Michael Palin A Life on Screen

I would describe him as a gentleman.

Well, it's still very tense here.

Anything could happen at any minute - honestly!

Funny, amusing gent, I have to say.

Welease Woger!

CROWD CHEERS

Michael's genius is to come up with an extraordinary array

of funny characters.

SHOUTING: Arrange them nicely in a vase!

I've always admired Michael as an actor.

He's a terrific actor.

Stalin?

There's a kind of fire in his eyes.

I must have wronged him so badly.

Michael, to me, hasn't changed

and that's kind of remarkable given the huge success

and the way his career has blossomed into different fields.

He's quite an exceptional man.

I'm more likely to be mad than you.

He really created a new animal in television.

The kind of irreverent travel documentary.

So that's what a field looks like.

Well, everybody says how nice Michael is,

but they don't know the real Michael as I do.

He is, in fact, a very ambitious, ruthless, vicious bastard.

A sociopath really because he has no feelings for all the people

on whose careers he has trodden.

It gives me great personal pleasure to present

the BAFTA Fellowship for 2013

to my dear friend Michael Palin.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Everybody stood up, which was rather wonderful, apart from my family,

who were all in the front row.

They couldn't see that everyone else was standing up all around them

so they were just sitting there, saying "Oh, Dad."

Humour. What is it? Where does it come from?

Is it genetic or environmental?

Are comedians born or are they made?

I was born in Sheffield in South Yorkshire

on the 5th of May, 1943.

I had quite a sort of regular, I suppose, middle class childhood.

My father worked at an office in the steelworks. He was export manager.

My father had quite a bad stammer and I think that made him

very frustrated sometimes

and rather curmudgeonly every now and then

and he could get very cross and he could get very angry

and he could be fine, he could be lovely.

I'm afraid his father was the least funny man I've ever met.

He was an angry man imprisoned by a terrible stutter.

Michael's mother however was lovely.

She was just so nice.

And she was quite interested in the fact that

I was interested in things like acting and all that,

whereas my father just thought that acting was a slippery slope

to decadence and wandering the streets of London with lewd company

and no money at all and having to come back to him

and ask him for money, so he wasn't very keen on the acting.

As children, my sister Angela and I were not exactly pampered,

but we were secure.

I went for walks, holiday trips to Norfolk,

played French cricket and drank my welfare state orange juice,

and at the grand age of five I was promptly sent out into the world

to be educated.

MUSIC: School Day by Chuck Berry

# Up in the mornin' and out to school

# The teacher is teachin' the Golden Rule. #

I do remember when I was ten years old because it was 1953 and it was

the Coronation and I used to do a little show for anyone who

wanted to come along in the milk room during the break.

I can remember doing improvisations in here.

I must have been about nine or ten

cos it was vaguely satirical material about the Coronation.

The Duke of Edinburgh being caught short in the Abbey.

But I can remember garnering a little audience of loyal people who

just came along and laughed at me, so I suppose by the time I was ten,

I knew that I could make people laugh.

-RADIO:

-# And much binding in the marsh. #

We did listen to certain comedy shows on the radio.

Much Binding In The Marsh, Take It From Here, very funny shows,

and that was one thing that really united the family.

My father, mother and myself, and my sister if she was there,

we'd all sit round, but then I discovered the Goon shows.

-RADIO:

-This is BBC light programmes and candidly, I'm fed up with it.

Careful there, Wallace,

otherwise I'll be forced to speak to John Snagge.

These were something that I knew that I could never explain to my

father and I just hoped and prayed that my father would never come in

but he did come in and it was in the one of the extreme moments where

Minnie and Henry Crun were talking.

HE IMPERSONATES: Min, what the hell you doing?

I'm going to go open the window!

And he said to me, "Is the set broken, old boy?"

I said, "No, no, no, that's the way it's supposed to be."

He could never understand.

He thought there was something wrong with the sound system

causing these falsettos.

ORGAN MUSIC PLAYS

Oxford University, one of the world's great seats of learning,

but it's also a crucible, a melting pot of ideas, thoughts...

CAR HORN HONKS

HE SCREAMS

There are certain things I would point to at Oxford which

changed the direction of my life and one of them certainly

was on the first day meeting someone called Robert Hewison.

I first met Michael in the autumn of 1962,

my first day at university,

and it so happened that Michael was going to same college.

We both loved the Goon shows and Peter Sellers

and all that sort of stuff.

We did work terribly hard at university,

but at being funny rather than actually doing any academic work.

Me being the pushier one of the two,

I got us our first gig for the university psychological society.

Which I remember fondly because we hardly got a laugh

and we did 30 minutes and you could have heard a pin drop.

# Here I go again. #

I suppose the most important thing I did there was to be chosen to be

in the Oxford University Revue at the Edinburgh Festival.

# There I was

# All by myself

# Doin' all right. #

There was myself, Terry Jones, Annabel Leventon,

Doug Fisher and Nigel Pegram.

Just the five of us.

Terry Jones and myself had met at Oxford and we wrote the revue

together and performed it together

in a hall which was lent to us

by the Edinburgh parks and burials department.

We came to here, the great temple of the arts,

the Cranston Street Hall.

-Oh, the name, what it meant in those days.

-Yes.

