Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Eric Idle

Episode Date: November 25, 2019

Comedy icon Eric Idle feels moderately aroused about being Conan O’Brien’s friend.Eric and Conan sit down to talk about his autobiography Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, playing ukulele with George Harrison, Monty Python’s genesis at Cambridge, finding a fan in Elvis Presley, the Fab Four’s response to parody group The Rutles, and looking back on fifty years of Python. Plus, Conan makes an effort to help his assistant Sona manage her side hustles.Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone].

Hello, my name's Eric Idle and I feel moderately aroused about being Conan O'Brien's friend. You're moderately aroused. Yes. About as much as I can get at this age. Hey there and welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. My little podcast, really just a scheme, a grift to force people to talk to me and possibly end up being my chum, a word you don't hear much anymore and for good reason. In fact, I've got some chums with me right here.

Sonia, would you say you're my chum? I'm your chum. No one says chum. It's a weird one, right? It's also what you throw in the ocean to attract sharks. Yes, I know. Isn't that interesting? We're your bloody fish guts.

Yes. Do you need an introduction at this point, Matt Gorley? I guess they're always first-time listeners, long-time fans. Matt Gorley, you are my chum as well. Do you ever use chum? You seem like a guy that might use chum. I think maybe ironically, chum, chap, boon companion. Right.

My boon companion. That's a good one. I remember that classic. Yeah. I say pal a lot. Pal's good. Why do some words stick around and others just sort of fade? Imagine if you did this show a hundred years ago, it would have been Conan O'Brien Needs

a Chum. Yeah. Well, also, it would have been called Filthy Irish Immigrant Needs a Chum. How did you get in this studio? Yeah. Dirty Irish dog Needs a Chum, scum that should just be cannon fodder for the Northern troops in the Civil War, caveman, recently arrived from the country with no food. Anyway, we could go down a darker and darker path.

There was a time. When I grew up in a household, my grandmother lived with us for quite a while, and she used to tell us stories about being persecuted when she was young because she was born in like 1890. In Massachusetts? Yeah, in Massachusetts, and in Western Massachusetts, she would remember people playing pranks on you if you were an Irish Catholic and teasing you if you were an Irish Catholic. So she used to try and warn me, I'll be careful when you go to school, like what are you talking

about? But doesn't that show you like... I'm wearing a dashiki, you know? But how good the Irish had it? There's a poster of Malcolm X on the wall of my English class, Malcolm X and the Fonz, and you're like, look out, they're going to taunt you for being Irish Catholic today. But the Irish, the persecution they face is pranks and teasing. That's having it pretty good.

Yeah, the big one was my grandmother used to say, now today on St. Patrick's Day, she'd say they're going to come after you pretty hard today, and I'd be like, what? What are you talking about? And she used to say they're going to wear orange, which is the Protestant color. So she said the other fellows will wear orange to try and get your goat, you know, to tease you. So the others will wear orange to get you, and they'll put chalk in your milk when you're not drinking.

When you're not looking, I'm sorry. When you're not looking, they'll put chalk in your milk, and I'm like, uh-huh, well, off to school now to see my Iranian friends at the most diverse school in the world. And this was at the height of the Iranian hostage situation. And when people were really mad at Iranians, this is like 1979 for taking our people at the embassy hostage. It'd be great if I got to school and the Iranian kids during the height of that were like, look, look at the Catholic.

We're going to put chalk in your milk. What does that do? I think it just tastes terrible. You drink your milk, and keep in mind, milk then tasted terrible anyway, because in 1890 they weren't homogenized or anything, probably. Straight out of the teeth. Yeah. It probably just, you know, everything tasted horrible in the 19th century.

People didn't, things didn't start to taste good. I looked it up until 1965. That was the first time food tasted good. Pumped full of hormones? I don't know. I don't know what they did. They just started adding a ton of really good, cool chemicals that made everything taste good.

A lot of salt and stuff. I think whenever they invented blueberry and Count Chocula is when stuff started to taste good. Yeah. And before that, everything just tasted horrible. Oh. Yeah. Okay.

I guess. I don't know. The first Thanksgiving was called This Blows. The Day of This Blows. Eat your really skinny turkey. Mmm. Look. Here's a root that we...

Did you boil it? No. We just let it sit in the sun for one minute. Try and keep it down. Then drink this corn husk. Anyway, very excited about our guest today. Very excited. Our guest today is a...

And people say comedy legend, I get that all the time, Conan, Conan, comedy legend, right Sana? I've never heard anybody say that about you. I'm trying to get someone to say it. I know. That's so sad. I thought if I planted the seed. Well, anyway, I don't get it, but this guy really, I think probably hears it 10 times

a day. He is a comedy legend. He's one of the members of the iconic comedy group Monty Python, the group that changed it all. His book Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, which details his illustrious career is available now. I am lucky enough to call him a friend. I'm honored.

He's with us today, truly honored. Eric Idle. Eric. I am spectacularly delighted that you took the time to sit down with me on this podcast. The only reason I invented this podcast was so that I could sit with the people I want to speak to most, and that, sir, includes you. I'm just, I'm really, it's a joy. And you wrote a book, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, your memoir, I devoured it because

this is the book I've been waiting for, that and the third testament to the Bible. The one that redacts. It goes into overtime. It goes over and it redacts a lot of the stuff in this second testament. No, I was just. Middle-aged testament. Middle-aged testament. Yeah.

