Monty Python star Eric Idle insists he WANTS to be ‘cancelled’ for his politically incorrect comedy

Famed English comedian Eric Idle says he wants to be ‘cancelled’ for his comedy.

The 76-year-old prankster, who first rose to fame in the 1960s as a founding member of the Monty Python comedy team, has been outspoken about political correctness.

He says there is a lot of bullying in the name of decency.

“I’d like to be canceled so I can go home and read a book and not have to make an a**e of myself all over the world,” Idle joked in The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday.

Idle, who is in Australia this week to perform a show in Sydney, explained in chat that he thinks comedy is about saying the wrong thing at the right time.

“You have to remember that Python was offensive when it started. We weren’t the cuddly old f***ers we are today,” he told the publication.

“It was very insulting. It was absolutely about upsetting and insulting the bourgeois.”

After his BBC debut in 1969, Monty Python earned a reputation for outrageous, surreal, often violent and sexual humour.

Idle says the point of comedy is to test boundaries and say the “unsayable.”

“And who are the people who say you can’t do that?” he says. ‘I do not understand that. Who is the committee doing this?

‘It sounds a bit like the committees of the French Revolution, who said ‘shut the fuck up’. I think there’s a lot of bullying in the name of decency.”

Monty Python, who formally broke up three decades ago, often attracted notoriety and scandal.

Their films Monty Python and The Holy Grail (1975) and Monty’s Python Meaning of Life (1983) became box office hits and shocked audiences.

But it was their 1979 hit Life of Brian, a parody of devout religious movie epics, that sparked a storm of protest worldwide.

Set in the time of Christ, the film has a climax where the hero, Brian (Graham Chapman), a Jew, is crucified for being mistaken for a messiah by the Romans.

As he and others hang from crosses, they sing “Always Look on The Bright Side of Life,” a happy sing-along composed by Idle.

Idle has been condemned as blasphemous by various religious groups and says the film would never be made today because “you don’t laugh at religion.”

The comedian was recently successfully treated after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Idle will appear alongside Shaun Micallef on Thursday at Sydney’s State Theater in the Just for Laughs comedy event.