Everyone was just desperate for somewhere to perform

and we got the parks and burials department headquarters.

Being on stage there doing new material that we'd...

I'd written some of it, Terry had written some of it,

was just a feeling that,

"Hey, just possibly, just possibly, one could do this

"for a living."

The difference between doing a revue in Oxford than Edinburgh

was in Edinburgh, people noticed you,

people from the outside world, impresarios.

David Frost coming backstage and talking to you, you know,

people from London taking notice.

You gradually got the feeling that it was going in a direction.

David Frost had come up to the Edinburgh Revue.

He'd actually come talent spotting and had seen us,

so we're all crammed at the bottom of the stairs.

We're all trying to get in front of David Frost

so he'll recognise us in the future.

I, unfortunately, got the back of his head,

but Terry got in front of him and he said, "We like it very much."

# I'm in with the in-crowd

# I go where the in-crowd go. #

Thanks to a contact, a friend of a friend at Oxford,

I was asked to audition as a presenter

of a television pop show called Now...

..which was being put on in Bristol by Television Wales and the West,

and, erm... I got the job.

MUSIC: It's Not Unusual by Tom Jones

It was really enjoyable to do. Tom Jones was just starting.

He'd come on every other week.

Eric Clapton was there regularly.

# It's not unusual to have fun with anyone

# But when I see you hanging about with anyone

# It's not unusual to see me cry

# I wanna die. #

Although it may not have been the greatest show ever,

it did pay me £30 a week

and I got married in 1966 on that,

so I'd invested a lot into getting into television

and it was a very hairy existence.

You didn't know where the next job was going to come from.

Fortunately, I had Terry then

so the two of us worked pretty well together.

The Frost Report came along and we were

contacted by James Gilbert, Jimmy Gilbert,

who was the producer who said,

"David saw you up in Edinburgh and are you still writing with Terry?

"We'd love you to be contributors to the programme."

And I think The Frost Report was the first time where I felt

we could, Mike and I, could get material on.

There was one about what judges do when the court has risen.

They go out back of the courtroom and into a fairground.

Ooh, up and down the slide and all that in judges' outfits.

We were able to get one or two long sketches accepted.

This was the holy grail of The Frost Report was to get a long sketch

accepted because they were generally John Cleese

and Graham Chapman, who I didn't know particularly well at that time,

but they were supplying some wonderful material.

We were all on the writers' table for The Frost Report

beginning of '66, you know,

with Dick Vosburgh and Barry Cryer and Chapman, Eric, Terry Jones.

There was Marty Feldman.

Lots of people who'd been working far longer than we had

and were very good so you had to find your little niche.

# It's all too beautiful. #

Mike Palin and I had been working for The Frost Report, I suppose,

through 1966, something like that,

and in probably late '66 or early '67, I got a phone call

from Humphrey Barclay, who was a young thrusting producer

in light entertainment for Rediffusion.

He asked me if I'd like to combine with Eric Idle

and write and perform a children's show.

So we all got together.

Humphrey had independently found a guy called David Jason.

So we were all young and keen,

you know, sparkling with energy

and desperate to want to get on and do it.

Do not adjust your set.

I'm Terry Jones and I'm King Lear.

I'm Eric Idle and I'm Edmund.

I'm Michael Palin and I'm Cordelia.

And I'm David Jason and I'm the King of France.

It was a bit like Python was to be, really.

You would tend to... We were writing it...

Eric, Terry and myself were writing

and you tend to play some of the characters that you've written.

Mike Palin had that extra quality where he couldn't help but be funny.

I am not a criminal.

I am, in fact, a stool pigeon.

-You what?

-I am a plain-clothed police officer in disguise.

So am I. Superintendent Jackson, CID.

Well, so am I. Sergeant Pepper, Criminal Records.

So am I. Police Constable Raymond Francis, Q Division.

We used to watch Do Not Adjust Your Set which was a kids' programme

allegedly but funnier than anything else on adult television.

Well, it's still very tense here.

Anything could happen at any minute - honestly!

Mike Palin and the writers,

they wanted to expand their writing to include more adult material,

because they were having to cut so much of their material

because the producers were saying,

"No, no, we can't use that. Cut that out."

With only 15 seconds left,

there's just time for a quick word from David.

-Boot!

-It's the end!

After Do Not Adjust Your Set in 1968, say, early '69,

we were writing for anyone wherever we could.

We just needed the money.

We had our first child in 1968.

There was mortgage to pay and all that sort of thing,

so you just needed to keep working.

And we came up with this idea of treating the history

of Britain as if television had been there at the time.

It was a kind of loose format,

but it meant you could do lots of jokes about history, really.

I mean, an estate agent showing somebody Stonehenge.

-Cosy, innit?

-Well...

As I say, it's ideal for a young couple like yourselves

with 30 or 40 children.

It's got character, charm and a slab in the middle.

-What about the gaps?

-Doors?

Isn't it a bit draughty in winter?

Not if you keep running about, dear. Not if you keep running about.

I thought it was funny.

I remember them interviewing Richard III in the bath

with the rest of the team after whatever battle it was.

Bosworth Field? No, no, he lost that one.

Well, anyway, I always thought they were funny.

-You must be very pleased with the boys?

-Certainly am, David.

They did a wonderful job.

