And other things we learn from a new Radio 4 interview

Eric Idle has revealed that he runs jokes past his daughter to ensure he doesn’t offend modern audiences.

The former Monty Python star says he checks material with 35-year-old Lily to discover what the younger generation might find beyond the pale.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life, which airs tomorrow, he explained: ‘Sometimes I’ll ask my daughter or my goddaughter.  I’ll say, "Can I say these things?" And they’ll say, "Yeah, that’s OK’" or not. 

‘But I don’t worry about [being cancelled]. I’m not saying terribly controversial things; I’m trying to make them laugh’.

He admitted he couldn’t sing some of his older songs such as  I Like Chinese,  ‘so I write new ones, that’s quite a nice challenge’.

Elsewhere in the interview he said: ‘I think comedians lack a sense of censorship, and they say things they shouldn't at the right time’ – a lesson he learned at school, making his classmates laugh even if he would ‘get beaten’ for it

During the interview with John Wilson, Idle also revealed:

• He laughed when he heard he had pancreatic cancer – because he’d previously asked doctors what would be the ‘quickest way’ to kill off a character he’d written. He said: ‘Before I had pancreatic cancer, I went to my doctor and said, "I’ve got to get rid of a character very quickly – what’s the quickest way?" and he said, "Pancreatic cancer – you may only have three weeks or three months." And then, 12 years later, we’re looking at a screen and I said, "What’s that?" And [the doctor] said "pancreatic cancer". And I laughed, because I thought it was very funny.’
• He’s proud that Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life is one of the most popular choices of music at English funerals. ‘I find that very moving. It really pleases me that people choose it at a very solemn and sad moment in their lives.’
• That he had a tough start to life when is father, Ernest, who had been a rear gunner during the Second World War, but was killed in a car accident on Christmas Eve 1945 while hitchhiking home. Eric was only two-and-a-half. He said he was later sent to an RAF-run school in Wolverhampton, full of fatherless boys due to the war, where he would ‘climb over the wall and get beer and chase girls’.
• That when he was at Cambridge he auditioned for his college revue in front of future Goodies Bill Oddie and the late Tim Brooke-Taylor — and the first sketch he ever performed was written by John Cleese. And when he auditioned for the Cambridge Footlights, the novelist Kingsley Amis was in the audience.
• That Michael Palin and Terry Jones were initially resistant to working with Terry Gilliam. The pair were working with Idle on the children’s show Do Not Adjust Your Set when the American joined for the second series. ‘Mike and Terry said, "No, absolutely not, go away", Idle recalled: ‘And I said, "No, no, no, there's something about this bloke, because he was an artist, a cartoonist." The three of them later formed Monty Python with Cleese and Graham Chapman.
• His famous ‘nudge nudge, wink, wink’ sketch performed on Monty Python’s Flying Circus was originally written for The Two Ronnies, but ‘they sent it back because there's no jokes in it’. Elvis Presley was a fan of the sketch and took to calling everyone ‘squire’ in its honour. 

Idle, 82, is about to embark on his first solo UK tour since 1973, playing eight venues in what he has said ‘may be the last time you see me’.  Eric Idle tour dates

• This Cultural Life is on BBC Radio 4 at 11am on Thursday and is repeated on Saturday at 7.15pm

Published: 27 Aug 2025