Bright Side

Product Information

This goes from public schools to His mad days with David Jason, Peter Cooke his life long friendship with David Bowie & Robin Williams to ending up like his Grandfather in A circus to how Look on the bright side is played at funerals Hendrik Groen, pseudonym of Peter de Smet, is a Dutch writer. He is the author of the book Pogingen iets van het leven te maken: Het geheime dagboek van Hendrik Groen, 83¼ jaar ( The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old) published in 2014. That book was awarded in 2016 with the Audience Award for the Dutch Book. The sequel Zolang er leven is: het tweede geheime dagboek van Hendrik Groen, 85 jaar ( On the Bright Side: The New Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen) appeared in 2016. Having said that, this isn’t a sad story. I knew very little about much of Idle’s fame. For me, the Pythons were a troupe and I didn’t know much about any of them individually. They always seemed funniest when together, a chemical reaction that brought lightness into a dark world. Monty Python and the Holy Grail, their earlier movie, has always been my favorite, but learning just how many famous people befriended Idle has a way of making an aspiring writer jealous. The world loves people who can make you laugh. His description of Graham Chapman’s death was heartfelt, as was his writing of non-Python’s George Harrison. Idle survives as people he knows die. Robin Williams, another fallen comrade. While reading this book new of Terry Jones’ death hit the news.

CHASING THE BRIGHT SIDE - Jess Ekstrom CHASING THE BRIGHT SIDE - Jess Ekstrom

The first, and only truly difficult step, is to become famous. I’m not talking about the clichéd 15 minutes of fame here. That may be good for couch time on Good Morning America, but not a full length book. I think the bar for celebrity renown probably needs to be set high enough to appear on Saturday Night Live. Short of that, sales would be meager. Note that I’m excluding politicians and other infamous figures in this analysis since their memoirs are of a different sort. Of course, Eric Idle is a pretty recognizable name, at least among those old enough to know Monty Python. And he did host SNL several times. On The Bright Side is the second instalment of The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, written by Dutch Care Facility resident, Hendrik Groen, alias Dutch librarian, Peter de Smet. Hendrik is now eighty-five and, after a year’s hiatus due to grief over the passing of his good friend, Eefje Brand, he has once again decided to note down the year’s events, starting in January 2015.When I was given the opportunity to read this sequel to The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old I hurried to read the first book before I embarked on the second. Wondering now whether the second would work as a stand-alone I am inclined to think it would but a great deal of the poignancy of Hendrik’s story would suffer. When On the Bright Side opens, one of his friends has died and one is suffering from dementia and has been moved to a different part of the home. His friendships with both continue to be very important to him and that doesn’t quite come across in the sequel. Nor do the experiences he has already shared with the other members of the Old But Not Dead club. Read the first one first is my advice.

Bright Side — Inspiration. Creativity. Wonder. Bright Side — Inspiration. Creativity. Wonder.

Hendrik and his best friend Evert continue to get up to mischief – their stirring of trouble delights the group. Well something has to brighten their day, doesn’t it! With death getting closer to them all, a lot of the residents spend time going to funerals. But Hendrik no longer goes – he’ll be at his own soon enough he thinks! Basically, it's everything you could want from a celebrity tell all, and yet LOVELY. I can only think of one story that is unflattering to anyone (*cough*Deeprak Chopra is a prat*cough*). Instead Idle writes with love, with kindness, with admiration, and above all with humor, about the people and events that have shaped his life. He freely admits to his own mistakes, he brushes aside his own jealousies and frustrations in favor of telling the story that will make the reader smile, laugh, and even tear up. (I have never cared one way or the other about George Harrison, but I was ugly crying at the gym over his tribute to him.) Hendrik is now 85 years old set in 2015 and it tells of the life in a Care home in Amsterdam, and as a founding member of the Old-but-Not-Dead-Club. It tells of the outings they go on and also the fine dining restaurants and the relationships he has with the other members of the club and the other people in the Care home. They still try and have fun and live life to the fullest the best way they can. But Hendrik finds out that his best mate Evert has Cancer, an another of the residents has dementia. Not only that, they think that home future is unstable and maybe one day close. I liked how things were put into perspective by how Hendrik swapped his daily entries from pressing global and international issues to the very parochial trivia that consumed the residents of his care home. The joviality of the first book was still there in places but the overall take I got from this book was of a sadness brought about by coping with declining health, death of residents and a negative outlook on old age. The optimism of the first book has gone and I felt like the residents were just hanging around waiting to die. As you can tell from the title, the main achievement of his was the song, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life that he wrote for Monty Pythons’ Life of Brian. It has become a part of life around the world. It is the number one piece played at funerals in the UK, for example. Sports fans sing it loud when their team is losing. What would Spamalot have been without it? It’s the Greensleeves of the 21st century.It's only natural that a book about octogenarians will have its share of sad and moving moments, but the main message it conveys is that however limited life expectancy is, the Old But Not Dead Club will do its utmost to enjoy it! Immediately, there’s a chemistry that comes alive between them. Kate tries to suppress her intensifying feelings for him, but the more she gets to know him, the more she falls for everything about him. He’s smart, funny, caring, but also a bit of a mystery. The truth is, both Keller and Kate are keeping secrets. The kind of secrets that can change everything. “My life will not follow a fairy tale, and that’s okay. My life is reality. And in my reality people don’t fall in love and get married and live happily ever after, because life is complicated. And messy.”

Bright Side - Kim Holden - Google Books

Eric’s kind heart is obvious, as shown through his endearing friendships with George Harrison and Robin Williams, not to mention all the Pythons. He’s had a rich life full of love and good friends. Laughter really does bring people together. I’d love to hang out with him sometime. I’ll even supply the booze. I'm a big fan of Monty Python so I was eager to read this memoir. I really enjoyed it! Say no more, say no more, nudge, nudge! Yup, another geriatric fiction novel for me. We will just ignore the implications of this recent genre-love. I enjoy the Monty Python team and was hoping for a more meaningful insight into Eric Idle's life so this was a little disappointing. The book left me wanting to read a book by Michael Palin or John Cleese rather than to refer to what I had just read.So, to say that there is some repetition in plot points from the first book would be a fair criticism. But it would also be fair to point out that you don’t really notice until the end of the book, and then you don’t really care. I don’t read many celebrity memoirs, but it only takes a few to recognize patterns. Please see if my observations match your own experiences. I’ll use Eric Idle’s recent book to drive the points home.