Yeah. The outshelt become only moderately aroused. The book is a joy. Well, you very kindly wrote about it and put it on a blurb, which is more than kind of you. It was very sweet of you. And I was very touched by that. Well, thank you.

I wrote it on one copy in a Barnes and Noble and then ran out. I erased it. You know, what's nice is there's a bit of a challenge when talking to you about comedy, particularly Python, because it was such a culturally defining moment that you've discussed it and discussed it and discussed it. And I wonder, do you get sick of it? And I think to myself, how do I talk to Eric without asking him the same bloody questions he's been asked 650,000 times?

I had a very good friend called George Harrison and we'd bother each other. I'd ask him all the questions about the Beatles and he asked me all the questions about Python. Right. He was an enormous Python fan. I mean, he was ridiculous. Well, he was not just a fan as you, as I already knew this, but you really go into detail in your book. George Harrison went to great lengths to help support you guys financially.

Life of Brian, when you were in trouble, when you weren't sure you were going to get the movie made, George Harrison wasn't just a casual fan. He was someone who was willing to risk his house. George mortgaged his house to pay for the life of Brian, which is quite something. It was like four and a half million dollars in those days. And imagine telling your wife, you know, hey, honey, I've just given all the money from our house to the Pythons to make a movie about religion that makes fun of the crucifixion at one point.

I think it'll be all right. It'll be all right. It should go fine. I mean, that's an insane thing to do, isn't it? Yeah. It's ridiculous. It's fantastic. It's a great story.

He obviously has a cameo in the movie that diehard fans know about. You can see George in the movie with a ridiculous beard on. In Tunisia. In Tunisia. Yeah. And you've told me over the years, when we've had a moment to chat, you've said that you often would play the guitar with George. You talk about it in your book.

You would sit around and strum the guitar, and I can't even imagine playing guitar with a Beatle, especially the best guitarist in the Beatles. Well, he's very encouraging. I mean, he would be very encouraging. So we just play. I mean, he loved playing. I mean, he's a musician. Right.

It's one of the lucky things I have that I could play guitar, so I could sit in with a lot of these chaps and just play, you know. And then at our house, he'd come over and we'd have little sing songs and, you know, and then he'd teach how to do the riffs. So you'd ask him, I just don't know how this part of here comes, the sun goes, and he would say it goes like that. And he would show you, like Norwegian word, he goes, it's all there, you know, and he'd just show you on the keyboard, on the fretboard.

Isn't that insane? That's just mind-boggling to me. In fact, later on in life, he got all these ukuleles, and he'd give everybody who came to dinner a ukulele, and he'd just sit around doing, so he got four strings, it's hard to be wrong, and we'd play ukulele songs. That sounds either wonderful or like some kind of punishment. You will go to the lowest level of hell where everyone has a ukulele. It's a nice, it's quite a nice little instrument.

It's a beautiful instrument. Yeah. It's a beautiful instrument. One of the things I loved about the book and why I really encourage anyone who's, and Python fans, comedy fans, just fans of reading about an amazing life is that you, I thought that because you had gone, had this very posh education, you know, and the Pythons all met each other at the footlights in Cambridge, or not all of you, but some of you, I had always assumed that you came from this upper crust background.

I think there's a bit of an American, when we hear a British accent, we tend to assume that this person had a valet and a butler when they were growing up, and nothing could be further from the truth. I don't know anybody who ever had a butler. Well, you do now, he's waiting for me outside, he's holding my trousers in the parking lot. I did write a play called, Pass the Butler, in the West End, but yeah, I mean, the fact is that, I think only John was sort of, could be called upper middle class, I mean, he was at a public school, Clifton College, and then he went to Cambridge, but I was at a horrible

orphanage in the Midlands, you know, for 12 years, and Palin was at a sort of semi-decent school, Chapman was a grammar school, Jones was not, you know, we weren't upper class or anything at all. Yeah, and you're, I mean, not to say it was Dickensian, but your childhood wasn't easy, we were talking about post-war England, depressed, everyone's on rations, things are rough, you're living in an orphanage, this was, I mean, it, you could possibly go right, it is, 110 years later. Yeah, 110 years later, you get to sit with me in a little room in a seedy section of

Hollywood, but you describe this life, and what's so incredible is that you, where you started from, and then all these things that you experienced, I mean, first of all, going to college for you was very fortuitous, going to university, that was not something, that could not have happened, right? Well, going to Cambridge. Yeah, Cambridge. Any college is like extraordinary, I mean, you couldn't imagine a more different two places than Wolverhampton in the Midlands and Cambridge, which is all 1490s and beautiful

old buildings, you know. And it was a bit of a culture shock for you when you first showed up. It was a fabulous culture shock. I mean, I didn't know that you didn't even have to go to classes, you could do anything you wanted for three years, it was fabulous. But I mainly did comedy. Right. I stumbled into comedy.

And you knew right away, this is, I have an aptitude for this, I like this. You were a funny kid, but you knew once you got working in the, in the footlights and performing that this just feels right. It was extraordinary time, because they were very, very gifted, Cleese was there, and he was really funny, Chapman was there, Tim Brick Taylor, Bill Hardy, there were all these people who were all being very funny. And so that's how you learn, you watch people be funny. And so the footlights was great, because you could learn how to be funny and try it out,

which is of course the only way you can really be funny. And then, you know, you'd perform, you would go and do cabaret, we got paid for doing cabaret. We go get a car on a weekend, four of us would go and get 20 quid, I think, to share. Wow. But it was great, because I learned how, you learn how to do it and what to avoid. And that was very, very useful, because I had another two years doing it, before we even, you know, gone into the real world. And then the real world, we're talking about what year do you graduate?

