Eric Idle and John Cleese of Monty Python bring live show to Santa Rosa

The Monty Python’s Flying Circus comedy troupe gave its last live performance two years ago in London, but the show’s not over yet.

The farewell at London’s O2 arena featured all five surviving members: Eric Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones. (The sixth Python, Graham Chapman, died in 1989.)

This year, Idle, 73, and Cleese, 76, are on the road again as a twosome, with a show that combines their onstage reminiscences, reinforced by clips from the Python TV series of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and live skits and songs that include some new bits.

Idle chatted with The Press Democrat by phone last week from Los Angeles, offering his offbeat observations on touring, aging and the lasting appeal of Monty Python humor, stopping briefly to talk to his cat.

Q: This tour is called “Together Again at Last ... For the Very First Time.” Is it the first time you and John Cleese have toured as a duo?

A: No. Actually, it’s “together again for the third time.” I suggested that title, but John said no, it might confuse people. We went out last October to Florida. We thought we’d go to Florida first, where the people were even older than we are. We appeared as young comedians in Florida. Then in February and March, we toured Australia and New Zealand. So now this is our third outing in a year. It’s amazing.

Q: Is the current tour more extensive than the previous ones?

A: It’s a big one. It’s a 34-date tour. We got a bus.

Q: Like rock stars?

A: Well no, it’s more like old people in a Winnebago, driving around America like the rest of the old people. What’s nice is you can lie down and have a nap in the afternoon on the way to the gig. This is much more civilized. You can have a cup of tea and something to eat. You don’t have to go through bloody airports and take your shoes off all the time.

Q: One of the Australian newspapers characterized your tour there as being the last chance to see you two, but it doesn’t appear that way now.

A: One would hope not, but I think it’s the last chance to see us before we’re dead. It’s the “Not Yet Dead Tour.” There’s a certain amount of people coming out to see you ... Sorry, the cat is biting my denims. Knock it off! ... because you can’t go on forever.

Q: What do you enjoy most about this tour?

A: It’s very good-humored. It’s very much a nice conversation. If I get bored, or if he gets bored, we can interrupt each other. It’s got an improv feeling to it. If we forget things, it doesn’t matter at all. There are nice clips from the “Monty Python” show and funny things to see. There are live bits we recreate, not anything anybody knows. The sketches are just as funny, but they were never in Python, or they were from a different show.

Q: How do the fans relate to you?

A: They sing along. When required, they sing the names of the great philosophers, which is amazing to me that an entire audience will know the names of all these philosophers. The audiences are very good. We play with them and we tease them. We play tricks on them. It’s a nice exchange. They know what they’re going to get, but they want to see us because we’re coming to their neck of the woods, and that’s nice.

Q: Why do you think your comedy has lasted so long?

A: “Python” humor is fairly generic. That’s why it has an appeal that still lasts, unlike early “Saturday Night Live” episodes, where you don’t necessarily remember that President Gerald Ford fell down a lot. There’s no context required to enjoy the “Python” sketches. It doesn’t have to be topical. It doesn’t have to come off the headlines.

Q: Is it fun to revisit some of that material?

A: I love being in John’s sketches with him, because he’s so good to perform with. Why is that? Because he never lets on for a second that it’s funny. When I first saw him in 1963. he was in the Cambridge Revue, and they would smile and laugh and be funny. Not for a second would John break character or even acknowledge he was being funny.

Q: You two have known each other pretty much forever, haven’t you? You met in college.

A: It’s been 53 years. We were in the same Footlights Club Revue. It was his last year at Cambridge and my first year. I first performed a piece of his material in my very first performance in a college revue, and he was there. In the show, we talk about when we met. Our lives are intertwined. These odd patterns emerge. You think you’re never going to see somebody again, and then suddenly doing this or that together. It doesn’t go away.

Q: Do you think there’s another “Python” reunion in the future?

A: No, we did that two years ago, and now Jonesy (“Monty Python” co-founder Terry Jones) has dementia, and Michael Palin doesn’t like to perform, so this tour is as close as we’ll get, with two Pythons. At the O2 Arena in London in 2014, we did every famous Python sketch anyone would ever want to see, and we hadn’t performed together for 30 years. It was a very nice way to end.

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @danarts.