Mr Bright Side

'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography' by Eric Idle (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2018)

After the intensity of 'The Five', I needed something more frivolous and optimistic.  As it turns out, you can't really get more optimistic than Monty Python's Eric Idle.

'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' is a scamper through the highs and lows (but mostly the highs) of the life of Eric Idle. After a childhood marred by the early loss of his father and an unpleasant spell at boarding school, Idle gained a place at Cambridge University in the 1960s, that now-legendary cradle of intellectuals and alternative comedy.  In this Big Bang of confidence and creative energy, many significant cultural figures mixed, with groups forming, splitting and reforming, until the infamous Pythons gravitated together and stuck.  Over the next 50 years, due to hard work and a positive attitude, Idle's career as a performer and writer thrived.  As well as professional success in film, theatre and television, he became friends with many like-minded people (who also happen to be celebrities), including George Harrison and Robin Williams.  'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' is a life story and a love story, about friendship as well as fame, humanity as well as humour.  There is laughter, there are tears, but, somehow, there is always a bright side.
I was quite surprised by how much I enjoyed this book.  A lot of performers seem to want to brush off their success by putting it down to luck and coincidence, so it was refreshing to have someone admit to the hard work and planning involved.   'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' gives an insight into the workings of profitable creativity, including the careful people-management that is needed when you have six or more confident and highly talented people in a room trying to produce something amazing...

I was also a bit worried that I would get deafened by the constant thud of name dropping, but that wasn't an issue either.  Let's face it, it would've been weird if he hadn't written about his colleagues in Monty Python, plus, if you're famous, you're going to be mixing with other famous people and - shock horror - even become friends with them.  Fortunately, Idle is rarely star-struck and one of this book's strengths is that he talks about even the biggest names as people rather than celebrities.  It's accessible and charming.

Overall, 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' is a stupidly long title but the perfect summary of both this book and its writer.  Alright, this is not warts-and-all and Idle probably is a bit more of a bastard than he admits to, but I'm reviewing the book, not the man.  'Always...' oozes positivity.  It cheered me up, reassured me that successful people aren't always superhuman or psychotic and partly restored my faith in the famous.  If a book can do all that, that's pretty amazing.

'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography' by Eric Idle was published in 2018 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson.  This review is based on the hardback edition.  Some strange man on Twitter keeps saying it's now out in paperback.