
Monty Python's Eric Idle says Nigel Farage being ‘taken seriously is appalling'
The 82-year-old comedian told the PA news agency he had now applied for a talent visa in France, where he has a home, in the hope it will help him avoid a similar issue happening again.
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Claiming Brexit rules limited his options, he told PA: 'Eight years ago, we could go and live in any country in Europe we wanted to and work, and I wasn't even allowed to vote (in the EU referendum) because I lived here (in the US).
'I mean, (Brexit) was just a terrible con, it was a real con, and (the fact) that Nigel Farago (Farage) still exists anywhere and is taken seriously is appalling to me.
'I was with somebody… she said, 'I hope I never see him in a room, because I want to punch him'.'
Idle said he was only able to spend three months a year at the home he built in Provence as a result of Brexit, in a recent interview with The Guardian.
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He told PA: 'I've applied for a talent visa in France, they have a little talent visa, and I feel I'm due one, because last year Spamalot won the Moliere, which is the equivalent of their Tony from Paris.
'And they love their Monty Python here (in France), we won that, we won the Jury Prize for The Meaning Of Life at the Cannes Film Festival, so they do know Python.
Eric Idle will head out on a UK tour in September (Eric Idle/Note by Note Media)
'So I'm hopeful that I'll get a little bit of an extension so I don't have to get kicked out, because I was kicked out two years ago, I had to leave, and I couldn't go and see the opening in Paris because I didn't have another day.
'I wrote to Monsieur Macron, and offered him a ticket if he'd let me in, and I said, 'only one ticket, because I don't want to be accused of bribery', but I never heard back.'
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Spamalot is the stage adaptation of the Monty Python film Holy Grail (1975), which has previously seen acclaimed productions on Broadway and London's West End.
Idle now lives in Los Angeles in the US and thinks he could also be made to leave that country if he jokes about US President Donald Trump.
He said: 'I think it's quite likely – I'm only a green card holder – that I will be given the boot.'
The comedian will return to the UK in September for a solo tour, which will see him perform at venues including London's Royal Albert Hall, Birmingham Symphony Hall and Glasgow's Armadillo.
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He is best known for his appearances in the Monty Python's Flying Circus TV series alongside Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam, and its spin-off films Holy Grail, Life Of Brian (1979) and The Meaning Of Life (1983).
Idle also created The Rutles with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's Neil Innes, a parody band of The Beatles, which featured in two mockumentaries in All You Need Is Cash (1978) and The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch (2003).
Mr Farage's Reform UK party have been contacted for comment.
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Daily Mirror
21 minutes ago
- Daily Mirror
BRIAN READE: 'Fat-shaming will be new bag-sizing for airlines - start worrying now'
Beware the bonus-conscious airline staff sniffing around for any chance to slap a penalty on the unwitting traveller, says Brian Reade Now that MPs are taking a break from work until a few weeks before the clocks go back, we are officially in the Silly Season. Which means, between now and the inevitable riots outside asylum hotels next month, us media outlets will seek out quirky stories to make you laugh. Like the one about the teenager who runs Warwickshire County Council for bureaucracy-slashing Reform UK demanding £150k of public money to pay people to tell him what to do. The season's biggest laugh, though, is Donald Trump's trip to Scotland, as his presence here always raises a titter. Remember last time, when paragliders flew expletive-ridden banners and comedian Janey Goodley stood outside his golf club with a placard that declared Trump was a thing that rhymed with runt? Sadly, Janey is no longer with us but there's a good chance protestors will repeat her message in 40ft letters on the nearby beach. Already a sign has been erected outside his Aberdeenshire golf course saying: "twinned with Epstein Island" and bald SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn has said he won't be able to meet the president as 'I'll be washing my hair". But the best humour will come when Trump gives an after-dinner speech in one of his clubs, after being allowed to win, yet again, the Bestest Golfer In The World Invitation Trophy, with three mysterious holes-in-one while everyone was distracted. I reckon it will go something like this: 'I feel incredibly humbled to be back in the land of my dear mother, who as you know, left here in days when economic migrants with no papers and English as their second language were welcome in America. Because they were good people. And white. 