10 Sep 2025
This evening I watched an eighty-two year old man perform a two and half hour, one man show, in Birmingham. At the end we all sang ‘Always look on the bright side of life’. I sat in Symphony Hall thinking just how much this man has influenced my entire life – and still does. I grew up listening, watching and learning virtually everything he and his fellow Pythons wrote – and whenever I’m writing or performing Horrible Histories, it’s inevitable that I will be drawing on his comedy, which I have absorbed into my brain and body. It’s not too farfetched to suppose I could have been born into any historical period, so it’s just amazing to think what a stroke of good fortune it was for someone like me to live on the planet at the same time as Eric Idle.