THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.28 - MICHAEL PALIN

Episode Date: September 1, 2016

Adam talks to author, actor and Python, Michael Palin about travel writing, Monty Python films and erm, death. Thanks to Seamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support. For links and pictures related to this episode visit adam-buxton.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk. Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke. My name is Adam Buxton. I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here. Thank you so much for joining me for podcast number 28. It is a very, very beautiful day out here in East Angula at the end of August 2016. The sun is shining brightly. There's a wonderful warm wind blowing.

I'm strolling along in my short-sleeved top, and I have on my feet sort of, well, they're like hiking boots crossed with sandals. It's an infernal hybrid. My wife does not like them. She says they are grotesque. But yeah, it's nice. Rosie's up ahead antagonizing critters. Sorry about the gap between this podcast and the last one.

It's been a few weeks now. I'm going to try and make these a bit more regular. But yeah, we've been away for the summer break, me and Team Buckles. We went on an exciting trip to America, which maybe I'll tell you about at some point. I was thinking maybe I'd quite like to write a sort of travel piece in podcast form. It's in my blood, I suppose. My dad was a travel writer, which we talk about in this podcast episode, me and my guest. And I do love going on holiday.

And I always remember being impressed by the fact that people would pay my dad to take us on holiday. I just thought, well, that's brilliant. And we were very lucky in that respect. Got to travel the world a few times with my pa. And I'm always on the lookout for ways that I can do that with my own family. And get invited on some free holidays. There you go. That's my plan. But listen, this week's guest is Michael Palin.

He's a British actor, TV presenter, travel writer, diarist, and along with John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and the late Graham Chapman, a member of the comedy team Monty Python. They used to make TV shows, sketch shows for the BBC between 1969 and 1974. And Michael and I spoke a bit about the films, really, the Monty Python films, rather than the TV series, because they were my introduction to the Python universe when I saw them as a youngster in the early 80s, particularly Life of Brian, released in 1979, and The Meaning of Life from 1983,

both directed by Terry Jones. Michael and I met one rainy London morning at the end of May this year, so just before the European referendum, and I had just seen a video that had been created by the Remain campaign, which repurposed the What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us scene from Life of Brian and turned it into a sketch with Patrick Stewart and various other British actors and comedians talking as if they were MPs about, you know, what have the Europeans ever done for us? It was good. I mean, it didn't, you know, work, I suppose. But anyway, and we met at Michael's club in Soho. Lovely old place, all creaky stairs and wood panelled walls and soft lit, you know, and bits of challenging artwork juxtaposed with

framed photographs of old literary and acting lushes and legends. And the conversation was bookended by talk of my dad. And the reason for that was that he'd been on my mind more than usual. Because when I heard that I was going to do the podcast with Michael, I went back to Michael's diaries and rewatched some of his travel programs and generally went on a massive Palin jag. And in doing so, I was reminded frequently of my dad for one reason or another. They weren't much alike, but he was a travel writer and he self-published an autobiography shortly before his death at the end of 2015. And as you'll hear, I gave Michael a copy of the book, along with another more practical gift. I guess because on some level, I just wanted to talk about him. And also, I thought my dad would have appreciated me passing his book along to a kindred spirit.

So here we go. Ramble Chat Let's have a ramble chat We'll focus first on this Then concentrate on that Come on, let's chew the fat And have a ramble chat Put on your conversation coat And find your talking hat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la Are you going home after this?

I only asked because I got you a gift. And if it's inconvenient for you to carry the gift, I'll just arrange for it. Well, if it's enormous, if it's a piano... It's not a piano. I could take it down to my office, and I can leave it there and collect it later. OK, well, maybe do that.

Thanks. All right, it's not, I'm just explaining to Michael that I've got him a gift, and I was worried that if he had a long way to go afterwards, it would be annoying to carry it. Very thoughtful. It's obviously happened to you. Yeah.

People have brought you things. At gigs, after a gig, people will come up, and they've crafted, like, I've made you, I've made a giant papier-mâché reproduction of your head. It's taken me five years. Yes, that's right. And it is very touching, but you're like,

yeah, I'm on my bike and I'm in Manchester and I've got to get back home tomorrow. Yeah. Here's what I've got you. And I don't know if this is any good because it may not be something you still enjoy, but I gleaned that you may have done... Oh, wow, yeah.

