Eric Idle was born on March 29th 1943 in Harton Hospital, South Shields, County Durham, U.K. His mother was a nurse and his father was a Sergeant in the RAF who was killed hitch-hiking home on compassionate leave and died in Darlington Hospital on Christmas Eve 1945. As a young child he lived in Manchester, attended his first school St. George’s, Wallasey (Liverpool) and in 1950 was sent to The Royal School Wolverhampton where his education was paid for by the RAF Benevolent Fund. Leaving school in 1962 with 10 O levels, 3 A Levels and 1 S Level he was accepted by Pembroke College, Cambridge, to read English Literature, in which he took his B.A. in 1965. From 1964/5 he was President of The Footlights Dramatic Club (founded in 1883) and changed the rules to accept women members, the first of whom was Germaine Greer. After touring with her in the annual Footlights Revue My Girl Herbert (1965) which ran for a brief time at The Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, he spent a season in Leicester Rep before moving to London, appearing in two BBC TV Movies: Jonathan Millers Alice in Wonderland, and Ken Russell’s Isadora, and then starting to write professionally for BBC Radio’s I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again and BBC Television’s The Frost Report, which won The Golden Rose of Montreux. In 1968 he began writing and acting in two series of a children’s TV hit, Do Not Adjust Your Set, with Michael Palin Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam, which won The Priz Jeunnesse, Munich for Best Children’s Television. The success of this show led to four series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus for the BBC from July 1969 through 1973, with the addition of John Cleese and Graham Chapman. Also in that month he married actress Lyn Ashley, by whom he had a son Carey (b. 1973).
