I think the thing about comedy is it's disastrous when you want to be liked. And you're much more of the mercy of executives in that form. They edited us hardly at all until about, they hardly watched it, actually - which was good. Until about the third series, and they cut one or two things, but only small things by today's standards. Such as? They cut out a sketch, which was a wine tasting sketch. It was completely a urine joke.
Should anything be off-limits in comedy? Kara and Nayeema discuss this question, and the recent Dave Chappelle SNL monologue, before Kara’s interview with our guest today: writer-comedian Eric Idle who is an OG in the craft. When he and his fellow sketch artists launched Monty Python on the BBC in 1969, it was unclear whether anyone would even watch. Now there are generations of Python fans. Today, Idle talks about what made Monty Python unique and how they pushed the line and the social conversation with their unique brand of humor.
Both avid Twitterers, Kara and Idle also discuss their frustrations with Elon Musk (he’s a noted fan of Monty Python, though Idle is not a fan of Musk). And Idle describes how his recent bout with pancreatic cancer has made him a more accepting person.
You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema.
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