Eric Idle Net Worth and Biography

Eric Idle is an English actor, comedian, musician, and writer, with an estimated net worth of $70 Million. He is known for his elaborate wordplay and musical numbers. Idle was a member of the British surreal comedy group Monty Python and the parody rock band The Rutles. He is also the writer of the music and lyrics for the Broadway musical Spamalot.

Bio Data

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Biography

Eric Idle was born on 29 March 1943, in South Shields England. His mother, Norah Barron Sanderson, was a health visitor and his father, Ernest Idle, served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, before his death in 1945. Idle was brought up by his grandmother in Swinton, Lancashire.

He spent part of his childhood in Wallasey on the Wirral peninsula and attended St George’s Primary School. His mother had difficulty coping with a full-time job and bringing up a child, so when Idle was seven, she enrolled him in the Royal Wolverhampton School as a boarder.

Idle completed his education at  Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he studied English. At Pembroke, he joined the prestigious Cambridge University Footlights Club, an amateur theatrical club that propelled him into Comedy.

Career

Idle began his career as the president of Footlights President in 1965. He starred in the children’s television comedy series Do Not Adjust Your Set co-starring his future Python castmates Terry Jones and Michael Palin. He also Idle also appeared as a guest in some episodes of the television series At Last the 1948 Show.

Idle was also a member of the British surreal comedy group Monty Python and the parody rock band The Rutles and is the writer of the music and lyrics for the Broadway musical Spamalot. He is known for his elaborate wordplay and musical numbers, Idle performed many of the songs featured in Python projects, including “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” (from Life of Brian), and the “Galaxy Song” (from The Meaning of Life).

After Monty Python’s Flying Circus, he created the sketch show Rutland Weekend Television (1975-76), hosted Saturday Night Live in the US four times in the first five seasons, and guest-starred on The Simpsons. Idle’s initially successful solo career faltered in the 1990s with the failures of his 1993 film Splitting Heirs (which he wrote, produced, and starred in) and 1998’s An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (in which he starred).

He revived his career by returning to the source of his worldwide fame, adapting Monty Python material for other media. Following the success of the musical Spamalot (which won the Tony Award for Best Musical), he also wrote Not the Messiah, an oratorio derived from the Life of Brian. He was featured in a one-hour symphony of British music when he performed to a global audience at the London 2012 Olympic Games closing ceremony.

Honors and Accolades

Eric Idle as a member of the Python is responsible for developing television series into something larger in scope and influence, including touring stage shows, films, albums, books, and musicals. The Pythons’ influence on comedy has been compared to the Beatles’ influence on music. Regarded as an enduring icon of 1970s pop culture, their sketch show has been referred to as being “an important moment in the evolution of television comedy”

An asteroid, 9620 Ericidle, is named in his honor. The default Integrated development environment (IDE) of the programming language Python, is called IDLE. Although officially IDLE stands for “Integrated Development Environment”, the name has been chosen in allusion to Eric Idle, as the name of the programming language Python itself has been chosen in allusion to Monty Python

Eric Idle’s Net Worth

Eric Idle is one of the richest comedians in the United Kingdom, with an estimated net worth of $70 Million. His hit Broadway musical “Spamalot,” which won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2005 grossed $175 million for its initial run of 1,500 performances.

Eric also starred in numerous movies such as “Splitting Heirs” and “An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn.” Following his success in Python, he landed his own BBC Radio One show called “Radio Five.” In 1975, he created the sketch comedy television show “Rutland Weekend Television.