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.