-Did you expect to win?

-Well, I never had any doubts, David.

The boys have been fighting very well on the Continent,

but this was the big one they were all looking forward to.

That was where we got the idea of telephoning them and saying,

"Why don't we get together in a group and do a show together?"

So when he did ring up, I think in April 1969, and said,

"Oh, I've just seen your series,

"The Complete And Utter History Of Britain."

I was rather pleased and said, "Oh, good, good."

He said, "You won't be doing any more of those, will you?"

which is very much more John.

And we got together and had a couple of friendly chats

and then went off to the BBC to see

the Head of Light Entertainment, Head of Comedy, Michael Mills,

who asked us what we were proposing to do

and we were unable to tell him.

We were so wonderfully, gloriously incompetent and badly prepared.

He just asked what sort of...

What's it going to be called for a start?

And we said, "Well, we don't know."

"Well, will it have music? Music interlude?"

"I don't know."

And he looked at us with pity as we tried to stagger our way

through a meeting that we hadn't prepared for.

And at the end he stood up and this is just quite extraordinary,

probably the most wonderful words I've ever heard uttered.

He said, "All right, I'll give you 13 shows, but that's all."

And now for something completely different.

It's...

Monty Python's Flying Circus-s-s!

A comedy show written by a small group of people

that liked each other's work and see what would come of it.

It was simple as that and, most extraordinarily, the mix worked.

It worked ever so well. I don't quite know why. It just did.

So the thing about Python was we were a good team

because we were all good at different things

and people forget that that's what you want in a team.

You don't want people who are good at the same thing.

Michael's really good at diffusing tension in a group situation

or hostilities.

He has a natural gift for that and that goes a long way.

Sometimes he can be annoyingly conciliatory.

Sometimes you want him to stand up for a point of view.

I always used to say he could have tea with Hitler and Stalin

and they'd both come away with the impression he was on their side.

He's immensely agreeable.

-Is it funny?

-It is funny, yeah.

It's just a matter of working it out when you do it with someone.

It held together better than I expected.

In a sense, the most important part of the process of putting

a show together was that first reading.

If something made everybody laugh hilariously,

like the dead parrot, that was gold star. That went on a pile.

I wish to make a complaint.

-Sorry, we're closing for lunch.

-Never mind that, my lad.

I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased

not half an hour ago from this very boutique.

Oh, yes, the Norwegian Blue. What's wrong with it?

I'll tell you what's wrong with it.

It's dead, that's what's wrong with it.

Nah, nah, it's resting, look.

I could write almost anything. I...

I liked more the kind of surreal ideas.

# I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK

# I sleep all night, I work all day

# He's a lumberjack and he's OK

# He sleeps all night and he works all day. #

Michael was the only person in the group who could have played

that part because he has that natural butchness about him.

He's very male, but there's a sweetness too,

so I think that added to the humour of it.

# I cut down trees, I wear high heels, suspenders and a bra

# I wish I'd been a girlie, just like my dear mama. #

But his great gift is characters, rather than dialogue itself.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

The Fish Slapping Dance, it's very strange cos it feels as though

we improvised it, but we clearly didn't.

There's something about the Fish Slapping Dance,

I've not found anybody who... Well, I would say it's the perfect test of

whether you have a sense of humour or not.

But when he does that dainty hopping around to the music,

it's absolutely wonderful and then

when we were rehearsing it, the water was much higher in the lock.

When we came to shoot it, it dropped about to about 12 feet

but Michael goes right in.

And what I love about it is it's so hard to say why it's funny.

And yet nearly everybody smiles and some people fall about,

so I would regard that the high point of my career.

COCONUT SHELLS CLIP-CLOPPING

Whoa, there!

All I remember is that we had no idea what we were doing

although I think we didn't realise quite how clueless we were

so when we sat down to write The Holy Grail,

the first draft, we threw away 90% of.

It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon

from the castle of Camelot.

King of the Britons, defeater of the Saxons.

Sovereign of all England.

-Pull the other one.

-I am!

Terry and myself had written a sketch about two people

coming up to battlements with coconuts and all that.

It was a very silly idea and didn't really go anywhere,

but when we were all talking together,

as happened with Python, sort of ripples go round,

ideas bounce off each other and someone said,

"Why don't we do a story of The Holy Grail?"

The key scene was the moment when Michael wrote the coconuts

and we then realised that that's what it was about.

I mean, earlier we'd had King Arthur wandering through the pet department

of Harrods going to buy a pet ant.

You see what I mean? We were all over the shop.

Once we saw Michael's sketch, I remember thinking,

"We have a movie."

-It's very scripted?

-As ever, yes.

It's very scripted and then we get together and just about ten minutes

before a take, the script is slightly rewritten.

About five minutes before the take, it's fairly radically rewritten,

so in fact at the very last minute,

there's usually some little extra bits creep in.

Hello!

Hello, who is it?

It is King Arthur and these are my Knights of the Round Table.

Whose castle is this?

This is the castle of my master, Guy de Lombard!

We'd chosen Scotland because wonderful scenery that was free

and, in fact, it wasn't that easy.

Some of the castles in Scotland

are really impressive that we wanted to use,

and they're owned by the National Trust for Scotland

and they weren't particularly keen.

