Editor Harry Mount selects some of the best moments from the latest October 2026 issue of The Oldie
In the October issue of The Oldie, Eric Idle talks to Harry Mount about his new book, Idle in Provence, about his 55 years living in France.
The Provence wildfires this summer came within four miles of the remote house where Eric Idle has lived for 55 years.
‘It was a monster,’ says Idle, 83. ‘29 houses were burnt down near here. It had been as dry as a bone for a month.’
Eric also reveals how the other surviving Pythons (Michael Palin, John Cleese and Terry Gilliam) haven’t talked to Eric Idle for four years.
‘I don’t know why, to be honest. It’s very weird. They got a million dollars for not writing a musical,’ says Eric, referring to his musical Spamalot.
Even Michael Palin, the Nicest Man in the World, isn’t talking to him?
‘Even the Nicest Man in the World,’ he says.
In a deeply moving piece, John Humphrys recalls being the first reporter on the scene at the Aberfan disaster 60 years ago.
John writes, ‘By the time I arrived, every mother in the village was there. Most were holding on to each other for support. All of them were staring in the same direction at a scene they could not have imagined in their worst nightmare. Most were sobbing. Some were standing silently. Some seemed to be praying. Others were clinging tightly to the small babies in their arms, pressing them against their chests.’
And, in his diary, Frederic Raphael, 95, the Oscar-winning screenwriter, recalls meeting an old lover of Frank Sinatra’s.
‘What was sex like with the legendary cocksman?
“Oh,” she said, “you know: push and squirt.”’
In a review of Rachael Stirling’s memoir about her mother, Diana Rigg, Simon Williams, star of Upstairs, Downstairs, recalls working with her:
‘I played opposite Diana once in Noël Coward's Hay Fever in Chichester. One night in our two-handed scene, she dried, stone dead. But, with her unerring survival instinct, she gave me that beguiling smile of hers and said sweetly, "Why don't you say something?"’
And Tom Courtenay remembers turning Omar Sharif, his co-star in Dr Zhivago, into a football fan:
‘I was fond of Omar. We used to tune into the Hull City score service and he became a Hull City supporter.’
All these gripping pieces are in the latest issue. And below are four more articles in full. Enjoy!
