Every member of the Monty Python team brought something unique to the table. In addition to writing and appearing in sketches (which they all did), Idle contributed a lot of the Pythons’ most iconic songs, including “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” which was, at one point, considered by the UK government as a new national anthem.
Across four seasons of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a movie that pieced together some of the Pythons’ most beloved sketches, and three movies made up of wholly original material, Idle played a bunch of memorable characters. So, here are Eric Idle’s 10 best characters from the Python back catalogue.
Harry The Haggler
Early in Life of Brian, Brian and his mother Mandy attend a stoning. Mandy has to wear a fake beard, as do all the other female attendees, because it’s “written” that women can’t watch stonings. Outside the stoning area, Eric Idle plays a stone salesman with a snappy pitch called Harry the Haggler.
Mandy reasons that she can just pick up some stones from the ground – she doesn’t need to buy some from Harry – but Harry claims that the stones he’s selling have better craftsmanship than the stones on the ground.
Philip Jenkinson
In introducing the Pythons’ hilariously ultraviolent imagining of a Salad Days movie directed by The Wild Bunch’s Sam Peckinpah, Eric Idle played a hysterically exaggerated version of BBC film critic Philip Jenkinson.
The Pythons themselves are all pretty dedicated cinephiles, so their lampooning of films, filmmakers, and the film community were always incredibly sharp and perceptive.
Rita Fairbanks
In the “Re-Enactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbor” sketch, Eric Idle leads the Pythons in drag as Rita Fairbanks, the head of the Batley’s Townswomen’s Guild.
Rita and the other women re-enact the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in one of the Pythons’ most absurdist takes on a close-to-the-vest premise.
Door-To-Door Joke Salesman
One of Eric Idle’s best-known “types” was a slick salesman with a smooth pitch. And some of Monty Python’s best comedy was the comedy that deconstructed comedy. Those two went hand-in-hand in the “Door-to-Door Joke Salesman” sketch.
Graham Chapman plays a regular guy who’s driven from the previous sketch to a filming location to shoot this sketch – and he doesn’t know the punchline. It’s wildly meta, and totally brilliant.
Loretta
On the whole, the Pythons’ humor is of its time and should be taken with a pinch of salt in the modern day, but some gags that were written as absurdist at the time have turned out to be surprisingly woke. The childbirth sketch in The Meaning of Life, for example, includes a moment where the delivering doctor tells the mother that it’s too early to enforce gender roles on the baby.
Another example is Eric Idle’s character in Life of Brian, who identifies as a woman named Loretta. The People’s Front of Judea agrees to fight for Loretta’s right to identify as a woman.
Dead Collector
“Bring out your dead!” In one of Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s earliest (and darkest) gags, Eric Idle plays a corpse collector who rolls through a village and asks for each household’s dead people.
John Cleese brings over an old man who’s still alive, and even claims he’s getting better, with the aim of getting him taken away on the corpse cart anyway.
Marriage Counselor
Idle wrote the “Marriage Guidance Counselor” sketch himself. He plays the titular therapist, who flirts with his patients instead of offering up relationship advice.
Michael Palin and Carol Cleveland play his patients, Mr. and Mrs. Pewtey, and he flirts with Mrs. Pewtey in front of her husband until the husband simply vacates the room so they can sleep together.
Arthur Nudge
“Nudge Nudge” is one of the few Monty Python sketches to end with a punchline, as Monty Python’s Flying Circus was specifically designed to avoid that by using the end of each sketch to segue into the next.
Eric Idle plays Arthur Nudge, who sits really close to an unsuspecting patron in the pub and spouts endless sexual double entendres. However, the aforementioned punchline makes it clear that he’s using double entendres because he’s actually a virgin.
Mr. Cheeky
He isn’t identified as “Mr. Cheeky” on-screen – the name was given after the fact – but it is a pretty apt label for this character, who treats everything like a big joke. When he’s being marched to his execution, he jokingly convinces the guard that he’s been freed. It works, but he still comes clean.
At the end, he claims to be Brian, earning himself freedom from crucifixion row. Even as he tells the guards that he’s just joking and he’s not really Brian, they still save his life and leave the real Brian to die.
Sir Robin The Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot
After the introduction of Lancelot as Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Robin is introduced as Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir-Lancelot. And throughout the movie, he certainly lives up to that title.
His funniest moment is when he flees from danger and the squire following him around and singing about his adventures tries to spin obvious cowardice to sound courageous: “Oh, brave Sir Robin, he bravely ran away.”