They weren't at all keen that we should use them.

They said the script was not compatible with the dignity

of the fabric of the buildings.

You know, these were buildings they poured boiling oil down.

People's heads had been put on spikes at the gate,

but not comedy, no, so we ended up using a privately-owned castle

called Doune Castle and that was great.

They were very nice and let us

muck around and throw cows over the battlements and that sort of thing.

If you do not agree to my commands, then I shall...

COW MOOS

Jesus Christ!

Crikey!

And they've done well out of it because now they're the place

where Japanese tourists go to see where Monty Python filmed.

And the gift shop, they very presciently decided

to sell coconut halves

and do very well out of it.

-You're using coconuts.

-What?

You've got two empty halves of coconut

-and you're banging them together.

-So?

We had to reassure ourselves at the end of each day

that what we'd done was funny.

And I particularly remember the Knights Who Say Ni...

Ni, ni, ni, ni, ni.

-Who are you?

-We are the Knights Who Say...

-..ni, ni, ni, ni, ni.

-No, not the Knights Who Say Ni?

-The same.

..which was done fairly late on in the day in the middle of some woods.

It was quite cold. I had to stand on top of a ladder to make me tall

and then this huge helmet was put on my head

so I couldn't really see much

and then, you know, somehow through the comedy of the sketch,

I just had the feeling why are we doing this?

This is just not going to work.

We shall say ni again to you if you do not appease us.

We'll, what is it you want?

We want...

..a shrubbery!

A what?

But, in the end, who knows?

In the end it's now something that everybody sort of remembers -

the Knights Who Say Ni.

-Ni, ni, ni, ni, ni.

-Ah, please, please, no more!

I thought Michael's scene with the Knights of Ni was inspired

and it's one of those things, it means nothing.

That's what's so laughable about it.

It means absolutely nothing

and in the end it's one of the ones that everyone always talks about.

# My school, my school

# How bravely she stands. #

It was the BBC approaching Michael to do his own show.

They recognised that he's a star and would be really good at it,

but Michael's such a nice chap he had to bring his old partner along,

so I had to be involved.

The reason behind the Ripping Yarns was we felt

if we're going to do something with two Pythons in it,

writing and performing, it actually... It can't be like Python.

We've got to make it as far away as possible.

Terry Jones and myself had experimented

with longer narrative formats in the Python shows and so we thought,

"Well, let's try and do little half-hour stories."

Thank you, Foster. Next, please.

Meeting the headmaster was just one of those ghastly chores

which produced such depression within me.

-CANE SWIPES

-Oooh, that's better!

There was also the compulsory fight with a grizzly bear,

which all new boys had to go through.

Mike comes up with the whole Tomkinson's Schooldays was his idea.

He wrote the first five or ten minutes

and... I think that was a cry from the heart from his point of view,

that it was actually ABOUT his schooldays.

And there was St Tadger's Day when, by an old tradition,

boys who had been at the school for less that two years,

were allowed to be nailed to the walls by senior pupils.

People make the connection that it was based on my schooldays,

but no-one got nailed to the school wall when I was at Shrewsbury,

nor did we have a school leopard that patrolled,

waiting to catch boys who were trying to escape.

Tomkinson!

I was 17 miles from Graybridge

before I was caught by the school leopard.

Spike sent me a fan letter after the first Ripping Yarn

in his very distinctive style.

"More Ripping Yarns, please. Yours, Spike."

That was one of the best communications I've ever received.

# Brian

# The babe they call Brian. #

The Life Of Brian had to be set in the Holy Land or something

that looked like the Holy Land,

so it had to be sort of desert and rocky so we chose Tunisia.

Good morning, Michael.

I was just practising for the burning fiery bush scene.

-Oh, right.

-Carry on.

-He's written a fiery bush scene.

-Good luck with the make-up sketch.

-In it, what Michael has...

-..is a strong grip.

-Oh, John, hurry up and get made up.

TRUMPET FANFARE

CROWDS CHEER

When we had crowd scenes,

we had local extras and it was rather bizarre

cos a lot of Muslim shepherds coming in to do a send up of,

you know, Christianity.

They couldn't really sort of get to grips with it really.

People of Jerusalem.

There was one scene where I'm being... Pilate is talking about

"Welease Woger" and all that sort of stuff.

Welease Woger!

He wanks higher than any in Wome!

They all have to roar with laughter at him.

This man commands a cwack legion!

CROWD LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY

He wanks as high as any in Wome!

CROWD LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY

They didn't get it the first time at all

and the second time, Terry Jones, as the director,

came up and actually showed them what to do.

He did this amazing act just rolling on his back going...

"Ah-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!"

Cackled with laughter, kicked his legs in the air.

I got up and I said to the assistant director,

"Just tell them to do what I do, all right?"

"Blah-blah-blah-blah."

And I sort of started laughing hilariously

and then fell on my back and wagged my legs in the air.

And they were all laughing at Terry and what he'd done.

This was the director, the man who was telling them what to do.

Their laughter was actually laughing at him,

rather than what I was doing.

All right, sir. My final offer, half a shekel for an old ex-leper?

Did you say ex-leper?

That's right, sir. 16 years behind the bell and proud of it, sir.

-Well, what happened?

-I was cured, sir.

-Cured?

