Eric Idle on the “remarkable” influence of George Harrison
Eric Idle met George Harrison for the first time at the 1975 screening of Monty Python & The Holy Grail. The former Beatle would go on to finance the comedy troupe’s 1979 film Life of Brian and form a close friendship with Idle, with the pair bonding over a shared love of music and comedy. “I had heard that George wanted to meet me, but I was somewhat shy of meeting him,” Eric writes in his 2018 memoir Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography. “I was shy and tried to avoid him, but he snuck up on me in the back of the theatre as the credits began to roll. I hadn’t yet learned he was unstoppable.”
That same year, Idle sat down for an interview for The Off Camera Show, in which he explained that writing the memoir had not only helped him come to terms with the death of his friend Robin Williams but also to humanise the various icons he befriended as a young man. “I met so many great people, and I thought, ‘I should write about them now’. You don’t – when you’re going with Bowie – say, ‘Oh, I was out with Bowie’ and give an interview, you know? But now people are interested, and they don’t realise that he was really funny and he loved to laugh, and nothing made him happier than making him laugh. So it humanises people rather than putting them on pedestals.”
Idle went on to explain how he’d been taught a valuable life lesson by “arguably the most famous person in the world”: George Harrison. Remembering how Harrison taught him to savour the simple things in life, Idle said: “He knew that because he’d been the most famous person in the world. He said, ‘Well, you know we’re still going to die.’ He said, ‘Fame doesn’t give you anything – you’re still going to die.’ So he’d been preparing, from about the time I met him, to die, and I was with him at the end. So he was quite calm about dying.”
“That was remarkable,” Idle continued. “His whole influence was remarkable. I was fortunate. He was kind of a guru to me. I mean, he was a pal: We got drunk. We did all sorts of wicked, naughty things and had a ball, but he was always saying, ‘Well, don’t forget you’re gonna die’. I think these sort of good people encourage you to remember that you’re just here now. You could maybe get hit by the bus on the way out, so just make sure that you’re living to the fullest at every single moment as best you can. And I think that’s very useful help, especially if you’re in the confusion of showbusiness, where people think you’re something you’re not and admire you for things you’re probably not responsible for… He was a remarkable influence on me.”
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