Eric Idle

Eric Idle is an English comedian, actor, voice actor, author, singersongwriter, musician, writer and comedic composer. Idle is a member of the English surreal comedy group Monty Python, a member of The Rutles on Saturday Night Live, and the author of the Broadway musical Spamalot.

Idle was born in Harton, near South Shields in County Durham, where his mother had been evacuated to from the north west of England. His mother, Norah Barron Sanderson, was a health visitor, and his father, Ernest Idle, served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, only to be killed in a hitchhiking accident shortly after the war. His mother had difficulty coping with a fulltime job and bringing up a child so, when Idle was seven, she enrolled him in the Royal Wolverhampton School as a boarder. At this time the school was a charitable foundation dedicated to the education and maintenance of children who had lost one or both parents. Idle is quoted as saying It was a physically abusive, bullying, harsh environment for a kid to grow up in. I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority. Perfect training for Python.

Source: Wikipedia