![]() ![]() ![]() Readers looking for firsthand insights into the inner workings of that landmark show will be disappointed. The show - a mix of absurdity, whimsy and high-brow humor- had evolved from British comedy before it, but it was a revelation when it crossed to the United States. “We didn’t know what we were doing and insisted on doing it,” Idle writes. ![]() Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam toyed with names like “Toad Elevating Moment” and “Whither Canada?” before settling on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” In 1969, the BBC rounded up some other bright young performers for a sketch show so undefined it didn’t even have a name. ![]() He made it into Cambridge University and - more significantly - into its performing Footlights club, which was a springboard to British stage and TV shows. The boy was eventually packed off by his overwhelmed mother to an orphanage, or “Ophny” as residents called it. His father survived World War II in the Royal Air Force only to die in a traffic accident as he was coming home for Christmas in 1945. Idle is one of those funny people who had a miserable childhood. There are a few laughs in this book, billed as a “sortabiography,” but it mostly reads like a casual memoir of someone who still can’t quite believe his good fortune. ![]()
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May 2023
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