A founding member of the renowned Monty Python comedy troupe, Eric Idle was born March 29, 1943, in South Shields, England; when he was just two years old, his father, a member of the Royal Air Force, died in an automobile crash. After attending boarding school in Wolverhampton, Idle studied English at Cambridge University, where he also served as president of the famed Footlights comedy group in 1964. He first met future Python collaborators John Cleese and Graham Chapman while appearing on the 1967 sketch comedy series At Last the 1948 Show, with the troupe -- also consistin...