Remember the date.  Blog it.  Post it.  Tweet it.  Put it on your calendar.  Have it tattooed on a private and rarely seen organ.  Tie a bit of string round the dog’s bollocks to remind you.  Leave small notes about the house saying “Today is Dick Day.” Call up your friends.  Tell people at work.  Email it to people you hardly know.  Stop wedding guests in the street and tell them in verse.  But do remember the date:

November 13^th is Dick Day.

On that day (or almost a day earlier in Australia) you can begin to download Dick exclusively from www.whataboutdick.com

Yes this once in a lunchtime offer to see Dick can be yours for only six bucks.  Featuring one of the funniest casts ever assembled:  Russell Brand, Billy Connolly, Tim Curry, Eric Idle,  Eddie Izzard, Jane Leeves, Jim Piddock, Tracey Ullman and Sophie Winkleman, talk about bang for your bucks.

Be the first on your block to download it.  Plan a Dick party.  Come in your pajamas.  Or come in her pajamas.   Either way don’t miss this shameless display of public weirdness.

ERIC IDLE’S HILIARIOUS COMEDY EVENT

“WHAT ABOUT DICK?” WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR DIGITAL DOWNLOAD TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2012

Featuring an All-Star Cast of:

Russell Brand, Billy Connolly, Tim Curry, Eric Idle,

Eddie Izzard, Jane Leeves, Jim Piddock, Tracey Ullman and Sophie Winkleman

 “Utter madness, brilliant innovation, weirdly wonderful… and deeply moving.”

– Huffington Post, Jay Weston

What is What About Dick?   A bird?  A plane?  A superglue? A film for radio?  A play?  A farce? An improv?  An albatross?  This weird hybrid, somewhere between Greek Tragedy and Professional Wrestling, is a comedy for comedians.  It has been variously described as “Oscar Wilde on acid,” “like Downton Abbey and almost as funny,” “like E.M Forster on steroids” and “a cross between a budgerigar and an accountant.”

 What About Dick? begins with the birth of a sex toy invented in Shagistan in 1898 by Deepak Rushdie Obi Ben Kingsley (Eddie Izzard), and tells the story of the subsequent decline of the British Empire as seen through the eyes of a Piano. The Piano (Eric Idle) narrates the tale of Dick (Russell Brand); his two cousins: Emma, (Jane Leeves) an emotionally retarded English girl; her kleptomaniac sister Helena (Sophie Winkleman) and their dipsomaniac Aunt Maggie (Tracey Ullman) who all live together in a large, rambling, Edwardian novel.   When the Reverend Whoopsie (Tim Curry) discovers a piano on a beach, a plot is set afoot that can be solved only by a private Dick, the incomprehensible Scottish sleuth Inspector McGuffin (Billy Connolly) who with the aid of Sergeant Ken Russell (Jim Piddock) finally reveals the identity of the Houndsditch Mutilator.

The show features eight new songs from Eric Idle and John Du Prez, the Grammy-award winning duo who brought you Spamalot and the comic Oratorio, Not The Messiah (He’s a Very Naughty Boy) including Arsetrology, Blow Me (a Kiss in the Moonlight) He’s Different (not Gay) and The Lament of the Lonely Trout.

 “A comic free-for-all.” Tim Curry

 “It’s a huge laugh.  It could rip your lungs out.  People could watch this and laugh too much and die, so that’s, that’s the danger.  It’s actually dangerous to watch this…” Eddie Izzard

 “These people are people that live for laughter!  They’re dangerous people to be around.  They’ll do anything!” Russell Brand

 “Most of the audiences have no idea what it is… They know there’s a vaguely suggestive title and they know the list of names and that’s why they’re in here!” Billy Connolly

 “The audience loves hearing those Python rhythms and that Python language… but we’re adding ourselves to it too and going off in riffs of madness…” Tracey Ullman

 “Genuinely a spirit of anarchy.” This cast is unique.  You’ll never see this cast together again doing something like this.” Eric Idle

 “Everyone who watches it gets free glue for life!” Eddie Izzard

Become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/whataboutdick,

follow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/whataboutdick

or add on Google+ at http://gplus.to/WhatAboutDick.

Or follow Eric on https://twitter.com/ericidle

I’m sorry.

I’m going to disappoint you.

I’m going to let you down.

I said I wouldn’t.

I assured you I couldn’t.

And yet, sadly, and alas, it’s true:

I’m going to Tweet.

I know.  It’s distressing.   And for those of you who have made a healthy unliving out of tweeting in my name it’s bad news.  It’s bad news too for both of you who like my blog because now I have only 140 words instead of unpacking my mind in paragraphs.

But the reason for my change of heart is simple:   I want you to see my Dick.

Not Exhibitionism so much as Commerce.

