'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.

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 not having them.

I'd lived in London for 15 years; I'd worked at the BBC. I'd always been doing television and writing things, so it was nice to get away from all that. I had a little writing shack up in the woods that burned down in '79. I liked the routine of going up there early in the morning, taking my flask of tea up the hill and writing about what I was thinking. And for the rest of the day, I could enjoy myself.

What makes Cotignac such a good place to escape from fame?

[The locals] don't care. It's no big deal. I believe even [George] Clooney comes and dines here. I think that's because it's more comfortable. You really don't want people pretending to take selfies and all that. It's hard. It stops you being completely relaxed. Here, the people are just getting on with their own lives.

Did the locals eventually come to accept you?

I was [seen as] a visitor for many years. We were living just outside the village. I knew at first the people who helped us build the house: the carpenters, the glaziers. Then, in 1983, The Meaning of Life won the jury prize at Cannes. It was on the front of [the local paper] Var-Matin. They finally realised what I did for a living – that I was a lunatic, an idiot! They were very nice about it, very proud that we won as part of the village.

Did they get your humour or was it lost in translation?

The French actually liked Python from about The Holy Grail in 1975. We had to go to Paris to open it and they loved that. They liked The Life of Brian, but they thought it wasn't blasphemous enough. So, a very French reaction.

In your book you describe having to learn French. Have you made any faux pas in your adopted language?

I once asked a waiter for a cul de Champagne [arse of Champagne] instead of a coupe de Champagne [glass of Champagne] and watched him biting his lip. He was laughing so hard I realised I'd got it wrong.

You were retreating from celebrity life, but ironically, your "shackeau" turned into a sort of celebrity retreat. Do you have any stories to tell about visits from your famous friends?

Ronnie Wood was the first. He came up on a motorbike. He was just joining the Stones and Mick [Jagger] had given him two [cassette] tapes – all the Stones songs he had to learn, and another tape about 'how to get laid' in French.

I took David Bowie to the local coffee bar, the Modern Bar. [A woman called] Muriel ran it. I knew she had pictures of Bowie inside, so I didn't take him in. We sat outside and had a coffee, and she couldn't believe it. She looked at me and just went to get the coffees. But it was lovely because nobody made a fuss. And I could never do anything wrong with Muriel after that.

George Harrison was here early 1978. There's a picture of him outside my writing shack. He looks a bit bothered. We were on our way to watch Barry Sheen at the motorcycling grand prix.

Cotignac was known as the Saint-Tropez of the Haut-Var for a very small amount of time. There are recording studios at Miraval [nearby]. I went there one night in 1979, and [Pink Floyd guitarist] Roger Waters was recording Another Brick in the Wall. So, he had: 'We don't need no education' and, I said, 'You do. We don't need any education, if you don't mind'. We became pals for a little bit – tax exiles.

Has living outside Britain made you feel more or less English?

I am what I am… inescapably English.

This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.

BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers. 

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