'She often told me I was related to the great Charles Stuart, which I kinda like. Bonny Prince Donnie sounds nice. And that also makes my wife Melania Queen of Scots and my son Barron The Bruce. 'Mel Gibson, who's a terrific guy - and by the way that racism stuff was fake news - told me he based his Braveheart character on me leading the January 6 uprising. Which was nice. Although, unlike that Wallace guy, I got shot and survived. 'So you see folks, no world leader has ever been more Scottish than me. The only food I eat is from Clan McDonald and when people see me in a kilt they say I have the best legs ever. 'And I have great, great plans for my homeland. I am renaming The Firth of Forth the Firth of Forty-fifth and Forty-seventh US President and I'm going to finish that terrible job done by Crooked Hadrian and build a proper wall, a beautiful wall to keep all dark-looking immigrants out. 'By the way, the Outer Hebrides remind me of Greenland, so I'm going to buy them and turn them into a big, beautiful, military base to hit Russia. 'I will be meeting fans from Celtic and Rangers to get them to end their hatred as I need to score a few more points to get that Nobel peace prize. Something Sleepy Joe never would have done because he was in the IRA. 'Anyway, I have to leave you as I've got a high level meeting with Prince Andrew in Balmoral to discuss child welfare. So haste ye back as us Scotlanders say. And oh, I'm still putting 50% tariffs on whisky, salmon and shortbread.' It's been sad hearing Fiona Phillips's husband Martin Frizell promote a book about my old colleague's battle with Alzheimer's disease. Fiona was a proper Mirror person. A loyal but critical friend of the Labour Party with deeply-held principles who often wrote poignantly about her parents' struggles with dementia, only to be struck down with early-onset Alzheimer's at the age of 61. The book called Remember When, written by our former boss Alison Phillips, charts Fiona's courageous battle against a soul-crushing disease most families have had to cope with, or probably will do. Because, scandalously, as Martin has been pointing out, for every £1 given to cancer research in this country only 31p is spent on dementia research. Which has to change. In the meantime, Fiona, may you face your battle with much courage and love. *** If you break into a cold sweat every time you go through an airport gate fearing you'll be pulled for having an oversized carry-on bag, then you now have good reason to worry. It turns out Ryanair and easyJet award bonuses of just over a quid to staff to spot bulging bags and dish out penalties. I fear this is just the start, and soon the likes of Ryanair's Michael O'Leary will make us declare our body weight on 'environmental grounds' and charge us by the kilo. Expect bonus-sniffing staff to eye you up, guess you're packing too much timber and force you onto scales, before saying: 'Sorry but Sir's been telling porkies about his porkiness. That will be another £50 please.' Fat-shaming will be the new bag-sizing. And being a fat-fascist is the best route to a bumper pay packet. *** Labour MP Dr Simon Opher is set to prescribe free tickets to football matches in a bid to beat depression. The former GP will trial it in Gloucestershire surgeries as an alternative to anti-depressants, saying: "Football is about socialising and roaring on your team, getting excited, taking yourself out of your own life for a short while.' It's also about, most weekends, at least 33% of fans walking home beaten, gutted, miserable, cursing the donkeys in their team and descending into a depression that dogs them for days. So nice idea, doc, but in practice sending already-depressed people to football matches could be a massive own goal. *** Over the decades screenwriter Jimmy McGovern has crafted many profound lines but this week he surpassed himself by condensing into one sentence the real reason why the Establishment is resisting the introduction of a full-blooded Hillsborough Law, which would compel public bodies to tell the truth in the aftermath of major disasters. 'What's going on there is people demanding the right to lie." That, in a nutshell, is the truth. And Labour must not let it happen. THE WEEK'S FIVE BIG QUESTIONS Isn't it funny how the men who abuse women footballers like Jess Carter on social media were also the ones always picked last on the playground and forced to stand, quaking, in goal? Can't the princes William and Harry do what feuding aristocrats used to do and walk into a forest with a pair of pistols and have a duel? Has any political party in any country ever been given as much air time with only four nationally-elected representatives as Reform UK? Do Andrex, with their advert claiming 76% of students hold their poo in at school, really think kids will all start opening their bowels if the toilet paper is soft? How long will it be before people can only draw their state pension on the same date they receive their 100th birthday telegram from the monarch?


