'I think I can write as badly here as I can in London': Monty Python star Eric Idle's 55-year French escape from fame

The Monty Python star bought a shack in Provence in 1972. Here's how he spent the next 55 years making it his refuge from fame – and how it somehow became a celebrity retreat.

Eric Idle is enjoying a pain au chocolat in the Provençal village of Cotignac. He is also drinking a cuppa. It's a fitting paradox: Idle has made a career out of satirising Englishness, but one of Britain's funniest men has been quietly consorting with the French for 55 years.

"It chose me, in a way," Idle told the BBC.

He first came to Provence in the early 1970s, as Monty Python was making him increasingly famous, and was immediately smitten. "It was just idyllic. It was fantastic. I said, 'I think I can write as badly here as I can in London'."

Soon after, he bought a three-room shack with no road, water or electricity. Over the next 55 years, Idle turned it into a 22-acre "shackeau": part writing refuge, part escape from fame and, somewhat improbably, a hideaway for friends including David Bowie, George Harrison and Ronnie Wood.

Now, as he publishes Idle in Provence: A Brief History of Thyme, he reflects on the place in France that has shaped more than half his life.  

Eric Idle is a founding member of British comedy troupe Monty Python. The comedian, author, actor and musician has written many beloved songs, including Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, as well as the book and score for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Spamalot. He is the creator of the Beatles parody band, The Rutles. Originally from Essex, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Cotignac. 

(Credit: Courtesy of Eric Idle)

You've had this home for decades now. What does Provence give you that nowhere else does?

Relaxation. As soon as I'd get here, I'd walk around my grounds, and I'd start to smile and I wouldn't stop smiling until I left. It's comfortable and [the people] are very sweet. They're nice to me, though not in a way they'd recognise. That's just how they are. Someone once said. 'What's it like to be a foreigner?' And I said, oddly enough, I'm not really a foreigner because foreigners are people from Paris. So, I'm beyond the pale.    

What was it like for you here in the early days?

It was such a wreck you wouldn't believe it. It had no road, no water, no electricity. We built everything bit by bit. We first came in 1972, and I think we were eight years without electricity. It was great though. [We were] adapting to a life where everything was oil lamps. There were no telephones. You don't have the convenience of communications, but you get all the calm and peace that results from........

© BBC