I don't love Eric Idle like I love Pat Nevin, but I picked up his memoirs - inevitably called Always Look on the Bright Side of Life - at the library too.

An unexpected discovery from it is that Idle appeared in Oh, What a Lovely War! at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester in 1965. The director was Richard Eyre, who began his acting and directing career there.

To Idle's surprise he was asked to stay on for the next production, a Ray Cooney farce staged for Christmas audiences. But in it he proved the rightness of his own judgement that he lacked the discipline to be an actor.

He was in his dressing room one evening, writing sketches for I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, and noticed that things had grown strangely quiet.

The silence was broken when the leading man, tired of waiting for his cue, knocked to ask if Idle would like to join him on stage,

Reader's voice: But why have you chosen a picture of an elephant?

Liberal England replies: Because it shows Leicester in 1965. Or thereabouts.