The Guardian
21 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘The first time I'd seen fart jokes that were actually funny': comedians on their cultural awakenings
The Young Ones arrived at exactly the right time. I was 15, and a weird mixture of studious and smart but also disruptive in class. I was also extremely virginal – both fascinated and terrified by the idea of having sex and in no danger of doing so for another half a decade. I was basically Rick. My parents were strict – my dad was the school headteacher – so I can't think why they let me stay up late to me watch it. Maybe they just wanted me out of the way so they could get on with other things. What drew me in right away was how silly it was. A lot of the comedy I'd liked had been clever stuff that was almost snooty, like Monty Python or Derek and Clive. The Young Ones was rude. It was the first time I'd seen slapstick and fart jokes that were actually funny. My generation missed punk, but The Young Ones had a similarsense of anarchy – a 'do it yourself' spirit, with a cavalcade of ideas being thrown at the screen. The alternative comedy scene – as well as the Comic Strip and French and Saunders – felt new and very galvanising. In the same way the Sex Pistols made anyone feel as if they could pick up a guitar, The Young Ones made me feel like I could make a living out of making people laugh: it didn't matter if I was a regular kid at a comprehensive school in Somerset. This was a particularly important revelation, as my careers adviser had told me that I should give up on being a writer and work in a bank. Watching The Young Ones episodes on repeat to learn the lines by heart, I learned about the rhythm and language of comedy. Plus, I discovered that if you could do a good impression of one of the characters, you'd get a laugh at school the next day. I loved Rik Mayall. He was a handsome and sexy figure, but not afraid to make himself look ridiculous. He continued to inspire me throughout my life. Years later, as a comedy writer, I wrote some scenes for him in the sitcom Man Down, but he died before they were filmed. I was on the toilet when I heard the news. I cried, both upset that someone I loved had gone, and sad that I'd no longer be able to work with one of my heroes. The Young Ones was a show that parodied idiotic students, a bunch of men who didn't want to grow up. Neither did I – and, thanks to The Young Ones, I didn't have to. As told to Harriet Gibsone Richard Herring's RHLSTP is at The Stand Comedy Club, 30 July to 10 August. A year ago, I was in the pit of a perimenopause crisis but I didn't fully know it. I didn't know there was an explanation for feeling depressed, suicidal, confused, exhausted and generally ill. Then I read Davina McCall's book Menopausing. The idea behind the book is simple: Davina went on to social media and got people to send their menopause stories. I listened to the audiobook while I was travelling around gigging, and heard lots of different readers voicing their stories, interspersed with Davina's chats with a doctor, who gave useful information about what was going on in these women's bodies and minds. There are people in the book who left their careers because they couldn't cope intellectually or emotionally. It just seemed crazy to me. A woman who has spent 25 years of her life building up her career shouldn't just have to walk away because she's too scared to say: 'I don't know what is going on. I'm losing words. I'm losing the ability to be in the present moment because of brain fog.' Davina's book helped me to understand that I had reached a stage that was actually quite serious. So I went ahead and pushed my case with my doctor. After reading the book, I was able to say: actually I'm not depressed – I'm losing parts of my cognition due to fluctuating hormone levels. Most of the time, the doctor just asks: how's your sex drive? But most of us experiencing perimenopause don't care about sex at that point. I was more worried about staying alive, how I'd perform in my job and how words weren't coming out of my mouth correctly. Being able to tell my doctor what was wrong was really important. I was given testosterone as well as oestrogen, and that was extraordinarily helpful. All of it has made me committed to trying to show up in my performances a bit more. I need to keep practising, keep exercising my brain. There has always been something so special in the art of live performance and being able to stay present – even if it means saying I forgot what I was about to say. Having Davina say that she'd gone through this was a big thing for me. So I'm always pushing her book to friends, to spread more awareness and bring the issue to the light. As told to Miriam Gillinson Desiree Burch: The Golden Wrath is at Monkey Barrel Comedy, 28 July to 10 August. Growing up as an only child and a drama kid, I was probably quite annoying. I was always coming up with ideas and characters, but I wasn't the type of kid to say: 'Come and look at what I've done!' Instead I would do parodies of teachers or characters from the television in the privacy of my bedroom. One Christmas, at primary school, I finally got the chance to stand on a stage and show everyone what I could do. It was the nativity play, and I was playing the part of the innkeeper. I only had one line, which I've since forgotten, but I remember that when I said it, people laughed. I liked that feeling so much that I said it 10 more times. It flicked a trigger in my brain: I wanted to do this all the time. I just didn't quite have the skills to do it yet … Then when my mum took me to see panto at Theatre Royal Stratford East, I was amazed and began to understand, at six years old, what it meant to properly put on a show. Not only was I impressed that there were children on stage – that this was something a young person might be able to do – but there was so much more to it than funny lines. There were theatrics, lighting and comedy characters, such as the famous pantomime dames. Michael Bertenshaw, one of our most famous dames, was very inspiring. I loved his massive hair, the bloomers and the songs – but mostly that he knew exactly how to get an audience on board. After that, I'd go to the panto every single year. Even though I knew what was coming next, the predictability made the chase scenes, the misunderstandings, the 'He's behind you!' jokes even funnier. I loved there was a baddie, and that you could boo and hiss at them. I remember going to see Dick Whittington and thinking: 'I am so incredibly jealous of everyone who is doing this for a job.' Now I do get to do it as a character and sketch comic. To go to panto aged six, and see a show on such a big scale, with props and costumes, I realised that this is what you need to do to be properly engaging. Instead of, say, repeating the same line 10 times at the school nativity play. As told to Harriet Gibsone Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Friends: Kool Story Bro is at Pleasance Courtyard, 15 to 22 August; String v Spitta, with Ed MacArthur, is at Assembly George Square Studios, 15 to 17 August.