65. You graduate in 65, and you and I talked about this once, the whole world changed overnight. It did worldwide, culturally, but particularly in England, you saw the whole culture change. It sort of went from this stodgy black and white to vibrant color, mod hair, almost overnight. It was almost overnight. It was the Beatles coming through. The Beatles went on a huge tour of England, and they changed everywhere they went. I mean, everywhere.

It was riots and, well, not riots, but there was great excitement, and people bought things and clothes and the records, and it was a very exciting time. And what was interesting to me was that at Cambridge, graduates would ask you questions like, who's your favorite Beatle? These people doing architecture and maths, and they're all Beatle fans, totally. The whole country was Beatle fans, and it did change the way people could be and feel about themselves and what they could do. Were you apprehensive about taking a career in comedy, when this is a question I faced,

because I went to a very nice college here in the United States, and I had people critically say to me, wait a minute, you just graduated from this very nice college with this very sophisticated degree, what are you doing? Why are you doing comedy? Shouldn't you be out curing cancer? And I would convince them that I would not be very good in the lab, and if I found the cure to cancer, I'd lose it, so I found it, but I forgot it somewhere here. Somewhere in the car.

Well, he was doing very well on a career, but then he's gone back into comedy. So what did you, it's an undertaking to say, you know what, we're essentially, I'm going to try and, it's almost like entering Vaudeville, it's like you're leaving Cambridge, you didn't know. So we were leaving Cambridge, and all we knew is we were going on the Footlights tour, just going around, and we'd end up at the Edinburgh Festival, and you know, you'd be getting a professional engagement, we're on television and things like that. So I had no idea what I was going to do, I went into Repertory for a little while, which

was terrible, acting, hated that, and then I fell into writing for radio, what you call podcasts these days, and it was a show called I'm Sorry I Read That Again, and it had John Cleese and Graham Chapman, various other people from the Footlights, and I began a career as a writer for radio, and I got three guineas a minute for that. Really? Yeah, BBC, three guineas. It's like you have a cab running, you know what I'm just saying, you have a meter going. This is early days, so but then I moved and Frost got all of us and Paul is on into television.

One thing I can relate to is I got started through writing, I would always be thinking constantly what's funny, what would be a good sketch, what would be a funny sketch, and then my introduction to performing was I would do it for people. Right, the very first time I performed, I performed a piece written by John Cleese, which they gave to me, and I looked up at the end and there was John Cleese, I'd never met him before, but we met immediately after he watched me give my first performance in the world. Did he like your performance?

No. He said he liked it, you could tell, you could tell he didn't really mean it. When you walked in today and I saw you and we struggled briefly, it was an altercation, but then we became friendly again. You handed me this great book, you said this is fresh from London, it's a magazine, it's Radio Times Official Guide to Money Python at 50. Hard to believe that Money Python turned 50, and then I realized, of course, it started in 1969, yes, the math works out.

It does work out. I have always maintained, I got started in professional comedy in 1985, and I said the Brits are way ahead of us, Money Python cracked the atom, they figured out that sketches should be as long as they are funny, and then they don't need an ending. They figured that out, and here in America we're still catching up, and I honestly believe that you guys were 40, 30 years ahead of your time, I just think it was absolutely incredible. I don't know how you knew to do that, how you knew that a sketch didn't have to have an ending.

Well I think because we'd been professional writers for about six years at that point, we'd been writing for television, and doing other TV shows, and other comedian shows, and so we'd seen a lot, and we'd seen a lot of junk, and we didn't much care for light entertainment, where people say, you know, we're now for something completely different, here's a little song, you know, we hated all that, so in a sense it was self-taught. We figured out, once we were given a show of our own, and we had total charge of it, we then had to decide what we'd do, and that was not obvious or evident, but then it became clear that you could pile on sketches together and form a theme and go into something else,

so we got a lot of fun playing with that, I think. One of the things the Pythons did so beautifully was you guys played everything with an intense straightness. There's no awareness that something funny is happening, nothing funny is happening here, and you know, Graham Chapman angry that someone might think something, as the general, angry that someone might think that something funny is happening here, and wants to get things back in shape, enough of that, I mean you talk about this in your book, Ministry of Silly Walks works because nobody thinks what they're doing is funny.

Right, and if they're smiling, or winking, or laughing at it, it's not funny, it stops being funny immediately, so you have to take it seriously. I think Mike Nichols did that very well, and when we did Spam a lot, he would always say to the cast, you've got to take this seriously. If you don't take this seriously, why should the audience? Which I thought was a really good director's note, and I said, but Mike, they're doing the nights who say knee, and he said, nevertheless. It's true, you have to believe in it.

