bus, and it was great fun riding around reading, writing, kipping, and occasionally sipping champagne. We went north into the Carolinas and Georgia, ending up in Baltimore on Halloween night. Tania visited several times. Lily came to Orlando for a Harry Potter binge. Our crew were kind and very helpful and Simon Garner, an incredibly considerate Canadian gentleman, was the perfect tour manager. My favorite time was somewhere in Carolina, when we had a large and very funny lady “signing” for the partially hearing. I had begun to sing—“Isn’t it awfully nice to have a penis?”—when I suddenly glanced at her and recognized the hand gestures she was making: unmistakable “dick” signs. I giggled. The audience, following my look, began to laugh too. Since the entire song is just a series of dick synonyms, I turned to face her, and continued singing directly to her. I tried desperately not to crack up as she found more and more elaborate hand gestures for that particular part of the male anatomy. She won. I collapsed in hysterics. She got an enormous round of applause from the audience. She was so funny I wanted to take her with us.

The whole tour went so well, and CAA paid so well, that John called a month later and asked me if I’d like to join him touring Australia and New Zealand. Hell yeah. So off we flew to summer in Sydney, everyone’s favorite winter destination. After some promo, where John and I slipped easily into banter mode, I flew up to visit my son in the rain forest. He does have a house, but it sounds nicer like that. In fact, it couldn’t be nicer. Carey practices Tibetan medicine on the Sunshine Coast and gave me a lot of meals and acupuncture. I once told him he’d let me down becoming a healer, as I had been hoping for a crack dealer. One of the funniest things he did was when the Dalai Lama visited the Chinrezig Institute, the nearby Buddhist center, Carey made a huge shrubbery with a plaque, which to this day says: SHRUBBERY SPONSORED BY ERIC IDLE & FAMILY FOR H. H. THE DALAI LAMA VISIT.

“We want…a shrubbery!”

Carey drove me to Surfers Paradise for our opening show, and then we went on to Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne. In Canberra we stayed for two nights in the wonderful Jamala Wildlife Lodge, where John and I had tea with a tiger, and bravely petted a cheetah.

The Ascent of Mount Cleese. Without oxygen.

Then on to Perth, Adelaide, and Wellington, where for our final show I played a gag on John. On a previous tour, he had dubbed Palmerston North the “suicide capital of New Zealand.” The locals were offended but, in 2006, encouraged by Fred Dagg—the pseudonymous character of John Clarke, a famous local comedian—they rather wittily named their rubbish dump after John, putting up an official sign at the Palmerston North refuse tip which says MT. CLEESE. On the drive to Wellington, I diverted and made a short film of me climbing it, with which I surprised him on the final night. I’m happy to say I’m the first Python to conquer Mount Cleese, and even Michael Palin hasn’t been there.

After New Zealand, Tania and I flew home via Tahiti, where thanks to the vagaries of the international date line I celebrated three birthdays. (I don’t have to add them all on, do I?)

Soon, John was back on the phone. This time he proposed a big U.S. tour, all the way from Vancouver, down the West Coast, through LA, San Diego, two nights in Vegas, on down through Arizona to El Paso, across the whole of Texas, ending up in New Orleans. Naturally we had a bus, and a spiffy one at that, but we actually slept in Four Seasons Hotels. It was rough, I’m telling you.

Before we left on this tour I recorded a TV show for the BBC with my pal Professor Brian Cox. He had been gently educating me in the mysteries of science since we met on What About Dick? and of course I turned my learnings into a musical. With songs by John Du Prez and choreography by the incomparable Arlene Phillips, we were back at the Beeb making another Rutland Weekend Television Special only forty-one years later. The Entire Universe in One Hour as a Musical is exactly that. It was broadcast on Boxing Day on BBC2 and again a year later when we sold it to PBS. It’s a simple gag. Professor Brian comes in late from Patagonia, where he has been studying electromagnetism for a month, and hence out of cell phone range, to join Robin Ince in the studio at Elstree. He thinks he is coming in to give a simple lecture on the physics of the Universe, but no, in the meantime Arlene and I have changed it into a musical. A serious scientist trapped in a musical is a gag I like, and my proudest moment was getting Brian to climb into full drag to illustrate the infinite possibilities of the multiverse, a universe of infinitely extending universes. (Weren’t we small enough?)