So here it is folks.  https://twitter.com/ericidle

The Powers that be insist that if I only start tweeting, people will be driven into a feeding frenzy and download awesome amounts of What About Dick? 

Of course this may be a total lie, and they just want me to go out there pimping my ass so they can feel better, but I cannot prove this, and as I very much want you to see my Dick I have no leg to stand on.

Actually I just stood on the dog’s leg, but that was an accident.

Ouch.   She bit me.   Bloody dogs.  Can’t take a joke.

Anyway we have finished editing the HD movie of those four mad nights of What About Dick? and it has been greeted with gales of laughter from both my friends and now it is time to make its way into the world and face the whistle test: will you like it, will you buy it?   Particularly so as we are venturing into the brave new world of direct download.   Our product will be Executive-free, my Dick will be untouched by any foreign hands, it will be downloaded directly to you anywhere in the world directly from our website http://www.whataboutdick.com/

And to get that message out, apparently I must begin tweeting right away.

As I am unfamiliar with this mode of creation I intend to tweet many of my friends who are already light years ahead to get their advice on how to master this new form.   I have much to learn and many questions to ask.

Here are a few:

 Is it necessary to wear a condom while tweeting?

I have heard the internet is unsafe, and I don’t want my computer to catch anything.  I intend to ask Stephen Fry this, as he has been tweeting since the early nineteenth century. (https://twitter.com/stephenfry)

Do I have to be funny?

This is clearly a question for Garry Shandling, although he rarely fails to be funny about everything.  (https://twitter.com/GarryShandling)

What shall I wear when Tweeting?    Loose shorts?   A kilt perhaps?

Obviously a question for Billy Connolly.  If anyone knows more about kilt-free tweeting I will be very surprised. (https://twitter.com/Billy_Connolly)

Should I wear eye make-up when tweeting?

                                    This is tailor-made for Eddie Izzard (https://twitter.com/eddieizzard).

Can I tweet while drunk?

I shall ask Sir Patrick Stewart this since he promised he would not tweet while drinking. (https://twitter.com/SirPatStew/status/244586042278178817).

Is it rude to tweet during sex?

This is a question for Russell Brand (https://twitter.com/rustyrockets).    No one will know more about the etiquette of tweeting and greeting.   For instance it may be ok to tweet during foreplay.

Do I have to publish a Book of my tweets?

This question is obviously for Steve Martin ), who has already done just that.   He is probably already Hosting The Tweet of The Year Awards  (The Twitties?)       (https://twitter.com/SteveMartinToGo

Can you tweet while playing banjo?

Obviously this is a twick question.  I am going to send it to Kevin Nealon (https://twitter.com/kevin_nealon), but Steve Martin and Billy Connolly are both excellent banjo artistes.  In fact it may be necessary to learn banjo in order to get the speed into the fingers required for hammering out a fast tweet.

Is the tweet the sonnet form of today?

Not as random a question as it looks.  A Shakespearian sonnet has ten feet per line, times fourteen lines, so metrically a tweet is a sonnet.  I’m going to ask Salman Rushdie this, as he knows everything, and I am halfway through his brilliant must-read memoir Joseph Anton.     (https://twitter.com/SalmanRushdie)

What exactly is the size of the Universe again?

Obviously a simple question for Professor Brian Cox (https://twitter.com/ProfBrianCox).  Of course you are impressed I even know Brian Cox, let alone have dinner with him, but I met him when he came to the filming of Dick and I have subsequently worked with him on a new version of The Galaxy Song, for his upcoming series The Wonders of Life, about which I shall surely blog shortly.

OK so now I’m ready to begin my first day tweeting.  Wish me luck.  Oh, and if you feel like it, that bit I wrote for The New Yorker is out today.

Become a fan of What About Dick on Facebook at www.facebook.com/whataboutdick, follow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/whataboutdick  or add on Google+ at http://gplus.to/WhatAboutDick.

Follow Eric’s brave new world at https://twitter.com/ericidle

Occasionally I’m accused of name dropping.   It’s not true, of course, as I was saying to Russell Brand (Boing!) only the other day.  Name dropping implies a level of superficiality to which I can only aspire.  Russell laughed merrily, Eddie Izzard (Boing) joined in the laugh and so did Michael Caine. (Boing!)   Marty Scorsese (Boing!) asked me to pass the salt, and then Philip Roth (Boing!) came in….

Start again.

I have met many interesting people in my life and many of them were famous, are famous, or would like to be famous, and many of them were not, are not, and would do anything to avoid it.   I try not to discriminate.   I think it is snobbish to be prejudiced against somebody just because they are not famous.   As it is wrong to hold someone’s celebrity against them.  It’s not their fault that just because they have a talent in one of the more popular performing arts, people look up to them, worship them, and hunt them down and kill them.   Fan after all is short for fanatic.  Fame is not a particularly desirable state, as Bob Dylan (Boing!) wryly observed “A lot of strangers think they know you, and it’s really only useful for getting a table in restaurants.”