If you are a knight who says knee, oh I say knee to you, if you don't believe in it, there's no threat, and there's no comedy, it just has to be played that way. One of the other things that was always startling to me, you guys, you made this show, and you were completely unaware of the effect you were having, it took a long time. It was a slow reaction, it was on very late, on a Sunday night, about 10.30, 11.00 at night, so there wasn't a big audience, the BBC were trying out a time slot because they wanted to see if people were still awake, and they were, and it took a long time, actually, to break it, before people, you know, you had that reaction in public, or people said,

oh I like your show, you know, it took a long while, we didn't mind, because we were quite, we weren't sure what we were doing anyway. I mean, I remember the first show being distinctly confused about the audience going, who were hardly laughing at all, they were old people brought in to see a circus. Right. They really thought it was a circus, so BBC had told them it was a circus. So it was very bizarre, but then I think we found our stride, and we made each other laugh, and I think that was the point about it, is that we always made each, that was the key,

if we made other people laugh, then it was in our show, that was the only test. You would pair off as writers, who did you mostly work with? I mostly worked with Eric Eidl, because I liked him, I thought he was very clever. You're the only one. That was my pair. Yeah. Fun and very entertaining. I hear he's a prick.

I'll be honest with you. I hear he's a prick. Well, you know, I stuck with him. You have a good chance, I say, you know. You know what I admire that about you, your loyalty to Eric Eidl is really impressive. It's one of the things you learned at boarding school, that on how to get out. It is, you got very disciplined, you were tough on each other, you know, like you would write something maybe with someone else, and you'd…

Honest, not necessarily tough, but yeah, I thought it can be tough, honest, you say, well, that was very funny up till that point, and then it stopped being funny, and you have to say that, and they go, and then, you know, you may have an idea to add to it, or somebody else may, but I thought, I think that Python editorial board was very good. I would imagine there'd be hurt feelings, disagreements. That's just part of the process. But I think that happens when you don't know or trust people, and you don't know who they are, but when you're working with somebody, like I've worked already with these people

since Cambridge, and certainly on TV with Mike and Terry for three or four years, so we were already used to working together and giving criticism, and that's the most valuable thing you can get in comedy, saying, don't do that, it's not funny. You want that beforehand, don't you? I usually hear that several years later. I wouldn't have done any of that. That whole section of your career was a mistake. Thanks, Dad.

You guys, obviously, it was a surprise to you, and I know this has been discussed a lot, but just describe for me, if you would, the shock of you come to the United States, and you realize that people have memorized the sketches from Python, and you weren't at all sure that they gave a shit at all, and they've memorized them. Yes. I mean, the first place you went was Canada, where they were insane about it. They learned everything, and they learned it all, so that was interesting. But then in America, everybody found it on PBS.

PBS, we would never have existed without PBS. We still wouldn't. It would still not be on primetime television. I remember going to an elementary school, there was a kid who sat next to me who had memorized, I think, a 40-minute straight of Holy Grail, and it was annoying, because there was a lot of American kids in my generation that would do what to you sound like an intolerable British accent, but it was all the sketches and the routines and everything over and over and over again, and you'd say, it's not, I love it.

I love it when I see it on television. I don't want to hear it out of your face, because you're from, you know, Needham, Massachusetts, and I don't want to hear it. I want to smash you in the face. But I understand it, because I did that with Beyond the Fringe, when I saw it, with Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore, I bought the album, and I learned it all off my heart, and I would do it in my bedroom. I'd do it, and that made me want to be a comedian.

Just learning and doing somebody else's monologue, and you can see how it works, and you can see what else they might say, and you know, it's good to learn like that. But when you come down, okay, you're in Canada, but you can excuse that. You can say, well, this is a commonwealth. Then you come down to the United States, and you're in Los... Well, we came here first, actually. Oh, you came here first. We went right across Canada, and then we went to San Francisco, because in America, we only

released the records. So they thought we were recording artists. So the Buddha records would bring us down to do publicity. So we ended up on The Tonight Show, doing 20 minutes in about 10 minutes. Wow. Because there was so much silence. Yeah. I mean, the whole audience went, because we...

The curtain, though, he said, it was like, obviously, you know, Bremner. Bremner? Bremner. Oh, David Bremner. So David Bremner was guest hosting. There are people from England, they tell me they're funny, I've never seen them. Bang, we're on. Yeah.

And we got 20 minutes, and there's a little stage, and there's two of us there going, oh, I've been buried in the catch. Is he dead now? Now he starts all a well, cat. I caught it up a little last night. Best to kill it now, I think, yeah, kill it now. We looked up, then, Tar Tonight audiences like that. Just mouths open, nothing.

Mouth open agog. Yeah. What the hell is this? Yeah. And that was really great. And we finished it, and we did about four of our sketches, and we ran out into Burbank, and we rolled around on the grass, and we laughed our asses off. It was really funny.

Right. And we don't make people laugh. It's really funny, there's a joke on you. Yes, yes. Totally. Well, you know what happens is, when they're not laughing, at first there's panic, but then there's almost a freedom. I don't know how to describe it, but there's like a, oh my God, I'm, it doesn't matter.

This is so, what's this, such a terrible situation that I'm going to enjoy this. I'm going to enjoy it. And then you're doing it for everyone else on stage and for yourselves. I mean, we had been going through Canada, and they've been giving standing ovations, going crazy in nuts and silents was a bit of a thing we weren't expecting. Right. But it was good for us. But once you're on PBS, once the movies are coming out, and it's, you're getting the reactions

that rock stars get. Well, yeah, because we were on stage, you know, we were in the theater. You were in a theater, or you're playing the Hollywood Bowl, and it's a happening. Everyone wants to be there. Everyone's excited. They're repeating, they're, they're yelling out the lines to the sketches. That must have been a moment of, how did this happen? How did we get here?

