The man who brought you the anthems "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" and "Sit on My Face and Tell Me That You Love Me" shows his naughty bits -- and so much more

A stunningly witty exploration of the American landscape -- not to mention a brilliant comic's mind -- this diary is chock-full of everything you ever wanted to know about Eric Idle, Monty Python, America, and sleeping on a bus. In these pages the sixth-nicest Python is cheeky, touching and funny when recounting the riotous tales of his beginnings, his school days in a Dickensian academy for boys, and his affectionate reminiscences of fellow Pythons, traveling the world, as well as his longtime friend, George Harrison.

Astonishing, moving, at times even amusing, this chronicle of Idle's road trip during his Greedy Bastard Tour will improve your sex life dramatically. After only a few pages you will begin to feel intelligent, charming, and clever, then aroused, then funny. And after a few chapters whatever personal or health problems you are experiencing will immediately vanish. So come experience 80 days, 15,750 miles, and 49 cities as you never have before!

The Greedy Bastard Diary

HarperEntertainment

Day One

To Canada and Beyond

As I leave home, the tears in my daughter's eyes remind me that this adventure comes with some real costs, and that I stayed home for the first thirteen years of her life for a very good reason.

I try to reassure her that Thanksgiving isn't such a long time away, and Ihave a sudden flashback of my mother sending me off to boarding schoolwith the same bullshit. Even my wife looks sad, which after twenty-sevenyears with the Greedy Bastard is certainly impressive.

I think of Michael Palin setting out on his great journeys. Mine won't bequite so bold: just to Canada, which is no longer terribly dangerous. Palinis probably in Pakistan at this very moment, eating dog with an Oxford-educated goatherd, interviewing yaks, and having his picture taken in front of a yurst, which is a kind of straw hut used for storing squirrels [Bollocks. -- Ed.] while I am headed for an executive-class seat on Air Canada, but chacun à son goût, as the French say when looking at English food. I feel a bit nervous encroaching on Palin territory by writing a travel diary. I want to avoid any unpleasant sense of stealing Michael's thunder, but most of the Pythons have been involved in documentariesrecently: Jonesy walked halfway to Jerusalem in Crusader armor, holding a spear; Gilliam is the tragic hero of a classic documentary about the nonmaking of a movie; and even Cleesy went to Madagascar to invade the privacy of the lemurs. Only Graham has remained quiet. Death will do that to you. That's one of the reasons I am so against it. So, what is this urge by excomedians to get out there and examine the world? Are theytired of dressing up as women? Surely not. This tour will be almostmy first time onstage drag-free.

For my diary, instead of a coffee-table book, I am planningto publish a dining-table book: a book so large that eight peoplecan comfortably have dinner on it. Maybe it could even bea bedside-table book, or better yet a bathroom-table bookwith lots of photographs of nude women, but then I don't supposethere will be all that many nude women at my shows.

I am going on a bus tour of North America. Three months,and almost fifty gigs across the entire continent. It mayseem a little odd at my age to be heading out on the road, but Ihave never done this and it seems to have a romantic gypsyfeel to it. I like the idea of slipping offstage into a bed that takesme to the next gig, rather than having to line up to showstrangers my socks at airports. As Kevin Nealon so brilliantlyobserved: How selfish and unthinking of the shoe bomber.Why couldn't he have been the bra bomber? Or the panty bomber?Kevin is a spectacularly funny man. Will I still be funny? Was Iever? These are the sort of anxious thoughts that fill my mindas I head for Canada.

I am flying into Toronto because my promoters are alsogreedy bastards, and it is cheaper to have me flogging my show on TV and pimping my ass to the newspapersthan buying expensive ads. In my experience there isnothing you can't do for promoters. It is only with thegreatest reluctance that they allow you to spend acouple of hours onstage, away from the relentless interviews.

My Greedy Bastard Tour is kicking off in Rutland,Vermont, in four days' time, a starting point suggestedby the Greedy Bastard's agent, who was formerlythe head of the Greedy Bastard's record label.Having sold precisely three copies of Eric Idle PresentsNigel Spasm's Journey to the Rutland Isles (a pithyenough title), he has been trying to lure me out on theroad in a blatant attempt to flog off the remainingtwelve copies that lie unsold in the Artist Direct storeroom(a small closet near Wilshire Boulevard).

As the car searches for fast back routes throughL.A.'s increasingly bad traffic, I congratulate myselfon not bringing a camera crew. The observer altersthe experiment as we all know from our readingsof Heisenberg (actually, none), and the thought ofhaving to appear cheery to a documentary crew firstthing in the morning makes me sleepy, so I settle downfor the first of many naps, unencumbered by the effortof having to make smart one-liners to a lens.

The flight to Toronto is on time and half empty orhalf full, depending on your point of view. Thestewardess offers me a can of Spam to sign for her brother while the West slips by beneath a huge, roundjet engine, and I am struck by how colorful it is: redsand oranges and blues and tortuous canyons of riverswinding between towering cathedral bluffs. There isnothing at all down there, and I ponder a short fantasyabout a tribe of Indians offering a new promised landto the Israelis. In no time they would have it blooming,if not Bloomingdale's, but would they really relocatehere if lured by the prospect of easy gaming facilities?And who would the Indian tribe be: the Schmioux, theDakoshers, or the Moe Hawks, perhaps?

Soon the land below is covered by a rust color,which looks like lichen from the air, before I realizethat it is fall. The Rockies have an early sprinkling ofsnow, which outlines the winding paths of their peaks;an improbable pure blinding white line, snakingamong the amber and russet of the forests. The stewardessis in a chatty mood and claims she saw us onour first visit to Toronto -- good God, thirty yearsago -- on Monty Python's First Farewell Tour ...

Excerpted from The Greedy Bastard Diaryby Idle, Eric Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.