Eric Idle Calls ‘South Park’s Trump Parody ‘Heroic’

Eric Idle may not be a big fan of Love Island, but he’s still a loyal South Park viewer.

Per The Telegraph, in a recent interview with Radio Times, the Monty Python legend took a break from exchanging social media insults with his former colleague John Cleese to weigh in on the current state of TV. “Television now seems to be people trying to bonk each other on islands, game shows or news shows, so it’s not terribly interesting,” Idle stated.

While there are arguably a lot of great TV shows that aren’t horny Survivor riffs, the Splitting Heirs star then pointed out that his formative years were more influenced by radio shows. “My generation — so that’s all of the Pythons — grew up without television,” he explained. “That’s quite a big difference, rarely observed. We grew up with radio, where the words involve your imagination much more.”

“On radio, the Goons could set the Thames on fire,” Idle argued, in reference to the radio show starring Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan, which is often cited as the biggest comedic influence on Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

According to The Mirror, Idle then recalled how the Pythons succeeded on television because they didn’t have any executives breathing down their necks. “When we were given our TV show, it was late on a Sunday night, and the BBC was just trying to see if anybody was awake after 10 p.m. and the pubs were closed,” Idle said. "What was really lovely was that we could please ourselves, there was no one overseeing us, so it was executive-free comedy and all the funnier for it. No executive has ever improved a comedy.”

But he does see value in at least one TV show: South Park. “What South Park is doing with Trump is heroic, and I know they’ve done him a lot of damage,” Idle continued. “There’s a reason Hitler and Trump get rid of the comedians first. They hate being laughed at. So, it’s great that Governor (Gavin) Newsom is taking the piss out of Trump and his hands. Comedy is saying the right thing at the wrong time. It’s so important. It’s telling truth to power, and it’s keeping people sane.”

These comments, made before the Jimmy Kimmel snafu, aren’t totally surprising considering that Idle voiced a character in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, a role that came about thanks to Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s love of Monty Python.

Idle’s enthusiasm for Newsom’s tweets, on the other hand, is less relatable.