Barb North’s Buzz Cuts

These are samples from Barb's comedy column in the military newspaper, The Western Sentinel.

A Military Brat Chats with Eric Idle!

By Barbara North

Years ago military brats at Edmonton’s CFB Namao had access to only a few utterly, fabulously, wonderfully entertaining shows.

At that time Namao had three TV channels: the CBC, the French channel (which always looked intriguing with naked people running across the screen late at night), and the local broadcaster (which almost never had naked people).

Unfortunately almost every night felt like Hockey Night in Canada. And the local news just never seemed to grab my childish imagination though I’m sure they tried. But Monty Python’s Flying Circus did.

Our entire family of six would gather on Saturday nights to watch it, amazed and grateful that the CBC presented something so funny. At this time the CBC’s prime offering was Front Page Challenge which they touted as ‘the longest running show in history.’ Of course it was. Because they simply refused to take it off the air.

Monty Python’s theme song would enter our living room, that cartoon foot would squash down, and off we’d go into a bizarre world of unbridled, uproarious comedy. Giggles, popcorn munching, snorty laughter and much happiness ensued.

Now Python’s Eric Idle enters Edmonton anew – this time unbridling his latest comedy show, Eric Idle on the Greedy Bastard Tour, Another Stupid Evening. Idle appears at Edmonton’s Winspear Centre on November 28. For tickets call 428-1414 or visit http://www.winspearcentre.com.

Eric graciously agreed to an interview with the Western Sentinel. It helped that we whined about how ‘Monty Python and the military go hand-in-hand.’

Here’s what Mr. Idle said when he chatted with us from St. Louis while appearing with Greedy Bastards on its tour through Canada and the U.S.

What inspires your comedy?

I don’t really know. I think comedy’s a response to misery really. Sort of a look at the bright side of what’s going wrong. I think it’s about how things are bad and then how to deal with it, really. It’s sort of an optimistic response to pessimistic situations. So I think that inspiration is particularly wonderful… you’re turning it on its head. It’s sort of topsy-turvy though. Especially in the military there’s an awful lot of humour that comes out of boredom and bleakness and other people telling you what to do. So that’s the inspiration: it’s the human spirit breaking out.

What do you think about Python dialogue being incorporated into military life? Things like soldiers whistling your song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” in training marches, or shouting out “Bring out your dead!” followed by “I’m not dead yet” during maneuvers…

Well, I’ve always known that it has a forces appeal because when the Sheffield was hit by the Exocet [missiles] in the Falklands War they waited three hours on the deck to be relieved, and they sang Always Look on the Bright Side…. My father’s generation were the generation that were at war in the Hitler war and we are the generation below that. In a sense their songs were always bittersweet: ‘There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover, the sun will come shining through.’ They were always about an optimistic tomorrow even though ‘we’re parting and the dark days are here now.’ I think my song is a parody of that attitude almost. It takes it to extremes… ‘I’ve had worse, cheer up.’ You know, taking that to the nth degree really.

Have you had any brushes with the military yourself?

My father was in the RAF and was killed at the end of World War II hitchhiking home. I was in the CCF [Combined Cadet Force] from the age of eleven to ‘til the age of about nineteen. I was sergeant major in the school CCF corps, sort of by default, because everybody else left. I mean I could strip a Bren gun blindfolded at the age of fourteen, and I could fire an anti-aircraft gun at sixteen. And I would go on these junior officer maneuvers in Wales, over mountains, leadership corps things. So yah, I had a lot of it. Enough to avoid it.

How would you liken being a comedian to being a soldier? Do you think there are any similarities?

No, but I think filming is like being in the army. Hurry up and wait. You’re always kind of called too early, you know at 6:00 in the morning. And getting into unpleasant clothing. And being told to do something bizarre. So [filming] always feels like going out on military maneuvers. That’s what it is. You take a small army. You take a battalion-sized army. All these people. The logistics are similar. The call times are similar. There is a similarity in that range of human endeavour. Of course nobody’s shooting at you, which is best. Although a lot of the times on Python you’d have explosives go off, as you ran through, shouting German slogans for the ‘Killer Joke in German.’ Explosives to the left and right of you. You’re very close to being in a war zone.

What would you like to tell us about Greedy Bastards? I understand one of your cast, Peter Crabbe, plays a colonel who goes on rants?

We’ve segue-way’ed it into Homeland Security. He yells at people for Homeland Security. In Canada he does RCMP. Then there’s Jennifer Julian and John Du Prez, the musical director. We’ve got about six people on the stage.

What inspired you to do this tour?

I had a new album out last year called the Rutland Isles. It was a semi-documentary about a fictitious place. They wanted me to tour at the time but I couldn’t because I was doing something else.

Eric notes that this tour is similar to Vaudeville, traveling by bus from town to town.

I thought the best way to travel would be by bus. You know, like last night we finished a show in Richmond, Virginia, and we just crawled into the bus and today we wake up and we’re in St. Louis. That’s a more comfortable way of traveling than all this airline stuff. I thought it would be kind of an adventure. I’m actually going across the entire range of the United States from Boston right up through Canada and down through Los Angeles and we’ve done about 5000 miles already. I think we’ll get to about 20,000 by the time we’re home.

Eric encourages people to dress strangely for the Greedy Bastards show.

We had a couple of people dressed as nuns, these two guys. We called them up on to the stage in Act Two and they’d gone. They went in the interval and we thought they’d gone for a beer and they just disappeared…. It was very puzzling.

Anyone who’d like to promote the show is invited to gather four or five friends, dress up, and have some fun handing out Greedy Bastard flyers before the show. There’s a chance to get complementary tickets to the show and perhaps “share a yarn” with Idle.