"Hello, I'd like to have a Birthday?""I'm sorry, this is abuse YOU HEAP OF PARROT DROPPINGS!"

Eric Idle was born on March 29, 1943, in South Shields, County Durham, England. Eric's father had been in the RAF and survived the Second World War, only to be killed in a car crash shortly afterwards, leaving his mother had difficulty coping with a full-time job and raising a child. So at the age of seven she enrolled him into the Royal Wolverhampton School, a former Victorian Orphanage, as a boarder. The environment was discribed by Eric as:
Quote:

It was a physically abusive, bullying, harsh environment for a kid to grow up in. I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority.

Boredom drove him to work hard and he eventually won a place at Cambridge, where he met other members of the groundbreaking British comedy team Monty Python's Flying Circus. His skills as a singer-songwriter were also put to use in his work with Monty Python, he wrote the majority of the songs featured in their television series' and films. These include "Eric the Half-a-Bee","The Philosophers' Song" and probably his most recognised hit "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", which was written for the closing scene of the film Life of Brian, sung from the crosses during the mass crucifixion, as something of an antidote to Death. When a clip of this song was used as part of a jingle by Simon Mayo on the Radio 1 breakfast show in 1991, it was re-released to much acclaim, and reached the UK Top 10. It later became a staple football chant.

Idle was co-creator of The Rutles, a pop band that parodied The Beatles (and indeed was helped into existence by George Harrison), and played songs largely written by Neil Innes. The Rutles first appeared on Idle's oft-forgotten BBC TV series Rutland Weekend Television, which also spawned a book, The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book, written by Idle in the same vein as the Monty Python books. He wrote and sang clever and intricate songs on such lesser-known broadcast projects as the radio series Radio Five transmitted on BBC Radio One. American audiences best know the Rutles from a popular 1979 TV movie, All You Need Is Cash (aka The Rutles), which united (for the most part) the Monty Python company with Saturday Night Live.

Eric currently lives in Southern California, and would probably enjoy a nice Mai Tai right around now.

Other Historical Highlights of today are:

• Today's the Ancient Mesopotamian feast of Ishtar (the goddess, not the movie)
• 1638 - Swedish colonists establish first settlement in Delaware, called New Sweden. Unable to find the Pi-Yi Grotto the settlement failt id 1655.
• 1790 - John Tyler, 10th President of the United States, is Born (d. 1862) His second wife, Julia (nee Gardiner), grew up a few blocks from my childhood home on Staten Island.
• 1799 - New York passes a law aimed at gradually abolishing slavery in the state
• 1867 - Cy Young, Baseball Hall of Fame Pitcher, is Born (d. 1955)
• 1867 - Queen Victoria gives Royal Assent to the British North America Act which establishes the Dominion of Canada on July 1.
• 1879 - Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Kambula: British forces defeat 20,000 Zulus. Zulu shields become sought after bar decor.
• 1912 - Robert Falcon Scott, explorer, Died (b. 1868) He & his party of Antartic explorers reached the South Pole a month after Amundsen's team became the first to safely reach the bottom of the world, they froze & starved to death on the trip home just 11 miles from one of their supply depots.
• 1918 - Pearl Bailey, singer, actress (d. 1990) Also Sam Walton, founder of WalMart, is Born (d. 1992)
• 1950 - Bud Cort, actor, is Born.
• 1969 - In Madrid, Spain, four different performers tie for first place at the fourteenth Eurovision Song Contest. The medals are shared by Spain's Salomé singing "Vivo cantando" (I live singing), United Kingdom's Lulu singing "Boom Bang-a-bang", Netherlands' Lenny Kuhr singing "De troubadour" (The troubadour), and France's Frida Boccara singing "Un jour, un enfant" (One day, a child...)
• 1982 - The Canada Act 1982 (U.K.) receives the Royal Assent by Queen Elizabeth II, setting the stage for the Queen of Canada to proclaim the Constitution Act, 1982
• 1992 - Paul Henreid, actor (most famous for playing Victor Laszlo, the husband of the Ingrid Bergman character in Cassablanca and In Now, Voyager, he played the married man that Bette Davis loved, and with Davis created one of the screen's most imitated scenes when he lit two cigarettes and handed one to her), Died (b. 1908)
  
• 1999 - Joe Williams, jazz singer (b. 1918)
• 2001 - Helge Ingstad, explorer (discoverer of Eric the Red's Viking Settlements in Vinland (Nova Scotia), 500 Years before Columbus), Died (b. 1899)
• 2006 - Predicted total solar eclipse.

Rev. Dr. Frederick J. Freelance, Ph.D., D.F.S

[ Edited by: freddiefreelance on 2005-03-29 11:23 ]

1992 - Paul Henreid, actor (most famous for playing Victor Laszlo, the husband of the Ingrid Bergman character in Cassablanca and In Now, Voyager, he played the married man that Bette Davis loved, and with Davis created one of the screen's most imitated scenes when he lit two cigarettes and handed one to her), Died (b. 1908)

He was also the really, really evil husband to Ingrid Bergman's character in "Gaslight" which has the most awesome display of mental unravelling in the history of cinema (but that's just my opinion!)

He was great at showing smooth characters with an undercurrent of character flaw below the surface. In his best roles there was a crumbling corner to the fascade, a rotton spot behind his character's mask.

On 2005-03-29 13:14, freddiefreelance wrote:
He was great at showing smooth characters with an undercurrent of character flaw below the surface. In his best roles there was a crumbling corner to the fascade, a rotton spot behind his character's mask.

This is true! But in Casablanca, where he stood up in Rick's and led the crowd in singing the French national anthem, drowning out the Nazi's, no matter how many times I see it, I always get a little choked up. It's kind of sappy of me...

I think Gaslight is one of Ingrid Bergman's best movies, she really loses it!

Anyway - I like Eric Idle a lot too!

[ Edited by: mrs. pineapple on 2005-03-29 16:18 ]