The sad thing about name dropping is that there is a sell-by date.  You’re best to either name drop quickly or not drop at all.  Out-dated name dropping is terribly sad.   As I said to Eartha Kitt only the other day….

Not recognizing the names being dropped is very embarrassing.  At the Olympic Games Closing Ceremony I didn’t know half the names on the bill and had to stop asking as people were beginning to treat me like an old fart, completely hopeless and totally out of touch. (You are Eric, you are…)

I was first “outed” as a star fucker by the saintly Michael Palin (Boing!) in his diaries of the Python days in the Seventies in New York when we were hot young comedians taking the town by storm.  He blasted me publicly for spending time hanging out with celebrities like the Rolling Stones (Boing! Boing! Boing!)   Oddly, only the very next day in his diary he wrote “Had lunch with Mick Jagger….”

So even nice Mike doesn’t escape his own condemnation.  We are all fascinated by the famous, though to be fair I never wrote about it in a published diary.  (Nudge Nudge)  My problem was often that they wanted to hang with me, and I am far too polite to say no to Keith Richards (Boing!)    I was recently asked by the writer of his autobiography  if I recalled any of the times I spent with him as he could remember nothing.   Of course I did,  Keith was rarely less than interesting.  Even when apparently out of it.    I remember him at a party he threw in Chelsea where I chatted with the very bright Pete Townshend (Boing!) while a few of the other Stones (Boing! Boing! Boing!)  gathered round and badgered him in the way rock stars do to members of another group.  Really, they are very competitive.  They behave like mobbing birds.  I once visited The Who (Boing!)  backstage at a Concert in Fréjus with Pink Floyd (Boing!)

“Oh hanging out with them now are you Eric” they said, to which I replied “Well at least they keep their drummers alive.”  A sardonic reference to my friendship with the late Keith Moon (ex Boing!)

Meanwhile back at the party in Chelsea young Mister Richards lay comatose on his bed under the influence of something strong, and never said a word.   I stayed awhile because I am very fond of Ronnie Wood (Boing!) and the girls at the party were really delicious, though sadly not famous, so I didn’t sleep with any of them.   One must draw the line.   Finally,  just as I was leaving, Keith rose up from his bed and yelled “Goodnight Eric.”   So yes he was there alright.

Mick Jagger (Boing!)  is one of the most splendid companions on the planet.  He is seductive, funny, and very intelligent.  Time with him is never dull.  And there are plenty of extremely bright rock stars I have hung with like the highly civilized intellectual David Bowie (Boing!)  the very funny Paul Simon (Boing!) the deeply read Art Garfunkle (Boing!)  and the awesome Joni Mitchell (Boing!)  Actors like Harrison Ford (Boing!) and Tom Hanks (Boing!) are very interesting company, though for company no one beats writers like Salman Rushdie (Boing!) or comedians like Steve Martin (Boing!)  Gary Shandling (Boing!) and Marty Short (Boing!)

So yes, I don’t think you should exclude people from friendship just because they are famous.   To discriminate against them for that would seem to be wrong, and I would have missed out on some of my most valued friends.  For example the great and good George Harrison (Boing!) who taught me more of what life in and out of showbiz is about, than any philosopher.  An awareness of death is what George taught, not in a bad or down way, but in a don’t waste your time on worthless shit your days are numbered kind of way.

My first mentor in this was the poet Stephen Spender (Boing!) who I visited in the early seventies in the Alpilles in Provence.  He said, unashamedly:  “I like the famous.  They are more interesting.”  Then he gave me his oil lamp as he had just got electricity, and I was living without.   So in a sense he literally passed the torch, and I read happily under The Steven Spender Lamp until a few years later when we too finally got electricity.  Meanwhile many famous celebrities came and hung out quietly in the Sud in the most basic of accommodation.   There is a great relief from fame, which is not being recognized.  I remember Robin Williams (Boing!)  at the height of his TV celebrity,  at a local fete in France, standing in the middle of the crowded dance floor yelling “I’m Mork! I’m Mork!” to the total indifference of the locals.  For me that was always the best thing about Provence.  No matter how famous you were back home, there you could be totally anonymous.   I was tolerated as an eccentric English exile for many years and it was only when Python won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1983 for The Meaning of Life and we were on the front page of the Var Matin that the locals realized that I was part of this odd thing called Monty Python,  pronounced magnificently Mon Tee Pee-ton by the French, as indeed to them I will always remain Monsieur Eedler.   They were very proud of me then, and my window glass fitter would murmur quietly “Felicitations”  and my plumber would come out to fix the drains a little sooner.  I cherish the friendships I made before that point, since I could be sure they were based on the purest of motives:  they liked my money.  So I played football with them and hung out with them practicing my atrocious French and sharing many bottles of appalling rosé wine – which we called Fighting Pink, for its tendency to break up marriages after lunch.  That heavy toxic purple stuff, soaked in copper sulphates, was light years away from the beautiful blush wines they now produce.  There’s even one called Pink Floyd  which comes from Miraval,  the Chateau where improbably many years ago Tania and I watched Roger Waters (Boing!)  recording the vocal of Just Another Brick in the Wall.   It’s currently owned by Brangelina.   No, I don’t know them….