-Yes, a bloody miracle, sir. God bless you.

-Who cured you?

-Jesus did, sir.

I was hopping along, minding my own business.

All of a sudden, up he comes. Cures me!

One minute I'm a leper with a trade, next minute my livelihood's gone.

Not so much as a by-your-leave. "You're cured mate."

Bloody do-gooder!

I think it's a very good joke.

It's the nearest you can get to actually making a joke about Christ.

People being so ungrateful.

-There you are.

-Thank you, sir.

Half a denarii for me bloody life story?!

There's no pleasing some people.

That's just what Jesus said, sir.

I knew that some people, whatever you said or felt, would be upset

just by having Monty Python and Jesus mentioned in the same film,

because some people just can't see comedy as helping you understand

things better or feel more comfortable about things

through comedy. They see comedy definitely

as something kind of which is

essentially destructive and I just don't see that.

I think quite the opposite.

When Saturday Night Live was kind of going from round about after

Python broke in the States,

and in 1984 I was asked to go over there and host.

And it was my mother's 80th birthday and I took her

and my sister to New York and Lorne Michaels, the producer

of Saturday Night Live, hearing my mother was there, said,

"Would she like to come on the programme, make an appearance?"

So I thought, well, she's 80. She's just here on holiday.

I don't think so, but I said I'd ask.

So that night I asked her and I said, "Would you come on the show?"

"Yes, yes, all right, dear, yes, fine, whatever you want me to do."

All right, there's your book. Now anything else you want?

Any vitamin tablets?

Murdoch newspapers?

Hair-curling equipment?

-No, that's all. Now go ahead and be funny.

-Thank you.

They adored her

and she stayed on at the party till about five in the morning.

Her finest hour. Not mine, but hers.

Action.

Sam!

Sam, do you know Alison?

I think Terry Gilliam felt very loyal to me

because I'd done Jabberwocky and his next film, Brazil,

was a bigger thing altogether.

Don't get excited just because you're on film today.

It can all be cut out later.

That was fun. Cut.

He offered me the part of Jack Lint.

We liked that, actually, because

I was playing a really nasty character.

Excuse me.

-Jack.

-Sam.

You can be the smoothest, nicest, most charming person, but be very,

very nasty underneath, so he said, "It'd be good for you to do that."

In a strange way, this was probably one of the more difficult things

for Mike because I was trying to get him to play himself,

which isn't what Mike does.

Mike is brilliant at playing ten million other characters.

No, I play the character of Jack. Yeah. Jack Lint.

She's innocent, Jack.

-Sam, we've always been close, haven't we?

-Yes, Jack.

Until this all blows over, just stay away from me.

In a slightly sheepish moment when he said,

"Oh, I'm trying to get De Niro to have a part."

I said, "Oh, wow! God figure, yes, great."

We're all in it together, kid.

He said, "But I showed him the script

"and the part he wanted is the part that I've given you."

I said, "Oh, well, that doesn't matter."

"No", he said, "No, no, no, I told him it's taken.

"My friend Mike's got that. It's taken."

So De Niro - look elsewhere!

Jack?

But I was then shot through the head by Robert De Niro.

That's going on my CV - shot by Robert De Niro.

I might put it on my gravestone.

Hello, Wanda.

I had the idea early on in A Fish Called Wanda

that somebody with a terrible stutter should be trying to

tell somebody something very, very urgently

and not be able to get a word out.

Ca...

-Plenty of time.

-Ca...

Ca...

-The Ca...

-Oh, come on!

Sorry. I'm sorry.

Um... All right, wait.

The Ca... The...

Here. Write it. Write it.

-Cathcart Towers Hotel?

-Cathcart Towers Hotel.

Well, where is it?

And I think I always knew it was going to be Michael

because I knew that Michael's father had had a terrible stutter

and that is why he is so wonderful in that scene

because he studied it, you know, while he was growing up.

It's perfection.

I thought it was the most wonderful film to be involved in,

but, looking back on my diaries, I found that about a year before

when I first read, or six months before, I found it very violent.

There's too much violence to make it funny.

Will you shut up?

Oh, Jesus Christ. Don't kill me, please.

Shut up, then.

And what I'd done was I'd really looked at the Kevin Kline part.

He is a pretty awful character,

and not been able to see how funny Kevin could make it.

I'm almost full.

-Almost.

-Stop!

Please don't...

Come on, Wanda.

Gullet time!

It was a very good combination of different styles

and yet they all gelled,

a bit like the way Python brought people from all different kind of...

Different ideas and approaches, different ways of life,

together and it all worked.

The thing that really annoyed me about Jamie and Michael is that

I think Jamie kisses four men in the course of the movie and she said

Michael was the best kisser.

We did have a kissing scene, which was very enjoyable indeed.

And I said I was kissing in character.

No, not yet.

After A Fish Called Wanda all I was aware was that there were no

really good film scripts around and so it was a little bit of limbo.

PHONE RINGS

Hello.

Out of the blue, a man called Will Wyatt, head of documentaries

at the BBC then, had got in touch with me and said,

"We've got this idea for something that's never been done before.

"We want you to present it."

80 days? Yes.

Oh, I see. And I'd be... I'd be Phileas Fogg?

Would you do this thing called Around The World In 80 Days?

