At 83, Eric Idle has revealed something unexpected about Robin Williams. Of all the famous people who stayed at his home in Provence, from David Bowie to George Harrison, Robin was the one he called “the most fun.” But twelve years after Robin’s death, Eric says the thing that stayed with him was not the laughter. It was something Robin did whenever an ordinary stranger approached him.
The memories came rushing back while Eric was revisiting that French life for his new 2026 memoir, “Idle in Provence.” The story reaches back to London in 1980. Eric and Shelley Duvall went to watch Robin perform, just as “Mork & Mindy” (1978) had made his rubber-faced alien Mork a sensation and Duvall was appearing opposite him in “Popeye” (1980). Eric knew comedy from the inside, yet Robin could still astonish him. A night watching that explosive young performer became a friendship that soon escaped stages and dressing rooms.
Robin began turning up at Eric’s home in Provence, where fame could finally loosen its grip. Eric remembers roughly three visits, first with Robin’s wife Valerie and later with Marsha. The property itself had begun as a rough refuge Eric bought in 1971, long before it became the sort of place where Bowie, Harrison Ford, Paul Simon and Penny Marshall might pass through. Out in the French countryside, even people that famous could sometimes just go get bread.
That freedom gave Eric a different view of Robin. There was no microphone in his hand, no audience waiting for another voice or character, and no need to be the fastest man in the room. Years later, Eric would describe the friendship in painfully simple terms. “He was just a great mate. I loved him. We’d go on holidays together. I never expected to out-survive him.”
But when strangers did recognize Robin, Eric started noticing something else. A fan would come over carrying that nervous excitement celebrities know immediately. Eric’s instinct could be wickedly dismissive. Robin’s was different. He gave the person a moment. He listened. He treated the interruption as something that mattered because, to the person standing there, it probably did.
Eric eventually understood why it was getting under his skin. “I watched Robin and his empathy and remembering that this is somebody’s moment in their life and it’s a big moment in their life.” That thought followed Eric into his own encounters. Instead of treating a fan as an anonymous interruption, he began asking a name and introducing himself back. Suddenly the exchange became two people talking, not a star trying to escape somebody who admired him.
There was something almost funny about Robin Williams teaching Eric Idle restraint. Eric has joked openly about how unpleasant he could be when people approached him. Yet Robin never sat him down for a lecture. He simply behaved differently in front of him. Eric watched, felt the contrast, and eventually had to confront the uncomfortable question himself. Why be nasty when kindness costs only a few seconds?
That lesson became heavier after 2014. While Monty Python was preparing its reunion shows, Eric asked Robin to appear on the final night as a masked celebrity who would be dramatically unmasked. Robin said he did not want to be onstage. For a man Eric knew as almost incapable of resisting performance, the answer felt strange only in hindsight. Not long afterward, Robin died at 63.
Writing about him later hurt enough that Eric admitted he had almost avoided it. “Robin was a very good friend and just a wonderful man, a really really generous, lovely genius and that was just so heart-rending.” The memories included vacations, laughter and those visits to Provence, but Eric’s most enduring change came from watching Robin interact with people who could offer him nothing except affection.
Robin made Eric laugh. Then, without trying, he made him kinder.