Oh, a bit of Bushmills, yes. Irish whiskey. You refer to enjoying Bushmills in your diaries occasionally. Do I really? I write things like that down, don't I? Sad, isn't it? Well, great. No, that's lovely. Thank you very much indeed, yeah. You know, you can always re-gift it. I did once do an

embarrassing thing at a party i took somebody it's a last minute gift and we took them some chocolates in a long thin pack look rather nice we weren't going to eat them we don't need much chocolate and got to this house and um the children of got it. Hey, what's that? Can we unwrap it? I said, oh, sure, yeah. And they unwrapped it. And there were all these chocolates laid out. And there was a letter on each one and it read,

Thank you, Michael. It had been given to me on the Parkinson's show or something like that. So it was much, much laughter. Yeah. Oh, dear. Personalised chocs. Yeah, yeah. By giving them to somebody as a it was much, much laughter. Yeah. Oh, dear. Personalised chocks, that's how you made it. Yeah, by giving them to somebody as a, you know, your gift. And he wasn't called Michael.

That would have been ideal, obviously. Yes, no, that would have been absolutely perfect. Absolutely perfect. Did it cross your mind for a second to try and concoct a story to explain it? Like, oh, it's a... No, there's no way that you could really explain that one, is there? I think I tried, but with children it's very, very difficult. Right.

Grown-ups you can fool most of the time. Children, they know. You could say... What's that? It's a phrase. It's got your name on, not my dad's name or my mum's name. Thank you, Michael. It makes chocolates actually taste better.

The other gift I have for you. Oh. This is my dad's autobiography. Now, my dad passed away last year. He was 91. He was a great traveller, and I always think of him when I think of you and your travels, because I know that you've read a lot of the same books that my dad used to learn. A Time of Gifts was a good one for him.

And he was in the war. You know, he had a lot of experiences that chime with a lot of stuff that you have done and talked about and seem to be interested in. So obviously you don't have to read it. That's rather nice, a kindred spirit. No, I like that. Yeah, I mean, he was a kindred spirit in a lot of ways.

I think there's actually travellers, a kindred spirit. No, I like that. Yeah, I mean, he was a kindred spirit in a lot of ways. I think there's actually travellers, certain kind of traveller, there is a sort of library of books that they all subscribe to. Yeah. I mean, Paddy Lee Firm is usually, Colin Thubrin's usually in there somewhere. That's right.

Very often not Paul Theroux, which I think is odd, because I think people feel he's a bit competitive. I mean, I love Paul Theroux's work. And The Great Railway Bazaar was really what, the book that kept me going when we did Around the World in 80 Days. Uh-huh. But yeah, there's Venice by Jan Morris. That's one of my all-time favourites,

because I read that very early on when I was, about the first time that my wife and I, as a married couple, travelled abroad and we took a holiday in Venice. I'd never been there and I read the book first and I think that's the criterion of a good travel book is if it just makes the place better and if you still want to read it when you're there.

So many of them just tell you everything and you think, oh, I've seen that, been there, read it all. But this was just perfect. It made you relish the place even more when you went. So that's always been high on my list. He loved Jan Morris, my dad, yes. Yeah. And he was, my dad was for a long time

the travel editor of the Sunday Telegraph. Oh, right, okay. So he, it was thanks to him that we were very well travelled as children. Yeah. And we went to America a great deal. Yeah. I do recognise it now. And we went to almost every

single state in the US at various points. And he was funny because he was very old-fashioned in all kinds of ways. Like he was from a totally different generation and if you get a chance to read any of it, you'll see that his prose is very dense, long sentences.

Oh, right, yes, yes. A little bit like the way that... Well, Paddy Lee Firmar. Paddy Lee Firmar, exactly. Right, yeah, yeah. He admired so much, but how dense, and all that architectural vocab. Well, it makes for a richer book,

and I found when I was writing the books for my travels that I was very conscious of other travel writers, but trying not to be. And yet, as much as I tried to be my own self, I would get drawn into elaborate sunset and sunrise descriptions, which would just go on and on, and the beige and the salmon, and then it's modified into a sort of silky, soft indigo blue. Cut it all out. You know, in the end, it was, what, half a page just to describe the sun going down. I like that stuff, though.

Your sunset descriptions are very evocative. Oh, that's very nice. And also, you know, it's hard to beat a good sunset, isn't it? Well, it's something about good sunsets. We all like them. That's mainly because we're up when that happens. Sunrises we don't always see because we're still in bed. But yes, there is something about the end of the day.

And usually it's cocktail hour. So if you're lucky, you're in a place where you can have a little beverage in your hand. But yes, it's something wonderful. And in Africa, I mean, the sunsets were extraordinary because the sun was enormous. And something to do with the desert perspective and all that, the dust in the air made it sort of begin to tremble as it sank towards the horizon. So you couldn't take your eyes off it.

I mean, in London you don't often see sunset. Yes, and then I suppose when it's that size, or it appears to be that size, you can actually see the movement of it as well. Yes, yes. And you see it sort of squelch down and almost widens at the bottom like it's some bad bit of animation.