It was, it was, well, it happened first in Canada again, and it was very strange because it was the only place, the only show you could get a prompt from the audience. Right. You forgot your line. Yeah. Right. And they. Parrot.

Oh, right. Parrot. Thank you. And we're back. Wasn't that fun? Did you like your break? Yeah. And it was a great break for me.

I had a lovely time. Yeah. You really did. You did a lot of. Yeah, I went out and met a woman. I slept with her. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was fun. You're going to have to tell your wife. Oh, don't tell her. Okay. This is, this is your business, not mine. I'm going to flash back to a second when you're, when you're a kid and things must have seemed a little gloomy and it's the 1950s and you're in England and Elvis Presley shows up on the radio and it's a bolt of lightning.

It certainly changed John Lennon's life, Paul McCartney's life. It created this seismic wave that invigorated a lot of young people in England and you were one of them, big Elvis fan. We cut to a number of years later, you find out, and it's true, Elvis Presley, a massive Python fan, huge Python fan and not just a Python fan, he was an idol fan. He would call everybody's squire from my nudge, nudge sketch. Yeah. Hello, Squire.

What? And I met, um, it was his, um, what's his name, his, his, his lady, uh, Linda Thomas, Linda Thompson. Thompson, that's right. Linda Thompson told me that Elvis was such a Python fan that, uh, when they were in, in, in Nashville, yes, I'm in the right place. Memphis, sorry. When they're in Memphis, after the television went off at night late, Elvis would make her

do Python sketches with him and not just any Python sketches, he'd make it a, hello, I need a new brain. Now, if you can think of her and Elvis sitting up in bed doing that sketch, you're that giggling about the absurdities of life. I mean, that's, that to me was incredible. I made it tell me three times before I believed it and I only believed it because she knew some of the words. I need a curry's brain, no one in America knows what a curry's brain is.

So she must have known the sketch. We know, first of all, it's been documented that, uh, you know, his people in his entourage have talked about what a Python fan he was. And it's also been documented and it's well, I'm a huge Elvis fan. And we all know that Elvis had, uh, one of those minds that could memorize, he could memorize an entire movie script. He knew all the, you know, he didn't need prompts for his lyrics. He just, he could memorize huge chunks of text and, and so he knew his Python the way

other people would know their Torah, you know, he just, he just knew it. And I think was delighted. I mean, he had an excellent sense of humor and, but the idea that this voice that came through the radio to you in an orphanage somewhere in the fifties would then you would get inside his brain with something you would come up says something to me that's very beautiful about the way our world works. It was mind-boggling for me. I mean, I couldn't believe it, to be honest, because he did save up, saved our lives at

school. You know, Elvis was the, you know, he was our man, our kid. Yeah. He was older than us, but he, that's what we aspired to be. You think of Elvis Presley, such a sex symbol being in bed with a woman and you, your mind would go to all these crazy places. It wouldn't go to him saying, Hey, baby, let's do the, let's do the, let's do the minister silhouettes.

You go first and then I'll do it. Okay. Now you're the proprietor and I'm coming in and look, you got a parrot this man did. None of that. And then she gets a line wrong. No, no. Come on, baby. Get it together.

I think we should get an Elvis impersonator to do Python sketches. With the Linda lookalike, yeah, I think we should. Yeah. He's wearing, he's wearing satin pajamas. She's wearing like one of those beds to start it too. They come in, whether it's in there or they get into the bed and then they start the next. And then it's very much, and it's very down to business.

Okay. Baby. Well, which one are we doing tonight? Is your wife a goer? Oh, yeah. We're going to do a notch. Okay. Hold on a second.

I got it. Maybe they're, you know, because in the 70s, there were people would sometimes get out the old camcorder and there'd be some sexy filming going on. There might be, maybe he set up cameras, but instead of it being Elvis having sexual adventures, it's Python sketches with Linda, his girlfriend. Well, that would be good to know, wouldn't it? I mean, I... Well, you also, you'd get a piece of the royalties.

Really? Yeah. Those are your words. Well, Elvis will say, I'm not sure, it's a diva, you know, it's not getting money out of the Beatles. Although we did do that. We did do that. That's me first.

You did. You did get many. Yeah. Well, one of them anyway. Oh, let me ask you something. You brought it up. The ruttles. To my mind at the time, I remember it being the first real satiric take on the Beatles.

What did the Beatles think? Did you ever hear? Did John have a take on it? They liked it. John and Yoko apparently liked it and wanted to go down to SNL one night when we were on doing it, promote it. They really liked it. She really liked it.

I mean, I was amazed by that. Yoko is portrayed as Hitler's daughter. Right. Loved it. Yeah. She thought it was hilarious because she was getting so much abuse anyway. Yeah. You know, George, of course, was involved and was in it.

Ringo said he liked it after 1968. Still. Well, I don't know what he meant by that. I don't know what that means. Puzzle me. Yeah. He was very, very, he was very circumspect. He wasn't very happy.

We bumped into him in a park. My wife and I, and he was with Linda, and Linda adored it because she nailed him. Right. She kind of like. Oh, she was like, oh, you got my husband. She was going on and on about how funny it is and how funny Dirk is and then he goes, oh. And anyway, he was very happy because it's all right, Linda.

