Eric Idle New Zealand Tour 2024

An evening of gluten-free comedy.

His new show, coincidentally called Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Live! is a nostalgic one man musical reflecting his love of Comedy, Music, Life and what he calls Mock and Roll, a weird hybrid of comedy and music, with tributes to George Harrison and Robin Williams and a salute to The Rutles, the Beatle parody movie he created which was the world’s first ever mocumentary about the legendary pre-fab four whose legend will last a lunchtime.

Eric Idle, star of stage, screen and crossword puzzle, has often been compared to Noel Coward. But never favorably. He has been in Showbusiness since 1961. “Unfortunately, I can’t find the exit” he says. “My role in life seems to be cheering people up,” he adds glumly. 

His song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, coincidentally the title of his best-selling Sortabiography, has been the Number One most requested ditty at British funerals for over twenty years. He performed it live before two billion people at the London 2012 Olympic Games closing ceremony and coincidentally it also appears in The Tony Award winning Best Musical of the Year 2005 Broadway hit Monty Python’s Spamalot, which he wrote with John Du Prez, and which returned to Broadway last November with rave reviews and packed houses and is about to tour North America again. His latest book The Spamalot Diaries an intimate look at the making of that show is published by Crown in October.

In 2007 Spamalot opened in Melbourne the same year Eric and John premiered Not The Messiah, He’s a Very Naughty Boy a comic oratorio based on The Life of Brian at the Sydney Opera House, with a full orchestra and chorus, which then toured Australia and New Zealand. 

Eric is a rare survivor of Pancreatic Cancer, and proudly supports PanCAN, and Standup2Cancer and this will be his first full tour of the antipodes since surviving. On his last visit to Australia in November 2022 he performed a sold out show at the State Theatre in Sydney with Shaun Micallef and closed the Just for Laughs Festival that year coincidentally singing his theme song with all the comedians at the Sydney Opera House.

He has lived in LA since 1994 with his wife Tania and daughter Lily, where they experienced the earthquake, and decided to stay. He has a son Carey who very smartly lives in the Sunshine Coast, from a previous wifetime to Lyn Ashley, an Australian actress. He has written several novels and plays and he was in several movies but he forgets which. 

Oh and he was in Monty Python.

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