I haven't quite got it right. Well, that's the kind of thing you see on documentaries, I suppose, and you always assume that it's whatever lens they have on the camera that is producing that effect, but you're actually seeing that for real. Well, I did find that in Africa, certainly in North Africa, desert Africa, yeah. And I suppose it's it being unique as well that you're seeing something that no one will ever see again. Yes. And it's kind of, it's almost like the power of nature, like huge waterfalls. I've

never been able to be blasé about, you know, the Victoria Falls. I could watch them for days and weeks. It's so stunning seeing this vast amount of water trickling along. You know, it's quite a sort of, I don't know if you've seen the Victoria Falls, you probably have with your dad, but the river is not that deep. Right. But there's a lot of water in it. When it just hurtles straight over the cliff over a distance of about 600 yards, it is stunning, the force and the power. I could look at that forever. So there's something similar to a big, big going on there you just think wow i just sit and

watch yeah then trying to write about it that's how your how your dad your father dealt with it um um did did he enjoyed the challenge of writing about things like that uh i suppose he did i I mean, the nice thing about writing in general, isn't it, is that you have an opportunity to organise your thoughts in a way that's very difficult sometimes when you're just speaking off the top of your head. But, yeah, you can take ages doing it. I mean, in theory, you could just go on forever, couldn't you? I guess the good writers are the ones that are able

to set things down quite quickly and just have at their fingertips all these... I sometimes wonder whether it's catching it at the spontaneous moment when it happens, which is the difficult thing. I think a lot of very good travel writers make it up later on, and then they've

got a slightly, not make it up entirely, but they've got a sort of mixture of things can come in, a bit of memory, and then something you've read about it and then create out of that. But actually getting the moment, I think, is really quite difficult to making that original, making that fresh. That's what I tried to do

because my books were sort of written in diary form, so I hope that people who read it would realise that this man has not got time to write marvellous, rich language. It's just capturing the moment. Right. And you keep your diary with you when you're travelling, obviously. Do you sit there looking at the sunset and sometimes take notes or do you go back to the hotel afterwards? Yeah, there's no pattern to it.

It's sometimes a bit like going to an art gallery and looking at the caption for about five minutes and then looking at the painting for about 30 seconds and moving on. You know, there's a danger if you're looking at a fantastic sunset or the Victoria Falls or an approaching sandstorm, something like that, and you get your diary out out you're missing what's actually happening so i have to be aware come on michael take this in write it down later yeah so the diary isn't isn't an exact commentary on life as it happens it's sort of moments but i do little

bits of detail i try and put down later you know for the meal you try and write the colors and or things like that yeah yeah i hope you don't mind me thrusting that upon you. It's a lot. I only just started reading it, really, to be honest, because my dad was always saying, obviously, when are you going to read my book? He's been working on it for ages. But the whole business of caring for him in the last year of his life

kind of overwhelmed everything. And the last thing I wanted to do was read his book. All right. You know what I mean? Was he ill? He was ill, yeah. He had cancer. Oh, I'm sorry.

But it wasn't... Well, I was going to talk about all this cheery stuff a little bit later on, if you don't mind. No, no, fine. Again, inspired by reading your diaries and how you talk about death. And I don't know, maybe we should talk about it now, now that the subject has been raised. No thanks podcast waiter. Let's talk about death later. Until then, let's talk all about Michael's diaries and also Monty Python and key things. A little bit more up-tempo and talk about death at the end.

I keep a diary occasionally myself, and I found an entry in 2009 where I was listening to the audio book of your Hollywood diaries. Right. And my entry says, Listen to Michael Palin's Hollywood diaries on the train. Luxuriate in his enviable life. Envy his apparent ability to go for a jog,

think of an idea for a film, and write it in around two months, despite every other thing he has going on. Strange moment when he talks about being held up on a train journey by signalling problems outside Manningtree. A few minutes later, I'm held up by signalling problems outside Manningtree. Perhaps I'm the new Michael

Palin. So that was a weird moment of synchronicity I had. Well, I'm very glad that I put in about being held up by signals at Manningtree. A lot of people would not have, editors would have said no. People don't want to know that, Michael. They really don't, where it is that you're held up by signals, but it's Manningtree. It's such a wonderful place. No, no, it just doesn't work. I think that sort of bit of detail is important,'s important and you've now made me feel it was worth keeping that there you go all right good you also make a reference I think in the traveling to work diaries a very fleeting reference to talking with the other pythons about the whole business of keeping a diary and there being strong disagreements within the unit about the wisdom of it.