He's from Liverpool. Right. He found out I was from Wallissey in Liverpool, so I was all right. Real one of us. Okay, so once he found out that you were from the neighborhood, that it was okay. It was always okay. I mean, it was not a thing that was commonly done. The rock and roll weren't being mocked a lot.

You know, we did it, we had a show called Rockman Weekend Television and we would do a lot of rock and roll. So I worked with Neil Innis on it and we'd have like the all dead singer come on and he would be dead, you know, and we did a lot of heavy metal and, you know, we do a lot of rock and roll. So it was a natural to slip into the Beatle parody and then Neil wrote so effortlessly Beatle songs that were so evidently Beatle songs that it was a matter of how do you, how do you film them?

How do you, what's the story? What are you going to produce them as? Yeah. Yeah. You, you hosted Serenade Live. I did four times. Four times in the 70s. Yeah.

And so they're with that original cast. With the original cast, it was the second show of the second series. Yeah. I was on first. And Chevy just got injured. He was in bed. He's still recovering. He still is.

But he'd fall and he'd done a fall and hurt himself and he was in bed, so he wasn't on that show. So I went and sat with him for a while because I liked him. I thought he was funny. Yeah. Yeah. But I, that show was good fun to do though. I mean, that changed America, that show.

Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, it was, and they were very lovely that cast. They were very nice. I mean, Lorne sold Serenade Live, he pitched it to NBC as a cross between Monty Python and 60 Minutes. Right. That was his pitch.

Right. Which is odd because I wouldn't have thought they'd know about Python at NBC in those days. But that was his, that was his dream to make that sort of show. That's what he wanted to do. They may not have known. They may have been doing so much coke in that meeting. Music obviously very important to you and you are the author of the number one song

played at British funerals, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. That song took on a life of its own obviously and it really is, you were the one to tell me this a while ago. It's number one. It's the number one requested song in Britain at funerals. That's incredible. You take it where you can get it. You know, it's not much money.

The roaches are shit. And also, they're dead. They're dead. It's hard to get money out of them at that point. It's not for the dead. It's for the other people. Royalty. Royalty.

I love you showing up at that occasion like, where's my money? Yeah. I'm going to go and sing it at their funeral. I'm not going to come to your fucking funeral and sing my song for you. You know. Well, you should ask how much money's involved first. Well, you see now you said I shouldn't have danced there. No, no.

You have me ask. I'll have you ask. Yes. You have seen, Eric, you're above these matters. This is where I come in. I contact them and I say, well, what are we talking about here? And if it's, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars and it's 10 minutes from your house and you've got the guitar anyway and I get 10 percent.

What's the big deal? I think that's fair. Those are the right figures. And then, of course, the music and your musical ability and your passion for music. I mean, spam a lot must have been just a complete joy for you. Just a massive success, a success on such a scale that I'm bitter. You got time. It's not over yet.

Really? Yeah. It's just next week. I've got an old sword and a bit of a crown. Great. Well, then. Well, I think so. Now you're talking.

Very good, Arthur. But what a joy that must have been for you to be standing there with Mike Nichols looking at this production being made, working on the music, working on the comedy. That must have been fantastic. Well, it was, yeah, it was probably the most fun I had working on anything. The Ruttles was pretty good, but working on this with Mike Nichols was just one. He was an old friend of mine. I've known him for 15 years at that point when we started to work on it.

But it was wonderful because working on a show is just the best thing you can do because you can keep improving it. So I was the writer, so I'd have to be the one who went home and stayed up all night and I've got a new draft for you. And it wasn't obvious how to make it work. It's good. It's easy to open, get it on, you know, running around with horses. But to bring it home wasn't easy and it took a while because it became something different.

It has to become something different as it's a music or there's a love story involved, you know, there's a, you've got to have an ending. I mean, the ending of the Holy Grail is, shit, the policeman comes and arrests everybody. My daughter says, my daughter says to me, is that it? I love it. I said, yeah, that's the worst ending I've ever seen of any film. I loved it. I'm sorry.

I liked it too. It was my idea. Yeah. Which is why I went to always look on the bright side for the next film. Yeah. You know, let's have a song. Let's have a song. Let's do it right.

Yeah. Well, you had a blast with Spamalot. Now you've hit 50 years, 50th anniversary of Python beginning. And I did want to get your take as we wind it down on fame because you have very interesting take. Yeah. I was very fortunate because I had this friend, George, who was so helpful to me. He was like a guru, really.

You give me advice all the time. And we didn't agree on anything, on everything like religion. We had total disagreement. But, you know, he would say, you know, we were the most famous people in the world. We still got to die. That's what these things always was. George Harrison would say that. You got to die.

What the hell? It doesn't matter if you're the most famous people on the planet. You're going to die. So you have to face that. What's going to happen? What do you believe? So that, I found, was very interesting philosophically to deal with him on that level. And I was at his deathbed, so it was kind of weird.

But he died very well. I mean, he didn't want to be reborn, was I give anything to be reborn, you know? Right. I'm not going to come back. Was there anything, really? Well, I don't know. I'm not going to follow you on that. Unicorn.

Oh, unicorn. I'd be fine prancing around on a rainbow. I would take that in a second, but I don't want to come back as an electrical outlet, you know, or something. And I'm an object. Well, you do it very well. Well, thank you. But I think the point about fame now is, at my age, I find the only use is it helps

you to get into doctors. Oh. They're very helpful. And they give you the extra medicine. They go to the extra yard with the, you know, the opioids. They'll give you a bit more. Then you should have. Give you a little more than they should have.

