BOOK: "The Greedy Bastard Diary," by Eric Idle (HarperCollins, $23.95)
TARGET AUDIENCE: Oh, you know who I mean -- wink, wink; nudge, nudge.
Ex-Monty Python member Idle, eager to take a show on the road but fearful of losing money, is advised to do something cheap but profitable: a "greedy bastard tour." Soon he's happily aboard a tour bus ("It's like traveling in your own suitcase") with a family-size cast and crew on a 15,750-mile spin around the United States and Canada. He keeps a diary of impressions as he goes (playing, among other venues, Washington's 9:30 club).
Idle's inventively loo-mouthed journal includes a witty Brit's impressions of the United States, onstage and backstage views of his show, and un-Pythonlike, affectionate memories of George Harrison. He suffers many of the woes we all encounter on the road (although somehow, his woes are funnier), plus he is constantly identified by strangers as an ex-Python, and usually the wrong one. He often drifts into the sloppy self-pity of a happily married man unhappily away from his wife, but then says something exquisitely stupid to break the treacly mood. Idle is an inveterate name dropper, but consider the droppees: the other Pythons, Robin Williams, Lauren Hutton, Uma Thurman, Catherine Zeta Jones. . . . Say no more; say no more.
-- Jerry V. Haines