And do you remember variously what their opinions were and what the pros and cons were as far as they were concerned? Yes, and as usual, there was a split, and very often it was a kind of... It went right back to varsity days. It was a Cambridge-Oxford split. And I think the Cambridge people, John and Eric and Graham, thought keeping a diary was a rather sort of woolly-minded thing to do.

You know, you should be getting on and sort of facing up the challenges of the world and developing theses on this, that and the other and just writing a diary. I mean, come on. Too much naval days. People have nothing to do. Yeah, exactly.

Whereas Terry Jones and myself, and Terry kept a diary for a bit, both could see the value of it, but we could always see the value in the sort of unintended little bit of detail. And I think that's just the way we were. We were a bit more reflective, and not everything had to sort of prove its worth in the diary. Whereas I think Cambridge had quite a rigorous sort of education there. The things had to be proven that they were worthwhile doing and all that,

and you can't prove it's worthwhile keeping a diary at all. It's just something you do. You can contest whether you should publish it or not, but keeping a diary, that's just impossible to prove. It's just a feeling of wanting to record things. And it all came to a head when we were writing in Barbados for The Life of Brian. And we'd written most of the film,

but there was a feeling that we needed some hard time together, really, to knock it on the head. And John and Eric, Eric said, Oh, I know someone in Barbados, got a villa, we could go there. And we had this ridiculous sort of argument. Terry Jones and myself saying, no, we don't want to go to Barbados. We'll never write anything, it'll be far too much fun. We'll be water skiing and all that sort of stuff.

Why don't we just, let's do the work, then go to Barbados. And they looked at us kind of askance. Why would you not want to go to Barbados in January? Then it went slightly to extremes because Terry Jones was very, very keen on... He would defend anything. He would say, January is a lovely time in England. It's foggy, it's wet.

Yes, precisely, they would say. And that's what's wonderful. That's what's so wonderful about it. And then Terry would get very impassioned and we'd rather lose the thread. Anyway, we went to Barbados. We were going to write a book about, well, the life of Brian's script

plus some other stuff in it. And it was suggested, I think, by the publisher that we should all keep a diary for the two weeks while we were there. I have the book. Ah. And no one did apart from Terry and myself. Yeah. Yes.

And I was a bit disappointed, because that was only... You're only asking people to keep a diary for two weeks. Right. So that made me feel, and I may be wrong here, Adam, that they had something about diaries that was too revelatory, that was kind of... It was examining yourself, and they didn't want to go there. Yeah, of course. That's my theory.

It's weird, isn't it? Because it is a strange thing to analyse your own life and your own thoughts in that level of detail. Well, I would question the word analyse. I mean, it's also recording. Yeah. I mean, just recording what you did in a day doesn't seem to be a very bad idea,

especially when, you know, later in life you want to check, was I there, did I do this? And actually my diaries have been used in court because I was the only one who kept an account. So there's a difference, I think, between recording and analysing. Of course, you're right. And, yes, you don't do too much analysis within your diaries. There's not too much sort of soul-searching that goes on on the page,

at least in the published form. Yeah, I mean, I sometimes think as I look at them, it's there between the lines. Of course. You mentioned writing the Life of Brian stuff in Barbados, and I have here an incredibly tatty copy of the Life of Brian scrapbook. It's a very badly bound book. All known copies are falling apart.

Yours is well within the tradition. Right. But I love this book and we used to pour through it. And as with a lot of the Python books, I got the books before I saw the actual films because I was too young. So I would have been about 12 when I got this, perhaps, around 1981 or 1982. And it was wonderful and fascinating and strange,

and I couldn't quite figure out what stuff was actually part of the film and what was just... Are there sort of deleted scenes in here, as it were? Are there scenes that never made... Yes, scenes that didn't make it, scenes that we didn't even film. The healed loonies in there somewhere and various things like that. What I... There's that picture of you guys naked.

There we are, all naked, apart from John, who wasn't there that day. That was taken by Richard Avedon, one of the great sort of photographers of the 20th century. I like Terry Jones's... Yeah, Terry Jones's... I played that one. Backside. I'm glad you liked it because, although the book is falling apart,

because it's all that strangely sort of designed, it's a great big book, it didn't fit on any shelves or anything, at least it wasn't just the screenplay. There were lots of other little ideas and jokes and spin-offs that were in there. We always felt that was important, that the Python spin-off stuff, whether it be albums or the books, worked in their own right and provided something that you couldn't get anywhere else. So I'm glad you like that.

