A Quote by Eric Idle
Probably spending 12 years at boarding school - comedy became a survival gene. But I think some people are funny right off the bat, as soon as they can speak or be naughty.
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When I was sixteen years old, I was sentenced to two years in prison; the Swedish government changed it, so I could go to a boarding school as part of a social programme. I was in this boarding school with some of the richest kids in Sweden.
I can't watch other people doing comedy. As soon as somebody starts being funny I have to turn off because it upsets me. I get comedy indigestion. I just hate anybody else being funny. That's my job.
I guess if you have had a good education as opposed to someone who hasn't been to school, you start off on this journey having studied Shakespeare for years and years or studied classics. I suppose why people see this big divide - the boarding school boys getting all the roles - is because they feel like some people have had a head start.
I ran away from three different boarding schools before joining a circus school, and eventually I became an actor. The only thing I learned at boarding school was never to send my child to one.
I have a theory that if you've got the kind of parents who want to send you to boarding school, you're probably better off at boarding school.
Oh yeah brother I was right they started in with that mormon vudo right off the bat as soon as we walked in everybody was friendly. One of them who later became known to my family as the amazing Mr. Plastic Man even told me that he loved us. Please there are times I don't even like us how could you possibly love us. I was thinking spend some time with me pal and I'll cure you of that.
I don't know if there is a gene for comedy, but my dad was a very funny man. He just didn't know it. He was a naturally funny character, and when my brother and I would laugh at things he said and did, he would say, 'What do you think is so funny?'
When I was seventeen, I left Scotland to go to Kent, a well-to-do boarding school in Connecticut, where there was a contingent of really naughty kids.
And they didn't have to get into a lot of legal speak or talk ER terms, they were real people. I think that's why so many actresses were attracted to it. And it was just about problems that you could identify with so much, right off the bat.
I became religious and at 14 went to a boarding school 500 miles from home to begin theological studies. By the time I started university, politics had replaced religion in the economy of my enthusiasms but I had no idea what to study. My boarding school emphasized languages which I was bad at, and deemphasized math and science which I was good at.
But, sooner or later I'd love to do a comedy. I mean I think that, you know, people don't think that that's in my wheelhouse because I've sort of played a lot of dramatic stuff and that's certainly a side of myself that I want at some point in the right context, in the right stuff, that I find really funny.
I think I'm one of those guys who was sort of always in comedy. I thought of myself - and other people seemed to think of me - as funny from a very young age. I was a very young comedy nerd and I even did sketch comedy in high school and college. I wrote and shot sketches on video and acted in them.
The only thing I wanted when I left school was independence. I had been at boarding school for many years. When you're boarding, nothing is your own and your whole day is scheduled. You're told when to sleep, what to eat and when. You have zero independence.
You know, our country's being ripped apart. And let me tell you, this is largely an economic issue, too. You know that workers, hard-working people, middle class people, haven't had a salary increase effectively in 12 years, all right? So for 12 years, they're making less now in many cases than they made 12 years ago.
At age 10 or 12 he's going to boarding school in the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is, of course, down at the bottom of England just off South Hampton.
I have a brilliant memory of being driven back to school when 'Super Trouper' was number one in the charts in 1980. When it came on the radio my mum just drove right past the school gates! When you're 11 years old and meant to be going back to boarding school, that's a great feeling.
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