Review: Eric Idle's silly, wonderful tour
By L.D. Meagher
CNN
(CNN) -- Eric Idle freely admits, "No day of my life passes without someone saying the words 'Monty Python' to me. It's not bad."
Indeed, being the living embodiment of a popular culture icon has certain advantages. One of them is getting someone to put up the money to send you on an 80-day, 15,000-mile road trip. The ostensible purpose of the voyage was to stage a musical comedy revue in 49 different cities.
The tour was called the "Greedy Bastard" tour, and Idle kept an online diary throughout. The journal has now been adapted into a book. "The Greedy Bastard Diary: A Comic Tour of America" recounts the adventures of the "sixth-nicest" member of Monty Python's Flying Circus during his long-running road trip, and it's a thoroughly enjoyable journey.
Not that it's all about the show. A few entries into the book, the reader gets a hunch the show was merely an excuse. Traveling with Idle becomes an end unto itself.
Reflections on sunsets -- and George Harrison
The first part of the diary deals largely with the perils and pitfalls of staging the show. Idle has a small supporting on-stage cast, plus a small crew, all packed into a pair of tour buses.
As the book progresses, though, it becomes less about the performances and more about Idle's impressions of the landscapes through which he passes. He waxes poetic about mountains and rivers and sunsets, not to mention football (soccer).
He also reflects on the people who have passed through his life, including some poignant, often hilarious, remembrances of his longtime friend George Harrison.
There are even marginal notations -- passing observations, bits of dialogue from the show and occasional musings (okay, rants). Example: "You know you've been on the road too long when you find yourself gazing into the window of Victoria's Secret for over an hour."
Energized and engaging
The road does not kill Eric Idle. It has the opposite effect. He comes alive -- on the stage and on the page -- despite the discomforts of staying in a succession of four-star hotels.
His wit never flags. He alternates between crotchety middle-aged Brit and exuberant boarding-school boy on holiday without missing a beat. He allows his mind to wander over the road he is traveling -- and the road that has brought him there.
"The Greedy Bastard Diary" is coming out, not coincidentally, as "Monty Python's Spamalot" is preparing for its Broadway run. A postscript details how Idle and his composing partner John Du Prez came to adapt "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" as a musical.
It may be an afterthought, but the story also a grace note in the delightful comic opera that Eric Idle composed as he traveled America's highways.