Very much. And they were incredibly densely packed as well. There was always a sense with everything Python related that no space should be wasted. If there was space there then you could put a joke in it. You're really spot on because

that was the feeling when we made the shows themselves. You know, there was a bare wall behind, even though it didn't need to have much on the wall because the action was taking place elsewhere. We'd put something on that wall. I remember there was someone's little suburban room, just an ordinary sort of sofa and a couple of chairs, and in the background were sort of joints of meat

that were sort of framed on the wall. They weren't absolutely immaterial to the sketch, I've never alluded to, but they were there for people who wanted to see it. And there was another, I remember one which I was particularly pleased with. It was zooming into a presenter of some dynamic documentary and the throbbing music and all that. And above the presenter was a big sign saying,

Is the Queen Sane? And it just zoomed in very quickly, so you could barely, barely see it. Most people would just miss it, but it's just there. And so that feeling of putting everything in, we felt if you've got people watching and there's that screen, fill it. I don't think it occurred to anyone to do that kind of thing in pre-video days because they thought, well, it's going to zip by so fast, they'll never notice. I think after the advent of VCRs, video days because they thought well it's going to zip by so fast they'll never notice i think in

after the advent of vcrs when people realized that they were going to watch things over and over again and stop things then certainly people started to pack things like the simpsons i suppose were a good example of people in that python tradition who wanted to pack as many jokes as they could into every frame yeah but we used to pour over these books and we loved them and the picture in the life of brian's scrapbook which i'm holding that really fascinated me i remember it being one of the very early things that made me think hey this looks like a good job was you guys in barb. Oh, yeah. Sitting, looking at the sea. Yeah. Enjoying a drink at the sunset. Having a drink.

And I just thought, well, that looks terrific. Five mates sat there writing what they don't realise is going to be one of, well, maybe the best comedy film ever. And having a drink, looking out at the sunset. And so, despite your

reservations, do you remember it fondly as being... I mean, clearly it was productive because you got some good stuff written. Yeah, no, no, it was absolutely fine. It was absolutely fine. It was just a kind of, I suppose, marking territory. We all had different territory we wanted to do it, you know. I suppose Terry and I were kind of, if you like, more sort of family, home-based, doing very silly stuff, but using a very basic sort of home environment to do it in. Whereas Eric and John, Eric particularly, was always quite a traveller. And Eric knew friends in France, was moving around, and John, you and John was going to America

and they were sort of kind of restless I think. There you are in Heron Bay. There we are, yes. Sat on your chairs. Heron Bay with Keith Moon. There's Keith Moon who was staying nearby

and Keith Moon would walk up the beach with some bottles of Dom Perignon and chat and he was going to be given a part in the film actually but he died shortly afterwards sadly very sad he just happened to be staying on the island

yeah happened to be staying on the island as did Mick Jagger and I think in the diaries there's the tale of Mick Jagger coming round, and we play charades. Mick Jagger's charade of the Sex Pistols was something really to be seen and treasured, you know, by gynaecologists everywhere.

Did you know George Harrison at that point? I think I'd just met him. Right. Eric was more of a friend of his, because Eric was spending a lot of time in LA at the time and was much more so part of the music world. So Eric was the one who sort of picked up on George's enormous sort of fan worship of Python,

which we didn't really realise. And I didn't know him terribly well at that time, but got to know him very well afterwards. Yeah. Well, he was in the film, wasn't he? He was in the film. He was Mr Papadopoulos, who was offering them out. And he was an important financial backer, wasn't he? He was absolutely crucial. I mean, without George, the film would not have been made,

as simple as that. Because EMI backed out when the head of EMI read the script. And some very nice people lower down in EMI had said, it would be great to be associated with the Pythons, this is really funny. And then Michael Carreras, I think it was, who was the head of EMI, read it and said, we can't do this, you know, a company like our own, a famous old traditional company, shareholders will panic, a stock price will fall, you can't do, you know, sort of blasphemous stuff like this. So we were left with a script,

a little bit of a set built out in Tunisia, and it was George who picked up the baton. That was when Eric asked him and told him about it in L.A., and George and his manager agreed to give us $5 million to get the film made. And memorably, George said, he was asked, you know, $5 million on one film, why? He said, well, you know, I just wanted to see it. Which is great, you know, it's lovely. He was such a Python fan.

And very few Python fans have five million to spend. Right. But he saved us, absolutely. Saved that film, yeah. Uh-huh. Oh, it's so great. It's obviously a film that tops polls of not only favourite, but critically. And that's despite all the hoo-ha that accompanied its release.

Well, maybe because of. Yeah, I suppose so. Although, to me, my family was never very religious. I wasn't totally scandalised by the religious aspect of it. It just was very funny. And that was for, you know, like a 12-year-old watching it who didn't get a lot of the references necessarily.

