Elvis Presley could have watched just about anything he wanted.
And one of his favorite things to watch, it turns out, came all the way from England.
The group was Monty Python. If you never caught them, they were a British comedy team whose TV show, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” was full of silly sketches. Eric Idle was one of the members, and he’s the one who told this story.
Idle never met Elvis. He was 14 in 1957, when Elvis “was everywhere,” as he put it. But he did meet someone very close to Elvis. “I never met Elvis, but I did meet his girlfriend, Linda Thompson,” Idle said. Linda told him all about how much Elvis loved the show.
During a talk at Google in December 2018, Idle shared what he’d learned.
“He was an enormous Python fan. And he had all the tapes on his plane, and he called everybody Squire after my nudge, nudge sketch.”
So there’s your word. Squire.
The sketch Idle mentioned is called “Nudge Nudge.” It aired in the third episode of the show’s very first series. Idle and fellow Python Terry Jones play two strangers in a pub, and the joke centers on a pushy, winking stranger.
Somewhere along the way, Elvis picked up “Squire” and ran with it. It became the word he used for the people around him.
Now think about that for a second. The King of Rock and Roll, greeting his buddies with a word that sounds like it came straight out of an old English pub.
Idle tells the story himself somewhere in this long talk, so grab a cup of coffee before you press play.
Eric Idle’s 2018 talk at Google, where he shared the Squire story
Elvis’s love for the Pythons didn’t stop at the TV show.
When the group made the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” word got back to them. “And we knew that he used to take the boys to the local cinema and watch Holy Grail four times,” Idle said. “The boys” were Elvis’s close friends, the same ones he was calling Squire.
Another Python, Michael Palin, heard about one scene in particular. “I remember hearing that Elvis, who I’d never met, loved the Knights Who Say Ni.”
If you’ve never seen it, or it’s been a few decades, this short clip will show you exactly the kind of nonsense that reportedly had Elvis hooked.
The Knights Who Say Ni scene from “Holy Grail”
There’s one more Python line that reportedly stuck with him. Sam Thompson, Linda’s brother and one of Elvis’s bodyguards, recalled that Elvis liked the Black Knight’s line from the movie, “It’s just a flesh wound.” He’d reportedly quote it after a show he wasn’t happy with.
That’s a pretty good way to shake off a rough night on stage.
Idle and Palin never did get to meet Elvis. They only heard the stories secondhand. But somewhere in those tapes on his plane, Elvis found a few laughs that stayed with him, and his friends got a funny new name out of the deal.