New Statesman
an hour ago
- New Statesman
The revenge of the left
Photo byTwo-front wars seldom have happy endings for the combatant in the middle. But Keir Starmer's beleaguered government is now fighting one, following the announcement of the impending arrival of the Corbyn-Sultana party on the left. The emerging, and as yet unnamed new force, secured more than 245,000 sign-ups within twenty-four hours of the announcement by the two former Labour MPs, one of them Starmer's immediate predecessor as Labour leader. As this is being written supporters are registering at 200 a minute, with forty donations a minute too. All polls which have given it as an option register the party making an impact, and one put it level-pegging with Labour. Early days, only polls etc. But it should be clear that Reform UK is now not the only insurgent force that Downing Street chief strategist Morgan McSweeney needs to worry about. Indeed, it is likely that the Corbyn-Sultana party (CSP here on in) will prove more attractive to more Labour voters than the Farageists, very few of whom will ever switch to Starmer according to polling evidence. 'The electorate has twice given its verdict on a Jeremy Corbyn led party' was the only response from a Labour source to the news. OK, let's go there. The Corbyn-led Labour party polled three million more votes in 2017 than Starmer's party managed last year. Indeed, Starmer's Labour even undershot, in vote numbers, the more miserable haul Corbyn Labour secured in 2019. So the electorate may not exactly be where Downing Street imagines it is. One thing is certain – Starmer's five years as Labour leader, and year in government, have opened up enormous space to the party's left. The birth of CSP has been a long time coming. The meandering road to this week's announcement can be traced back to the hundreds of thousands of people who joined Corbyn's Labour, often engaging in politics for the first time, and have since quit. Long marginalised, socialism was back within the Overton Window of the politically-conceivable. The fuse was then lit by Starmer's suspension of Corbyn from Labour in October 2020, and his subsequent exclusion as a Labour candidate. Corbyn himself was long sceptical about the merits of a left-of-Labour electoral challenge, and could point to the wreckage of previous such initiatives – Socialist Labour, Respect, Left Unity and on and on – in his support. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The game-changer was Gaza and the enormous movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people which developed after October 2023. That movement turned much of its anger against Labour, then in opposition, because of Starmer's blundering endorsement of Israeli war crimes in an LBC radio interview, a position it took him nine days to walk back. British Muslim opinion in particular proved to be irreconcilable, and Labour parted company with one of its staunchest voting blocs. Four independents were elected as MPs alongside Corbyn last year, above all on the Palestine issue. That is more than the aggregate of MPs elected to the left of Labour in all general elections since the second world war. The general election outcome also showed that Labour, beneath its puffed-up first-past-the-post Commons majority, is far more vulnerable to challenge than at any other time since its emergence as a governing force in the aftermath of World War One. The Party won over forty per cent of the vote, whether winning or losing, in all eight elections up to and including 1970. It has reached that benchmark just three times in fourteen elections since – twice under Blair (charisma) and once under Corbyn (authenticity). Its electorate is fragmenting in all directions. We can be sure it will not see forty per cent, or likely even thirty, again under Starmer. After a year in office, its polling is underwater, with resistance to the economic and social strategy of Rachel Reeves joining Gaza as a recruiting sergeant for the left. Now the CSP could be Britain's second biggest party in terms of membership by the end of the weekend. Its main asset at this stage is not just the sense that its two leaders say what they mean and mean what they say – it is enthusiasm. Reform may be cornering the market in anger, channelling the hyper-ventilating tabloid/GB News agenda, itself fuelled by decades of complacent establishment support for capitalist globalisation. But anger isn't the only emotion available. Hope and excitement get a look-in too. Where was the political enthusiasm in the generally enervating election campaign last year? Such as I came across was in a church hall in Chingford where Faiza Shaheen launched her independent campaign having been shamefully axed as Labour candidate on McSweeney's orders after the election had been called; on the streets of neighbouring Ilford North as charismatic British-Palestinian woman Leanne Mohamad came within a few hundred votes of ending Wes Streeting's political career, and in a garden in Bristol where Green canvassers massed to send their co-Leader Carla Denyer to Westminster. In Islington North too, of course, where a national mobilisation of the left helped return Corbyn for an eleventh term as