I think there was definitely a knee-jerk reaction very often from people who hadn't seen the film and knew they wouldn't want to and therefore went on to say, quite unjustifiably, that others shouldn't, so they tried to stop it. And that's the thing. And also, interestingly, you saying you were 12, there are all those people out there who say,

we're doing this because our children shouldn't see this. They bring in the children. This happened when Monty Python TV shows were first made. I mean, these are TV shows about sheep falling out of trees and hitting newsreaders and bishops wrestling. But they said, no, we cannot have this. This cannot go out early because children might see it. And these people who speak on behalf of protecting children

seem to have got it completely wrong. It's just their way of saying, we don't like it, therefore we're going to bring in children as a sort of reason. Sure. And the children, like you, when you were 12, are people who really loved it. I think Python was written for children and adults as well, but it certainly wasn't intended to be an adult show

in any shape or form. I think that children as well tend to remain largely unaffected by the stuff they don't understand. There's a lot of stuff that just goes over their heads. You filter some out. Yeah, yeah. I was responding to, I loved the way you hopped about as the ex-leper. And that became kind of my template for a funny way to move and behave physically.

It was so sort of joyous and skippy. And then, I mean, you were the person that I focused on, I suppose, because you seemed to be, apart from just being very physically funny and a lot of your characters looked warm and kind of welcoming in that way, that some of the other characters seemed fearsome and frightening. So as a child, you're focusing on the Palin characters. Then there was the sort of nice Roman... Oh, yes, one of myin characters. I know. Then there was the sort of nice Roman...

Oh, yes, one of my favourite characters. Yeah, it's such a great idea that he just feels really bad about it, handing out all the crosses. Yeah, I just... How do you play this character? I thought, well, he's... Think about it. He's someone from a well-off, very sophisticated Roman family. What's his name again? Nysa Suetes. There you go. well-off, very sophisticated Roman family. What's his name again? Nicus Wettus.

There you go. And he's sent out to this god-awful place in the baking heat where there's a civil war on, really, and tries to live his ideals, his sort of left-wing ideals. You know, these people shouldn't be suffering. There's a reason why they're doing this. They're all human beings. let's look at their story and he's given this terrible job of sending people

to be crucified, which is about the most horrible death you could have, so he rationalises by being terribly sort of he's wrestling with his conscience as they come along and one of my favourite bits in the whole film is when Eric Idle comes along and says, he says crucifix whole film is when Eric Idle comes along and he says,

Crucifixion, no, no, I've been told to be set free and go and live on a desert island for the rest of my life. And I said, sure, it's just wonderful. He said, oh, that's so nice. Oh, I'm so pleased. And Eric says, no, no, it's crucifixion, really. So, you know, from both sides he's assaulted by the authorities and also the people he's sending seem as a complete drip um oh and so he says yes if you go yeah i know one of the first on the left and all that yeah and did you guys ever sort of analyze those kinds of

beats in the films or you just did what you thought was funny but did you ever think about like what feeling it gave to an audience because for me especially again as a youngster watching these films in in a very simple-minded literal way i'd often be confounded or sort of a little bit shaken by the endings that were quite bleak like holy grail so you're invested in all these fun nutty nights yeah and then suddenly you're invested in all these fun, nutty nights. And then suddenly you're ripped out of the thing right at the end with this postmodern flourish of having the cops turn up and bundle them all into vans, and then the film runs out, and then you're left with that crazy intermission music.

It's quite jarring, you know. And did you guys think about all that kind of thing, or you just thought, nah, it's funny? I think we thought, this has to be funny but with endings was very interesting we never we were never very good at endings which is why we actually um python was not particularly good at sketches which had beginning middle of an end the traditional sketch format very often we'd have an idea which would sort of be very very, but why did it have to be concluded? And so when we were writing the TV shows,

we'd ignore that sometimes and just cut to animation, cut to film, you know, and then you'd go back later. So having to have endings, and you have to have endings to movies, was something we were not very good at, and I think that's why we sort of devised a sort of non-ending for Holy Grail. It didn't come out of the story of the knights and all that, because, you know, where does that go? So we create this underlying story,

modern story about the historian and all that. And so in the end, I think we suddenly thought, well, let's end it with a modern scene and the police coming and arresting everybody, which is actually supposed to be funny. I don't think we felt it was bleak. I think we thought it was just hilariously funny. But as I say, as a 12-year-old watching it,

it was like, what the hell's going on now? I don't understand. Where are all the... They can't arrest the knights. And then... Oh, that's interesting. But did you even... were there even discussions about having a more conventional narrative tying up of the story i can't remember any and holy grail was written fairly fast i mean later films particularly

