Born in Wolverhampton and often refers to Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Python sketches. Attended the Royal Grammer School for Boys. Shacks up with Catherine Zeta-Jones in Splitting Heirs.

Eric does not have quite the verbal brilliance of Cleese or Chapman, who excelled at sketches where people abuse each other out of thesauruses.

Nor was he as firmly in the slapstick camp as Palin and Jones, who liked visual non sequiturs such as knights in full plate armor standing in the middle of a stream and battering each other with trout.

Eric's brilliance is in characterization, insinuation and mimicry. He smarmed better than any of the other Pythons, which is why he did the best game show hosts, head waiters etc.

He also has a musical bent none of the others does, and wrote a whole lot of really good songs for the troupe; including Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, the finale to Life of Brian, which was popular enough to be sung en masse by the crew of HMS Coventry as their ship went down during the Falklands War.

Also, if more evidence is needed, I give you: Nudge Nudge.

Say no more!



...and of course, The Rutles.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.