Whoops!

There was a very nice guy called Clem Vallance who had come up

with the idea and I thought this is a wonderful idea

and I said yes straight away.

I couldn't believe why anyone would not want to do something like this.

When the idea of Around The World In 80 Days came up,

Michael was the person that was kind of behind my thinking.

He'd just done one documentary,

which was a train journey through England.

They call this the Skyline and it runs through some of the most

gloomily beautiful country in the world.

And that's why perhaps I thought of him when we had

the idea of doing a Phileas Fogg and going around the world.

Phileas Fogg left from here 116 years ago in October 1872.

He set off with head high, clear eye, never hurried, always calm,

but then, of course, he was fictional.

I will have some help.

Fogg took a servant, Passepartout, and I shall have my Passepartout.

The trouble is he's five people and works for the BBC.

Ah, now I thought I was the only one travelling light.

I'm not going, no.

There were two crews, Crew A and Crew B,

that leapfrogged each other to keep up with Michael,

but Michael was the one who kept going.

How are you? I love you.

Oh, that's nice.

I had every single tape of Monty Python.

-Well, that's...

-And I loved you in A Fish Called Wanda.

-And you've never met me before?

-I don't care.

-Completely unsolicited.

-I love you.

-No-one will believe this.

I thought why am I doing this?

What kind of person am I supposed to be?

Am I supposed to be Michael Palin the comedy actor?

Am I supposed to be Michael Palin the travel nerd?

I mean, what am I doing here?

We are...

Well, well and truly scuppered because if I don't get to Jeddah

in time for the connection, we have to find out when the next one is.

Could be a week, three or four days.

It's a real... HE GROANS

On the third episode, everything had gone wrong, we had to get a dhow,

an old sailing boat with 18 Gujarati fishing men onboard

from Dubai to Bombay.

We spent seven days on that ship going very, very slowly,

living onboard because there were no cabins, anything like that,

with these Gujarati fishermen, who cooked food for us and all that,

and by the end of that I realised that I didn't have to pretend to be

anybody, I could just be me.

Unbelievable what this man can take.

Full volume now. This is full volume.

Are you all right?

Are you all right in there?

And the act of listening and engaging them in what I was doing

seemed to work.

Seven weeks out of London

and I'm taking a day trip to the island of Cheung Chau.

It's been called the Hong Kong Riviera.

It's also the home of a friend of mine, Basil Pao,

an artist, designer, photographer and complete renaissance Chinaman.

With the prospect of several pound's worth of BBC expenses,

I'm hoping to lure him to Shanghai with me

as interpreter and travelling companion.

When Mike did Around The World In 80 Days

and the producer needed help in Hong Kong,

for me to just take him around.

And Mike and Basil get on very well.

They're sort of naughty boys.

They whisper in a corner and laugh and titter.

And he was present at the very famous snake banquet

where Michael had free-range snake for the first time.

This may look like a day at the zoo,

but in fact it's a night at one of Canton's most famous restaurants.

There's really only one ingredient.

He's going to kill it now.

He's disembowelled it. Now he's going to kill it.

-Yeah, ready for your meal.

-It's like the Middle Ages, isn't it?

They used to do this to bishops in England.

-Whoa.

-Good heavens.

I'm afraid that that was my idea.

Just some ice cream for me, please.

It was Clem Vallance's idea and it was his idea

and he insisted on having the snake killed at the table,

which is just not done.

Actually we can't get this in Hong Kong.

And it tasted like chicken, a lot of it.

Doesn't everything taste like chicken?

And at the end, because the Chinese are very fond of their toasts,

there was a little glass in front of us which was

a bright green lurid colour and they toasted us.

We said, "Cheers" and we drank it or sipped it,

and then Michael said, "What actually is that?"

And it was snake's gall bladder liqueur.

DRUM ROLL

This is it. I'm standing on the top of the world at the North Pole.

Pole To Pole was a very difficult series to do.

It took a lot longer than 80 days.

There were certain natural hazards that we couldn't avoid

like landing a light plane at the North Pole on ice.

We, ourselves, touched down with only minutes' worth of fuel left.

The plane we're in was designed in the 1950s.

Our lives depend on it.

I remember Pole To Pole as probably the nearest

we came to getting killed in the whole series.

There are no airstrips, no control towers,

no emergency vehicles below us.

There is rapidly-changing weather, intense cold

and hundreds of miles of frozen ocean.

I think certainly the public liked seeing somebody

showing that it can be difficult.

There was no attempt to, you know, put me in a suit

and smart clothes and take me from one place to another.

It was actually the getting there and the actual nuts and bolts

of how you get across a desert or across a river or up mountains.

He was incredibly up for almost everything.

There are people crazy enough to take boats over these rapids

and what's more, people daft enough to pay them to do it.

Michael and the team went white-water rafting in the Zambezi

and it was great.

We went through ten rapids of the Zambezi

and it was by far the worst day of my life really.

There's hardly time for fear, though at this point I distinctly remember

something I want to change in my will.

Michael was persuaded by the other people who were in the raft

to go swimming.

Now that's not a good idea in a set of rapids and he was in there

and he got buffeted by a wave, from one to another.

He hit a rock, or hit several rocks, and cracked a rib.