meaning of life we spent ages agonizing over the shape of it and what would come where. And I think probably, I think the ending probably came just like that. We had a session, sat around, what happens, you know, do they find the grail? What do they do with the grail when they found it? You know, nobody sort of seemed to know quite what to do and suddenly the idea must have come up. Why't we get the historian historian's death which seemed like a silly moment in the middle of the film make this a significant thing then the police are onto it and the knights are going to be arrested we thought the idea of arresting them a modern lot arresting the knights was a really nice sort of um combination of conventions yeah uh coming together and and and it felt neat it felt right yeah and then in life of brian Yeah. understanding that's ended up with brian being on the cross facing as you say a miserable death

and then all these opportunities for a reprieve come along all these little glimmers of hope in the people's front of judea and judith and otto yeah but they're all snatched away from him it's so cruel yes did you ever think like god this is bleak? I think, again, we always looked for what we felt would make people laugh, most of all. And we'd sort of established the convention that, you know, Brian isn't Jesus, but he's treated this way and he's continually protesting his innocence. He's not the Messiah. And the fact that this goes all the way through, right to the fact that he's on the cross, somehow it felt necessary to carry it right through.

Otherwise that would be a bit of a cheat at the end. They said, oh, he's not, you know, sorry, we've got it wrong. That wouldn't have been Python. And, of course, what saved us there was Eric coming up with always look on the bright side. And there again, that was a moment when we must suddenly have said, oh, that's got to be the ending, this singer's song on the bright side and there again that was a moment when we must suddenly have said oh that's got to be the ending they sing a song on the cross um had you said like we should do a song here eric why don't you go off and write something or did he just turn up with it no eric

turned up with it we all had a session really on the last section and i think terry myself wrote quite a lot of that bit um And Eric came up with this song. And it's in my diary. I rather sort of, you know, say it's OK and all that. Typical, this is what diaries are. That and that day when I heard it, it's OK, it's quite nice. Where will it fit? And, of course, it fitted perfectly.

And the main discussions I can remember at that point were what should the process of crucifixion look like? You know, do they have nails? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All that sort of thing. And that was really, that was debated for quite a long time. And we decided, no, that's, we can't do it that way. So they were sort of, if you remember, they were strapped up, roped down and all that.

There was no bashing of nails into palms. Yeah. Funny, we were sort of copped out there. I don't... It wouldn't have been funny. It just wouldn't have been funny. Some things are funny. It would have played badly with me and my mum.

Yeah. When we were watching it one rainy afternoon with me aged 12 again. That would have been embarrassing, wouldn't it? Well, I was already... You wouldn't have found it... It wouldn't have been funny, so I don't think you'd have been able to say, well, it made me laugh. Yeah, I was already heartbroken that he was going to die.

Yeah. So, again, it would have just been too extreme, I think. And I do remember registering the fact that it wasn't nails in the hand and thinking, well, that's something at least. And did you feel, well, he hasn't died, and maybe he's not going to die? I thought there was a chance. The song is kind of giving them a kind of new, an escape. The song was just so transcendently uplifting

that it really didn't matter. It was amazing. It was, I would tear up every time I was watching it. It was one of the first things that ever made me emotional, watching a film, you know. And it still does to this day. I mean, it's really quite a thing that transcends something purely comedic. It's lovely that when you kind of

move to tears by something like that. Yeah, yeah. Good for Eric. Life's a piece of shit when you look at it. Life's a laugh and death's a joke. It's true. You'll see it's all a show, keep on laughing as you go.

Just remember that the last laugh is on you. And always look on the bright side of life. Are you excited, pleased about the fact that the What Are The Europeans Ever Done For Us has been now taken up as a pro-European skit. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, any time Python is picked up, two thoughts. One is that it's generally used out of context, like Margaret Thatcher and the dead parrot.

The dead parrot, yeah. Call the liberals a dead parrot. He didn't do it very well. I thought, oh, God, that's a good line. Misused. But on the other hand, it shows that sort of things have gone into the language, I suppose, which is quite rare for a comedy show. And things like the nudge unit they have at Downing Street,

where it's nudging people into doing something rather than forcing them to do it. What have the Europeans ever done for us? These things do come back, and that's, I suppose, evidence that you're remembered. And you're also seen in an odd way as slightly irrelevant. I don't think when we wrote Python we ever thought, is this relevant or not?

It's a comedy show. We want to make people laugh. In order to make people laugh, you have to make them think as well and feel something and feel so emotional. So, yeah, I like to hear moments like that. Except when it's being used, you know, usually it can be misused. I was sort of used by Thatcher, and I think there was some American called Chris Christie,

who was the mayor of New Jersey, and we didn't like him particularly, and he was pretty right-wing, and he used Python, tried to use Python for a Python thing for a bit. And you want to put a stop to things like that. Well, you can't choose your fans always, can you? You can't choose your fans, no. I don't know if he was a fan.

