I love being an older comic now. It's like being an old soccer or an old baseball player. You're in the Hall of Fame and it's nice, but you're no longer that person in the limelight on the spot doing that thing.
There's no gap between the writer and the performer, which is what I think makes [Monty] Python unique. Five or six people who write Python and five or six who act it. That's what makes it unique.
Writers tend to suffer from back problems because they spend their time bent over a desk.
They're a typical Hollywood audience. All the kids are on drugs and all the adults are on roller skates.
I think the special thing about Python is that it's a writers' commune. The writers are in charge. The writers decide what the material is.
I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority.
What's brown and sounds like a bell? DUNG!
I live in a Spanish-style hillside home in Los Angeles, California. I paid $900,000 in 1995. It's perhaps worth about $3m now. Thankfully, I paid off my mortgage before the crash because I could see it coming. I worried that I would be caught having to pay off a very high mortgage for a house I couldn't sell.
I always have a feeling you should move the playing field and the minute you know what you're doing, you're wrong. Therefore, I wanted us not to try to follow Spamalot immediately, but to do something different. This is perfect because it uses all the same skills, like story telling and lyric writing and music writing, but it's presenting it in a different form. And of course it gives me and John a nice chance to perform and show off which is also fun.
Well we were lucky because we started in Canada where everybody has a sense of humour! We flirted a little while with Josh Groban. He was personally interested in it. He said oh I'd love to do something different, and I said well it's pretty different! But in the end the dates didn't work out.
I used to think I was like the wicket- keeper, which is like the catcher in base- ball, y'know what I mean? You can call the play a lot from behind the plate, y'know what I mean? You're not necessarily the star, you're not the one that makes the mark, but usually in the end, you're called upon to get a run when it's needed.
My father, who was a sergeant in the RAF during the Second World War, was killed in a hitchhiking accident while returning home on compassionate leave. As a result, my mother had to get work, as a nurse, and at seven the RAF put me into a boarding school and ex-orphanage called the Royal Wolverhampton School.
I got locked into a tradition [at Cambridge] of doing comedy.
When, in 1966, I progressed to The Frost Report, I was paid ten guineas a minute. I was guaranteed three minutes a week, so this was good money.
I never pay any attention to figures.
We learnt a lot because we got in with real choreographers who tell you what they need from a song, because a song has to advance the story. Then real directors like Mike Nichols tell you where you can have 'B themes' and 'C themes', and we go oh yes, B themes and C themes! So we were taught in the finest school amongst the finest people. And also by the school of experience.
My wife, Tania, is very big on dogs, so I'm always paying out to animal charities.
If you're famous, you have to [be overly generous], otherwise people say, "Eric Idle came in and only left me $4." I always tip more than people expect.
Monty Python paid me £20,000 to write, direct and assemble them - the cheapskates! I told them I'd never earned less in a year since leaving Cambridge. The first show sold out in 43 seconds and we ended up performing ten in total. We had no idea there would be such demand.
I don't invest in the stock market, but I have pension funds - some in America and the UK.
I'm not careful with my money at all these days. I buy people a lot of dinners!
I used to collect Persian rugs and real estate - you should be able to walk on and live in your money. I had to give up the rugs because I'm allergic to mould.
Many years ago I also bought a house in Provence for about 70,000 francs. It had no electricity or running water, and no road leading to the house, but gradually we made improvements. It's my escape and I love it.
You could write a joke in the pub at lunchtime and watch it performed on television that evening.
When we graduated [ from Cambridge], we were grabbed right into television. I was grabbed straight into the practice of writing comedy. It was all writing and performing. You wrote something in order for you to perform it.