The worst thing was actually doing it off camera.

If he'd have done it on camera,

it would have been much easier or much better to say,

"Hey, I've suffered for my art," but sadly nobody saw him do it.

Despite the fact of being a national treasure and all that,

he is capable of being just another idiot.

We were in a refugee camp in Algeria.

The people there had brought a camel head for us to eat

while we were there.

And we ate that hunk of camel for several days, for every meal,

different bits of it, and by the last night

we were eating the sort of fatty bits and bones and stuff already.

The only meat I've eaten for the last three days is camel.

I suppose this is where it comes from.

So when she offered me at the end of the week,

"We've still got some camel meat. Would you like some to go with you?"

I said, "Well, yeah, all right."

I took it and I knew as I popped it in my mouth

that this was going to revisit me.

We both knew it was going to be bad, but I survived.

What you've got to keep, and I think that's what worked

in the series, is a sense of wonder.

You've always got to have a sense of wonder.

If for a moment you go a bit blase, been there,

done that, I'll do this usual thing.

And because we had such strange itineraries,

and went to such different places, I never ever got bored.

It was always wondrous.

# On the road again

# I just can't wait to get on the road again... #

SHE LAUGHS

# The life I love is making music with my friends

# And I can't wait to get on the road again

# On the road again

# Going places that I've never been

# Seeing things that I may never see again

# I can't wait to get on the road again. #

We always said, "Well, that's going to be the last one."

And then we'd be drawn back a year later because you think,

"Oh, wow, yeah, it's been popular.

"Let's have a look at the Atlas again."

And my wife was very keen for me to go abroad regularly.

HE LAUGHS

When Alan Bleasdale got in touch and said, you know,

there's a big new series, would I play one of the main characters?

I couldn't say no to that.

I had to say to Michael Palin, "Jim Nelson is the part

"that you can play perfectly,

"and you'll be absolutely wonderful in it."

Jim, isn't it?

To some.

-Not all.

-Pleased to meet you.

This is a school.

You're not a member of this school.

-I'd like you to leave.

-Oh, come on, Jim. You know who I am.

It wouldn't interest me if you were Bishop Tutu wearing one.

I wrote GBH for the simple reason that I was fed up.

I think a lot of people were fed up at the time that I started writing

GBH, which was in the mid-80s.

CHANTING

SHOUTING

What I was trying to write was, basically and simply,

a plea for common decency.

CHANTING AND SHOUTING CONTINUES

-Robbie, you stay with Miss Hutchinson!

-I'll come with you, sir!

-Robbie, stay with Miss Hutchinson! You don't follow me, right?

-Right!

I felt that so long as he was... Alan was confident in me,

and others around were confident that I could do it, I could do it.

You know, sometimes I needed my own competence to be reinforced.

We were on the same side once.

Here's your chance to forget the past,

and come back and play the game on our side.

But I knew I could do it.

I knew what had to be done. I knew how it had to be delivered.

And I knew that I had to be kind of intelligent

about the way that I did it.

All that was there, but it still didn't prevent me from being like,

"God, I've got to get this right."

Because here we all are, living under the most reactionary,

democratically elected government we've ever known,

in a Labour-controlled city, where all animals are equal,

but some councillors are more equal than others,

where too often lions led by donkey jackets, living proof that

the further left you go, the more right wing you become.

For me, GBH was the most demanding acting I've ever done.

The most rewarding, really.

BIRDSONG

BIRD SQUAWKS

The film was based on his great-grandfather, Edward Palin,

who was a don at Oxford.

He had to leave St John's College, Oxford, where he was vice president,

because, you know, as you know, they had to be celibate then.

And the meets these two American women,

Caroline and her young and beautiful charge, Elinor.

And what shall you take back with you, Mr Ashby?

Ah, Mr Ashby...

Can I talk to you about John?

And it was interesting, because, you know,

there was a lot of flak that they got... The Pythons got for not

writing women and writing real women and...

Well, this was a great example, I thought,

of how well Michael and Tristram Powell did write women.

How was your day with Mr Ashby? What did you do?

Well, how did you know I was with Mr Ashby?

I found the letter. The one you didn't post.

That was a private letter.

-It was lying on the desk.

-Well, you had no business reading it.

What could you have been thinking of?

Connie gives you a sort of subtlety

and a kind of delicacy of emotion which is very, very...

Absolutely real, absolutely right, and absolutely spot on,

and rather touching, really.

TOILET FLUSHES

Stalin and Beria put you on a list.

Stalin?

The Death of Stalin came from Armando Iannucci.

There's a handful of people I think can do no wrong

in television writers and Armando is about three of them.

So I said, "Yeah, you know, got to look at this."

We had this character, Molotov, in The Death of Stalin,

who has to obey... Who kind of is the most passionately enthusiastic

about whatever the party believes.

Beria, he wants you out.

Now I've been talking with Comrade Bulganin...

-No, no, this is...

-I think he's right. We can outvote them.

-No, no, no, this is factionalism, Niki.

-No, no, it's not!

-Stalin didn't like factionalism.

-Stalin is dead!

And I just felt that was right up Michael's street.

That's the sort of character I think he could play -

not just as a satire, but actually give it a bit of heart as well.

SOBBING: I can't believe he's gone!

Oh!