their local MP, despite both Peter Mandelson and Paul Mason putting in appearances to try to get Labour over the line. Enthusiasm is not really the Prime Minister's thing, and to be fair he has never pretended otherwise. But he did promise 'Corbynism with competence' – the nod to his predecessor's policy agenda has long been discarded, and the last year has shredded whatever reputation he had for the latter. Nevertheless, the Corbyn years at Labour's helm have shown the limitations of enthusiasm alone. Can the CSP defy history and make a lasting impact? One pre-requisite for doing so must be reaching some form of electoral agreement with the Green Party, themselves presently choosing a new leader, with Zack Polanski's campaign drawing significant 'Corbynista' support. It is clear that in competition the two parties will simply eat each others' votes to a significant extent. United, it is easy to see seats tumbling to a red-green alliance all over the country. The Greens could sweep Bristol, the CSP half of Birmingham. Together, they could defeat Labour almost everywhere in east London. Bye bye, Health Secretary. Moreover, such an alliance would mark the birth of a five-party politics across England, and six-party in Scotland and Wales. Given the prevailing rules, that could see MPs being elected on thirty per cent of their constituency vote in many seats. At that point, predicting the outcome in a particular constituency becomes a lottery. In every seat there could be three or more possible winners. So the non-Labour left could be a significant force in the next House of Commons. But that is very far from certain. Several things could go wrong. One, entirely in the new party's own hands, is that the perennial habit of left-wing Pythonesque factionalism and splits could manifest. It is an open secret that Corbyn was surprised by the decision of the committee then organising the new party to vote for a co-leadership arrangement between him and Sultana, and even more by her subsequent public announcement of it. Nor is it news that Corbyn's own leadership style has its detractors. Unity has been restored – Corbyn and Sultana get on well together and are almost perfectly complementary in every personal characteristic and quality. But there are certainly different perspectives on how the new party should be organised, as well as its political strategy. Its promised founding conference will bear a heavy load. Then there is the possibility that Labour could shoot the CSP fox by actually addressing left-wing concerns. For a moment, after the U-turn on the welfare benefit cuts under backbench pressure, it had seemed that might be possible. The suspension of four MPs from the parliamentary whip punctured that bubble tout suite. The authoritarianism of the Starmer leadership, directed exclusively against the left, looks like remaining its hallmark. Number Ten is determined to foreclose any possibility of a revival of the left within Labour. Previous regimes within the party, of the left or far more often the right, always allowed the other wing of the party to hope for a turn of the wheel in the future. That is not the McSweeney way, and it is certainly one factor powering recruits to the CSP. Securing the support of more Labour MPs and official trade union backing for the CSP will be challenging in the short-term. But if the new party looks popular and properly-run a couple of years down the line, and the government continues on its dismal way, that could very well change. The government is imprisoned both by its commitments – to the electorate, to the City, to Trump – and its prejudices. It hopes that the possibility of Lee Anderson as Home Secretary will drive voters back into its arms in 2029. It also recycles the arguments I and others used in 2019 when pressing against a commitment to hold a second referendum on EU membership – Labour can lose votes to the Liberal Democrats and Greens in many areas without endangering seats. The margin for error in the 'red wall' is next to non-existent. So it proved. But does the argument hold true today? Labour's strategists claim that in 2024 they consciously allowed for a fall in support in safe big city seats in order to make gains where they were needed, in the red wall inter alia. This plan only half-worked at the time. The metropolitan support indeed dropped – in Starmer's Camden constituency he lost half his personal vote, something little remarked on since – but there was no return to voting Labour in seats which had been its traditional strongholds. It elected MPs entirely because of a split in the right. Today, those urban strongholds are not so strong. The day after Sultana's initial announcement that she was quitting Labour I spoke at a Palestine demonstration in Kentish Town, the heart of Starmer's own seat. Every mention of her and the 2024 independent challenger against the Labour leader, Andrew Feinstein, was cheered to the echo. Downing Street will have to listen. Andrew Murray is political correspondent of the Morning Star, a former advisor to Jeremy Corbyn and the author of The Fall and Rise of the British Left and Is Socialism Possible in Britain – Reflections on the Corbyn Years (both Verso). Related