Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Eric Idle

Author:Eric Idle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2018-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

One day in 1991, Gary said to me, “You know they’re singing your song on the terraces.” Apparently, football fans had taken to singing it when their sides were losing helplessly.

Always look on the bright side of life

Duh duh, duh duh duh duh duh duh…

Simon Mayo, a friend of Gary’s and a BBC Radio 1 DJ, began playing the song every morning on his breakfast show, so it was getting a lot of airplay. Because of this, Virgin Records rereleased it as a single on September 23, 1991, and to my surprise it began to rise up the pop charts. It was strangely exciting as each week it rose higher and higher. It eventually got to number three, where it peaked after I had been persuaded to sing it on Top of the Pops, a deliberately chaotic performance with John Du Prez leading the band. Simon Mayo said it was because I had sung it on Top of the Pops, and he may well have been right, but it did get to number one on the ITV charts, and, even more satisfying, it became number one in Ireland, which was great because the movie had been banned there, and the soundtrack album on Warner’s was withdrawn and pulled out of record stores after protests when it was first released. A fitting revenge.

Because it was such a hit, ITV asked me to sing it for the Queen on the Royal Variety Performance, an annual charity event, held that year at the Victoria Palace Theatre. I had grown up watching this show, which featured every top artist and the best comedians from Britain and America. Even the Beatles had been on it, and John Lennon had said cheekily, “The people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewelry.” Tommy Cooper, a wonderfully funny British comedian, had died on it, collapsing backwards through the curtains at the end of his set to a huge laugh. Everyone thought he was joking. Shockingly, he was dead. A great way to go, though. So of course I said yes.

Traditionally on the show there was a classical moment from the opera or ballet, where the audience would nod off for a bit. I decided to use this to play a gag on them. David Frost introduced Ann Howard, my singer friend from the English National Opera, in an aria from Madame Butterfly, and the curtain rose to reveal a beautiful set with a little Japanese bridge on which stood Lieutenant Pinkerton in his naval whites. Ann was dressed in a kimono with a black wig and knitting needles in her hair, and at her feet was a Japanese maid lying prostrate in a kowtow. She began the famous aria:

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