Say no more!

I can’t think of many double professors of science who would uncomplainingly climb into a red frock to illustrate a scientific principle. Perhaps it’s our Oldham connection. Superbly complemented by Warwick Davis, the cast starred Hannah Waddingham, our first Lady of the Lake from Spamalot in the West End, and the brilliantly funny Noel Fielding (from the whimsically hilarious show The Mighty Boosh).

I don’t think I can describe it, except as a nutty show, with science, song and dance, Albert Einstein, the Bee Gees singing about gravity, and a real astronaut (spacewalker Tim Peake, who had just returned from six months on the International Space Station). We ended up singing “The Galaxy Song,” with Professor Hawking himself singing at the end. The show was great fun to do, before a live audience, but no sooner completed than I dashed off to join John Cleese on our big tour of the USA.

I liked the shape of the show we already had going, the double autobiography, but I wondered why we couldn’t just pick up and continue our story after the intermission, with the various Python breakups and all the coming-back-togethers such as Brian, The Meaning of Life, Aspen and O2. Even though it meant quite a bit of work, John thought this was a good idea, and we tried out this new Act Two for a few nights in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, where it immediately worked a lot better. I also wrote a new song to open the show, “Fuck Selfies!” which at least warned people where we stood:

Fuck “Selfies”

And all those stupid gits

Who want Selfies

They just get on my tits

Fuck grinning like a lunatic

With people you don’t know

It takes them half an hour

To get their fucking phones to go

And then another fourteen other people

Fucking show!

So, tell those selfish selfie pricks

Next time they bloody ask

To take their fucking selfie sticks

And shove ’em up their ass.

It’s our kindness and sweetness people like…

Now that the whole show had a shape, it was more satisfactory. It had narrative. A beginning, a middle, and an end. It was our entwined life stories, plus a tale of Monty Python from start to finish. Mike Nichols would have been proud.

We had a blast on the road. We played a very strange hockey arena in Canada, which was, predictably, freezing. The show was going incredibly well, the dates flew by, and soon I was home in LA with two days off for the presidential election. It was supposed to be the triumph of the first woman president of the United States, but unfortunately Putin had other ideas. With the unexpected and unwelcome election of Donald J. Trump, our show became therapy. At Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza the night after, the audience was still grieving. Laughter was tremendously important to them now. They laughed three times harder than before, and sang along to “Bright Side” with fervor. It was never more needed. I sang it with John on Conan, where I made a genuine ad-lib, live on the show, when I sang:

When you’re feeling in the dumps

Forget about the Trumps

Just purse your lips and whistle, that’s the thing

Sometimes jokes are just staring at you in the face, and that was one occasion. For the rest of the tour we sang that and the audience would cheer. The resistance was beginning. Across America our show was sad, glum, people coming out to be cheered up and set free by laughter. And really, laughter is the only sane response to pathological lying.

For two packed nights at the MGM Grand, we played Vegas, baby, staying in suites that were bigger than most private houses. In Arizona, Alice Cooper came backstage to say hello…He even invited us to Thanksgiving, which was most kind, but we had to move on. Texas was waiting, and after hooking up with old friends in Houston and playing all the “blue” cities, we flew to New Orleans for our final show. John and I had a final farewell lunch amongst the Christmas decorations, while outside a parade of leprechauns dressed as green Elvises with pointy ears and black pompadours drove past on scooters. We had done three tours in very quick succession and were still friends. In the Southeast of the States we had played twenty shows to 38,000 people. In our second tour, to Australia and New Zealand, we had played nine shows in seven cities to 36,000 people, and in our final U.S. tour, we had played thirty-four shows in twenty-three cities to 62,000 people. Our combined age was a hundred and fifty.