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‘I’d be proud to be thrown out of America!’ Eric Idle on Trump, life after Python and not talking before lunch

Ahead of his UK tour, the former Monty Python star responds to questions from Catherine Zeta-Jones, David Mamet, Janet Suzman, Steve Coogan, Bill Oddie and others

Maggie Smith gave me a beautiful leatherbound copy of the lyrics to Sit on My Face because when she was working on a film with Michael Palin, she would make the entire crew sing it every day before they began. The Rutles in 1978 … Ron Nasty (Neil Innes); Stig O’Hara (Ricky Fataar); Dirk McQuickly (Eric Idle), and Barry Wom (John Halsey), posing for their TV mockumentary All You Need Is Cash. You don’t watch early episodes of Saturday Night Live and think: “Oh, Gerald Ford fell downstairs!” Python was always generic comedy and that survives longer.

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