Yeah, they're very nice about that, doctors. Yeah. That's very nice. Especially in America, where, you know, having a costume. You and your... I mean, you can get sick for nothing in England. You and your cradle-to-grave life insurance, life health care. It's over now.

This is over now. You know. Cradle to Brexit is what it was. Cradle to Brexit. Yeah. You'll have to go to Northern Ireland now to get a physical. Southern. Oh, that's right.

I forget how it works. I don't really read the news. I read it upside down. It's worth going to Northern Ireland, though, if you can get it to Europe. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Yeah.

You have the better Guinness, too. It's really good up there in the north. Yeah, you said, you know, you mentioned George, and you talk about George a lot. George had a quote about the Beatles that you think also applies to Python. You said that George once said to you, had we known we were going to be the Beatles, we would have tried harder. That's great. It's such a great line, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. But first of all, I think... You don't know you're going to be the Beatles. You don't know you're going to be Python. Python was just another show we were doing at the time. Yeah. You know, it was like the eighth show we'd done in two years, right?

Yeah. He would come out with these one linings. It was fantastic. I was on holiday with him once, and somebody went up to him and said, hey, George Addison, what are you doing here? He said, well, everybody's got to be somewhere. Look, kill a lion. Ah, sounds like you must miss him terribly.

Ah, yeah. He was fantastic. Fabulous. Just a fabulous fellow. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I like to always end on a real down note. Yeah, no, it's good.

It's good. It's good. It's good. It's good. It's called down note with Conan O'Brien. Well, sorry about your friend. Must be painful. And that's all the time we have.

You know what, I could talk to you for about six hours. I know that would not be your favorite experience, but it would be mine. Just getting to know you, you are a delightful human being, and I am thrilled about the book. You're an idiot if you don't go out right now and get Eric Eitel always look on the bright side of life. It's just a terrific memoir. It really is. It's fantastic.

Well, thank you. I was really appreciative of what you wrote. It was very nice of you to do that. Well, it was, I mean, just as you say, meeting some of these people that inspired you or hearing that Elvis was a fan, getting to sit across the table from you with some microphones and talk to you after all you've done for comedy and for everything is just a real treat. And I know the English don't like this kind of sentiment, so I'll end on a go.

Yeah, all right, thank you. I have a concern. It's a legitimate concern. Sona, you know that I'm happy for you to do extracurricular things. You're doing a lot of extracurricular things now, and I'm worried that it's going to get in the way of your work. True or false, you just signed up to do, you're hosting an Armenian telethon. Yes.

Yes, they're my side hustles. Yes. But that I'm not getting into. How many side hustles do you have right now? So, my main job is being your assistant, then I have this podcast, then I also do the voice for Princess Sugar Salt on a cartoon network cartoon. Is that a show that, yeah, you keep leaving for this voiceover work. And she'll leave, I mean, there'll be stuff going on and I need her and she's like, can't,

gotta go and do the voice of Princess Sugar Salt. Yeah, you know what, I did leave once in the middle of the day and it was really a busy day. That was bad. I remember and I came upstairs and I needed help with some stuff and it was just an empty chair there and you're like, yes, she's off doing side hustle number 15. Yeah, and that's when you were evacuated from your house too, because of the fires. Yeah.

It was the worst possible time to leave work. Yeah, and you were doing the voice of Princess Sugar Salt, so who can fault you? And how many things do you have? And you have other side projects I know about, some of which you probably can't talk about. You have, I legitimately think you have 15 things you're doing outside the show. This is your fault. Why? Because you put me on the show and stuff.

Oh, and that's why? Yeah. Did you say no to anything? No, no. I say yes to absolutely everything. Right. I do. Okay, so you're, the telethon you're gonna host it, are you gonna do jokes and stuff?

I don't think so. Oh. I don't know what I'm gonna do. Well, you're the host, so you have to do, you gonna prepare? Aren't they gonna give me like cards? I don't just go out there and read what's on the, you have to be part of it. It's gotta come from your personality. Oh, I don't know.

I don't think I'm using that. You have like a grand host here that you can pick the brain of to get a little insight on. Yeah. I could help. I'm good. Oh, God. I'm good.

You think you got it? No, I don't think I got it. I think I'm gonna, I don't think I'm gonna do a great job. What? I don't think I'm gonna do, you know, a good job of being a host of the Armenian Telethon. If I were you, I'd be scheming to crush it. That's the difference between us. I would be losing my mind thinking, how can I just destroy being the, you know, host

of the Armenian Telethon? Well, that's the difference between you and me. I wing it and it's usually not very good. You prepare and that's why you are, you know, a very well-known person. Oh my God, that's the best you could give me. The hillside strangler is a very well-known person. And a pretty damn good host. Yeah.

What the hell was that? You struggled to say anything nice about me, a very well-known person. It's true you are. And keep in mind, all of this is while, is happening while you're committed to at work rewatching the first season of New Girl. Yes. You've, who rewatches the first season of New Girl, New Girl's fine, but you don't rewatch the first season.

What do you do? It's not like you miss something at first. And it's at work. I know. I'm so sorry. That's not cool. Plus, you've got to do like two Sudoku's a day. Three.

