Eric Idle Skips Monty Python Reunion After Spat With John Cleese
Happy 81st birthday, Michael Palin! We’ve gathered the surviving members of the Monty Python gang for songs and tarts. Here’s John Cleese, Terry Gilliam and… Hey, has anyone seen Eric Idle?
Palin turned 81 on May 5th, and his former Pythonmate Cleese posted his congratulations one day later: “I was travelling yesterday, and forgot to wish Mickey Pallin a joyous 81st Birthday. We shall celebrate it together tonight, along with Terry Gilliam, if he promises to behave.”
No mention of Idle at the celebration, which makes sense given the Pythons’ heated back and forth on social media earlier this year. Idle proclaimed the group “a disaster” and blamed Terry Gilliams’ daughter Holly, now in charge of Python business affairs, for the comedy troupe’s lack of riches. “One Gilliam is bad enough,” Idle tweeted. “Two can take out any company.”
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Cleese fired back in a series of “funny” tweets along the lines of “We always loathed and despised each other, but it’s only recently that the truth has begun to emerge.” Cleese later explained that the loathing and despising part was posted tongue-in-cheek, a bit of humor that most of us mouthbreathers missed because we don’t understand irony. This is the same refrain Cleese used last week when he was “forced” to cut the racial slurs from his stage revival of Fawlty Towers — no one understands irony anymore!
A check of Idle’s social media feeds shows that he let Palin’s birthday pass without a public “happy birthday” message, instead delighting in his autobiography being placed in a position to ogle Stormy Daniels.
At least all the Pythons had the good sense to refrain from more public spats with one another on Palin’s special day. But that didn’t stop Cleese from fighting with randos on Twitter/X, such as one “fan” who remarked, “So you’ve reconciled, then? Let’s see how long that lasts…”
“You are an unpleasant little person,” replied Cleese, “who knows a lot less than he thinks he does.”
And just to make sure everyone understands his particular sense of humor regarding “Mickey Pallin,” Cleese is now punctuating jokes with a parenthetical (irony).