Author: Eric Idle

The song that gives this memoir its title was written for the last scene of Life of Brian, and it has followed Eric Idle ever since, onto football terraces, into a closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, and finally into his own account of himself. Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography appeared in 2018, a year short of Monty Python's fiftieth anniversary. Idle was born in South Shields in 1943, lost his father to a road accident in 1945, and was boarded at the Royal Wolverhampton School before reading English at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he ran the Footlights. The book covers the television series, the films, and the friendships with George Harrison, David Bowie and Robin Williams that grew out of them; Harrison put up the money for Life of Brian after EMI withdrew, which Idle has called the most expensive cinema ticket ever bought. Spamalot, his stage version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, won the Tony Award for best musical in 2005.