I’ve just asked Eric Idle that most basic of questions for any comic. What is it that makes him so funny? “I don’t feel it’s my job to be funny,” he says. “It’s just I find myself saying funny things ...

Even if you’ve watched Monty Python’s 1979 Biblical satire, “Life of Brian,” a skillion-and-one times and thus know by heart the song for which Python member Eric Idle named his “sortabiography” – ...