Ronnie Wood (Boing!) was totally anonymous in France when he came and stayed with me in 1976, just before he became a Rolling Stone.   Mick had given him a tape of all the Stones songs for him to learn, and a second language tape, which consisted largely of slang, including important things like how to ask for a blow job in French.  (Faire le pipe I think.)  This I suppose was essential information for a would-be Stone about to go a-rolling.

Mike Nichols (Boing!) always appreciates the value of the famous.  In fact he rarely works with anyone else.

“There is a good reason they are famous” he says, “it’s because they are the best at what they do.”

Of course. The smartest man in the room as always.  But Mike also gives an acting class once a week to utterly unfamous actors and is always most generous in supporting writers who, of course,  have no names worth dropping.  His insightful and encouraging notes are the most valuable on the planet.   So his will be the last name I drop…

As George said presciently and succinctly “Even the famous have to die.”

Oh and the New Yorker piece is in the October 8th edition.  Enjoy.

The light in Oslo is very fine.   Perhaps because it’s the time of year or perhaps it is always like that but it comes in at a low angle under the clouds, lighting up the castle with golden light at sunset and lingering in fine shrouds of pink overhead for the longest time.    On my tourist day I am taken to the massive metal ski jump which extends in an unfinished parabola up to the sky itself.   We mount a cable car elevator which slides us up the mountain to a truly breathtaking view of Oslo, which tantalizingly appears and disappears as the vast complex clouds come rolling in.  When we climb the final few yards to the top of the extraordinary steel structure there is an all-metal area where we stand amongst the clouds themselves, which pass us in wisps, now and again leaving us in sunlight with staggering views of the mountainside and valleys far below us.  It’s like being God, I say to Anders Albien, our Spamalot director.

I am glad to see that John Cleese is back being God in our Norwegian production.  The Daily Quail made much of us being at war over playing God, when in fact the truth is simpler: Chris Luscombe the UK director wanted God to appear on stage and it was cheaper and easier for me to film it, than to try and drag John in from somewhere and force him to wear all that white hair and make-up.  So there Daily Grail, we are not at war, and would it help you believe it if I tell you my weekly fee goes to Great Ormond Street Hospital?  What could be more Godlike?

The Norse Gods were clearly smiling on us when we opened the play.  I have become so accustomed to the British cut down review version of Spamalot that I had quite forgotten how splendidly thrilling the full musical version can be, and both I and Oslo were bowled over at opening night.   Six or eight curtain calls, we could have gone on all night, staggering reviews, and an amazing cast whom I got to know a little in the all too few days I was there.  On my promo day the print journalists were suitably circumspect after my last blog rant, and the researcher sent by the tv show to prep questions, confessed herself scared, declared herself “a minion” and revealed herself as a Nordic blonde Goddess of very agreeable proportions.   In fact the Norwegians of all sexes were very kind, friendly and lovely to me.  The cast contained every possible star of film and TV with the possible exception of Liv Ullman, who was herself a big fan of our Sir Robin, as indeed was I, a young actor of terrific weight.  But the whole cast was weighty from Arthur to Galahad, from Lancelot to Bedevere, not to mention an hilarious Prince Herbert, and Kim our engaging Swedish Patsy.

Now you’re going to have to forgive me not naming names here as I have left my programme in Oslo, but I must just mention our Lady of the Lake, short of stature, feisty of spirit, with sparking dark eyes, and an unbelievable voice.   She just tore apart Find Your Grail.  Indeed the whole company’s singing and dancing was extremely impressive and the musical numbers drove the whole production. It was great to see the scantily clad ladies of the chorus back.   I don’t know what it is about young women dancing in lingerie that I find so appealing….oh that’s right, yes I do, but suffice it to say that these girls gladdened the eye, and thrilled the heart with their talent, and of course they all wanted their pictures taken with me afterwards which I reluctantly agreed to.  (Yeah right Eric.)  So thank you Oslogians, especially Bjorn our Producer, as I said on stage at the opening night I know only one word in Norwegian and that is “Ni.”

Also lest you think I am a bullshitter you may have noticed that my piece was not in the New Yorker this week as I had vainly promised, and no I am not suffering from delusions brought on by being treated like a God in Norway, they assure me they are publishing  it but now at the end of October.