There was a feeling right at the start that we were doing something

a bit special. We had rehearsal and rehearsals were great and that's

when we sort of added things and modified things here and there.

We were changing the script at the last minute, and he'd just quietly

go away and five minutes later come back,

and he'd learned it perfectly.

He has this enormously complicated speech

right in the middle of the film.

I've always been loyal to Stalin.

Always.

These arrests were authorised by Stalin, but Stalin was also

loyal to the collective leadership, and that is true loyalty.

I could see that he was slightly nervous of this big speech looming,

but he delivers it terrifically and perfectly,

and it was such a joy to have

hopefully a classic Michael Palin moment up on screen again.

However, he also had an iron will, undeviating, strong,

can we not do the same and stick to what we believed in?

No.

It is stronger still to forge our own beliefs with

the beliefs of the collective leadership.

Which I have now...

done.

I think Michael was attracted to The Death of Stalin

cos there was that mischievous side of him who thought,

"Well, this is a potentially controversial topic,

"let's do this, then."

I think comedy can go anywhere. So I believe that was able

to be part of me, the comedy crusade.

Oh, I shouldn't say crusade now. Get me killed.

Not the C word.

AUDIENCE CLAP IN TIME

CHEERING

We came out of this TARDIS that was turned on,

and there was just this huge, enveloping warmth from the audience.

I mean, it was the most extraordinary thing, really.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Well, we - for many, many years - discussed the idea of getting back

together and doing a live show.

And I'd always been very wary of it.

Largely because once Graham died in 1989, I felt,

"Well, it's not really Python."

It's like a sort of six-legged table.

When you take one leg off, suddenly it's slightly wobbly.

But... I don't know. We came to a point where...

HE LAUGHS

..certain people needed large amounts of money fairly quickly.

And a man called Jim Beach had become our manager.

Jim was the manager of Queen. And Jim had vision.

So Jim said, "Look, if you really want to make some money,

"Why don't you just do a couple of nights at the O2 Arena?"

We said, "The O2 Arena? What, 15,000 people?"

He said, "Yeah, just do it." "Could we?"

"Yeah, yeah. I can get it for you. Don't worry, don't worry."

HE SIGHS

And within I should think about 5.5 seconds, we'd all agreed.

Having being disagreeing for the last 15 years.

I know what they mean by well hung jury.

LAUGHTER

Anyway I've finished changing. WHISTLING AND CHEERING

Really serious.

The actions of these vicious men are a violent stain upon the community,

and the full penalty of the law is scarcely sufficient

to deal with their ghastly crimes.

And I waggled my wig.

It's wonderful to see Mike being funny again.

You know, I mean, we make the joke constantly about his boring

travel shows because we know how brilliant he is.

Oh, he knows everything that Michael Palin.

Yes, and he's been everywhere, too.

You ever watch any of those travel...?

-THEY YAWN

-..travel prog...

THEY SNORE

LAUGHTER

Just the idea of it just getting there and mouthing the sketches

wasn't good enough.

That would look a bit sad and it wouldn't be rewarding.

So that was the thing that worried me, but rehearsals went well.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Our chief weapon is surprise!

In the very first read through, he's like whoosh! And he's flying.

He's alive. He's sparkling.

His timing, everything about it, is extraordinary.

CHEERING

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Our chief weapon is surprise!

Everyone realised, as the shows went on,

that forgetting your lines was not going to be a problem,

because the audience loved it when you got it wrong.

Where were we?

You say, "Now that's what I call a dead parrot."

Now that's what I call a dead parrot!

LAUGHTER

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

No, no...

"No, no," I say...

-It's stunned.

-Stunned?!

Yeah, stunned!

They love it when you fluff.

They've seen it a million times.

When you make a mistake, it's special to that evening.

# Always look on the bright side of life... #

Come on!

I think ten shows was exactly enough.

Towards the end of about show eight -

well, earlier for some people -

there was a feeling perhaps we'd done enough.

We'd be hopeless at going round the world

doing the same show all the time.

I mean, it might have been a good way of making money,

but honestly, we'd have got bored stiff.

Well, there was something very special about the O2,

cos it wasn't a performance in any normal sense.

It was something else. It was a celebration.

They were thanking us for making them laugh.

We were thanking them for thanking us.

There was a wonderful atmosphere.

Thank you!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-Thank you!

-Thank you!

-Thank you!

-Thank you.

I suppose one of the things that makes him

so well loved is how he's expanded himself in terms

of his communication with the world and people.

He is completely devoted to his family.

Now that he's got grandchildren,

it's harder for him to go off on these, you know, crazy journeys.

I think he will continue to travel,

but I'm not sure that he'll take a television crew with him this time.

I think the thing about Michael is that it shows that really

hard work can overcome complete mediocrity.

And I think it's a tribute.

You know, I think it's an encouragement

to all not particularly talented and rather mediocre people to see

what can be achieved by sheer hard work and good luck.

I'm hoping that as a result of being back on the big screen

that we see more of him on the big screen.

I hope his phone hasn't stopped ringing.

And I hope occasionally he picks it up.

CHEERING

I never say never to anything.

It's fatal to because who knows?

All I want to do is to continue doing new stuff.

So, I mean, the past is great,

but the future is more interesting to me at the moment.