Okay. Three. I do easy, medium, and hard. Easy is basically not even one. I was joking when I said two and then you corrected me and said three and you're serious. I am serious. Yes. Do you also do the New York Times CrossFit puzzle?

I do. Okay. And you're rewatching the first season of New Girl. Yes. And you're hosting the Armenian Telethon. Yes. And you've got, you're the voice of Princess Sugar Salt and you also have like seriously six other things you're doing, some of which I can't mention that are in development.

My side hustles. You always say, you treat me like number two. Like you always say something. You're always like, yeah. I don't know. You're always walking around because you're like, can someone help me with something? And like I'm usually just not paying attention to it. Well, what I do that's the only way to get attention from you is I ask other people to

do the things that you're supposed to be helping me with and you see them go help me with it. And it's someone who's not qualified usually to do it. Right. Someone who's like 22 and I'm asking them to go get my anti-psychotic medication. You need to up your dose. I don't really have anti-psychotic medication. Up that dose. What do I?

Anyway. Strength in that. And then you go, hey, what are they doing that for? I was going to get to that once I finished season six of Hogan's Heroes. Look it up, kids. It's a worthy reference. You're a cottage industry. I don't know.

I just need money for a house. Why don't you do a Kickstarter? That is so not. Do a Kickstarter. That's not why Kickstarter should exist. Yeah, but so many people, so many celebrities are like, I want to make an independent film. This is my Kickstarter. I thought Kickstarter was for people that had like a brain tumor and didn't have any money.

And then there's tons of people out there like, you know, I want to launch my own beauty line. Well, you're thinking of go fund me. Go fund me is more for the sick people. Kickstarter is like, I have this project that I love like help me pay for it. What if your project is not dying? I'm doing a Kickstarter from this new project called I don't want to die. I don't want to die.

I'm sorry if you're feeling neglected, but you know, you're fine. Do you think I really am neglected somewhat sometimes? What do you think this is all me having phantom symptoms of being the middle child of six? Can I weigh it? Yeah, go ahead. Yes. You think so really? Yeah, I think it's gotta be, right?

Yeah. Middle, middle child, six kids, one born every year. My parents sometimes gave two of us the same name just because they weren't paying attention. There's two Luke's in my family. How do you do that? And one of them is a girl. They had no idea it was going on. I met two of my siblings in the bathroom four years ago when I went home for the holidays.

So you are a lost boy. Yeah, I am a lost boy. I got lost in the middle. I had uncles that didn't know my name. One uncle called me ham fat. I'm not kidding. One uncle was like, hey, ham fat. And I hated that.

That's great. He was like, hey, ham fat. Get over here. Ham fat. Hey, look at ham fat. Ham fat. Ham fat. He called me ham fat.

My uncle called me ham fat. Did he call other people that? No. He called me ham fat. I don't think he knew my name. I honestly don't think he knew my name. But he had to have looked at you and the image of ham fat had to have come to his mind. And I wasn't a fat kid.

I was a thin kid. But I think my head looked like a salted ham. Like a cartoon leg of a ham. I don't know. Yeah. But yeah. That's the kind of world I grew up in. And my mom had nicknames for me.

Pigeon pie. Pigeon pie. You've heard that one. Yeah. What? Wait, baloney boy. Baloney boy. Why are these all meat related?

I don't know. But my mom, still, sometimes I'll call her up and she'll go like, oh, pigeon pie. And then she'll say, oh, my baloney boy. Because I liked baloney in 19, you know, during the Ted Offensive, 1968. I was eating some baloney. She was like, oh, hello, baloney boy. And so you heard me the other day. I think I was on the speakerphone or something and you heard her go like, oh, my baloney

boy. And you lost it. Here's the point. Ham fat. So during this home, no one knew my name. So I was called Baloney Boy and Ham Fat and Pigeon Pie, all versions of meat, crude meats. And that's because we were just this meat obsessed Irish tribe. This is all 100% true.

I know. Oh, I don't doubt it. And it brings truth. And then you wonder why I feel neglected at work. When you're watching season two of whatever, Gilmore Girls, which you've watched nine times. I've never seen Gilmore Girls. You've never seen Gilmore Girls? No.

I can't believe that. Everyone watches Gilmore Girls. I know. And people say that I sometimes talk like Lauren Graham. Yeah. But I never got into it. I see you more as a Laura Lai. Oh, wow.

I never missed an episode. I'm glad we got this out there. Shout out to my mom, moms, love you, moms. I never called her mom. I know. Why did you do that? But now I call her ma. Hey, ma.

I call my mom ma. Yeah. And now because it sounds so antiquated. I know. That's the best way to. Wellford. Yeah. Oh, Wellford.

Yep. I call her ma. And shout out to my ma. She doesn't listen to the podcast. I don't think my father does either because they don't know how to get it. And I keep explaining to them. And they were like, well, we turned on the TV and it didn't come on. So you'll never hear this.

No. Anyway. Good work, mutton dick. Yeah. You know, if my uncle had had 10 more minutes to think about me, he probably would have called me mutton dick. Conan O'Brien needs a friend with Sonamov Sessian and Conan O'Brien as himself. Produced by me, Matt Gorely, executive produced by Adam Sacks and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and

Colin Anderson and Chris Bannon at Earwolf. Team song by the White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. The show is engineered by Will Bekton. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts and you might find your review featured on a future episode.

Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco hotline at 323-451-2821 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.