Football fan Idle was not about to support Kenwright’s Everton team, however. “Football is my life but I don’t support any team because that’s how to be miserable.”
He is a fan of Liverpool the city, though. It was in Liverpool that he filmed The Rutles, a mockumentary based on The Beatles. “One of the best films I ever did,” he says. “And some of the most fun filming I ever had.”
He did a follow up film, Can’t Buy Me Lunch, and later live Rutlemania concerts. But that’s probably it, he announces. “The concerts were quite successful and went well. But I get bored once things work.”
He also did a live oratorio at the Albert Hall based on Python’s The Life of Brian. “We had 240 constituents, bagpipes, sheep, proper singers, Palin, Gilliam, Jones, Neil Innes, they all came out and did their turns. It’s now on DVD and something rather wonderful.”
He’s also happy with his new-look Spamalot with its new leading man, the stand-up comedian Marcus Brigstocke as Arthur. “He has a lovely bemused quality about him, like ‘What am I doing here?’ He’s a sort of patient man surrounded by incompetents.”
Also appearing will be TV’s I’d Do Anything winner Jodie Prenger and Todd Carty, who made his name in Grange Hill and EastEnders.
It is, of course, a musical which spoofs musicals. “I like musical comedy theatre and in my youth I was taken to see Gilbert and Sullivan. I am just not a fan of people with plates on their faces and helicopters landing on stage. It should not be a special effect thing. It works best when it gets a laugh, then you sing and then you laugh.”
Perhaps Idle’s biggest contribution to the joy of British life is the song, Always Look On the Bright Side of Life, which he wrote for Life of Brian.
Astonishingly, Idle reports that for the last 20 years it has been in the Top Ten of songs played at funerals. It was played at colleague Graham Chapman’s.
He thinks it would be “too controlling” of him to have it played at his own. “I want fireworks, a lot of Champagne and dancing girls, I think.”
SPAMALOT is at the Liverpool Empire, August 9-14.