In politics, it's always somebody has suggested it as a fan on the staff lower down. You know, it never comes from top down. OK. Still talking about the movies, I'd forgotten how much a formative part of my youth they were you know because i didn't know anything about monty python hadn't seen the tv series my first exposure to that whole world was and now for something completely different which i caught on tv late

one night i just thought what the hell is this didn't know anything about it you know made a big impression right yeah and it was the first time I had seen anything postmodern, I suppose, or meta is what they would say now, where you had characters from one sketch running through into another sketch and things like that. Had anyone else done that kind of thing before you guys that you were aware of? Probably Spike Milligan.

Right. Spike was very much into sort of playing with the form and meta, as you describe it, and that's what we really liked about his TV show, like Q5, I think, was going out just before Python. I mean, he would just have silly things like a character would come on the middle of a sketch and there would be a caption giving the name of the actor

and his take-home pay, so you'd just have a sketch being played. John Bluthorpe, take-home pay. So you just have a sketch being played. John Bluthorpe, take-home pay, £52, 10 shilling. He played with the form wonderfully, so Spike would have been there. But it became something which we enjoyed doing greatly and we enjoyed the sort of interlacing of the ideas and the sketches. Now for something completely different, it was quite conventional. It was a film which was made after the first series, I think, of Python

to try and sell Monty Python to America. Right, so you re-shot some of the big sketches? We re-shot all of it. We re-shot all the stuff. But it was still basically the same sketches that had been in the TV show. And we did mess around a little bit and we had people running through. I can't remember quite how we did it.

But that was the beginning. And I think later on in the second and third series we enjoyed doing that. We enjoyed having people running past the window from somewhere else. There's a sort of batch of courage in Python to always try and come up with new

sketches each time, rather than rely on running jokes. There were some running jokes. I mean, the Gumby's, my brain hurts, tended to appear rather a lot. But apart from that, it was really important to try and get new ideas and new ways of putting them together. Yeah. And, of course, having Gilliam was very, very important.

Sure. Because he was the sort of, he could take you anywhere you wanted to go and make it very funny and very silly and very strange. And I think he was terry was crucially important python because it also gives a lot of street cred to have an animator that had never been done before no spike peter cook darling more no one had really used animation um in a comedy show before uh and that was, you know, the standard was high. And he was also quite kind of rude and risky.

So he ticked all the boxes, Terry. Plus he was able to do it quite quickly. I mean, I guess the reason that most people don't have an animator as part of their rock and roll team, whether it's comedy or music, is that it takes a while to do animation. But he was able to find a way of doing it so that he could put stuff in every show. It was like a cottage industry.

Terry would just cut these things out and move them around himself. I think one of the big issues of the first series that we took up with the BBC was they wouldn't allow Terry... wouldn't give Terry any money for an assistant. So he was doing it all himself to start with. And then there was a girl who was Terry Jones's sister-in-law, Kate Hepburn, and she sort of came in and helped for no money at all.

And eventually, when the shows went out, they realised that animation was important and he got someone to help him. But basically he was doing it all on his own, up in his top room of his house off West End Lane, his flat off West End Lane, and churning it in. I think it was very, very hard work. Sure, but it looks great.

It looked great. And sometimes things are best produced under pressure. You moan and groan and all that. If you're given all the time in the world, whatever that means, would it be any better? Probably not. And that wonderful opening title sequence in Life of Brian is so spectacular and very much sets out the stall for a comedy film that looks like a big-budget feature film.

Yeah. And that was one of the enjoyable things about it, was that Terry Jones... Yeah, and a terrific soundtrack too. Brian, the boy they call Brian, sung and very powerfully arranged. Was it actually Shirley Bassey or someone, a sounder? No, no, it wasn't Shirley Bassey.

It was a friend of Andre Jackamins, who's our sort of sound man and has been throughout the Python days. He got her to do it. She was just brilliant. It was so good. Yeah. days he got her to do it she was just brilliant it was so good yeah the first python film that came out when we were just about old enough to go and see it was the meaning of life in 1983

again that was one that me and jo Joey went out and we got the book and we got the book before we went to see the film. Went to WH Smith. Here it is. Here it is. Slightly better bound. Proper size. Proper size. So you've got bits of the script. In fact, this one is more scripty.

It is, yes. But it's got all the big glossy pictures of what was going on. And again, you could see that it had this really high budget feature film look. And all these extreme images like the person getting operated on at the beginning. Yes. Guts all being pulled out. Yeah.

And then the topless runners chasing the guy off the cliff at the end and then the crimson permanent assurance thing which was like a little mini epic in itself terry's own little movie yeah within the movie yeah that caused quite a bit of a little bit of tension within the group because it's quite costly right okay cost a lot of money and people kept saying terry have you finished that yet? No, no, no. But he assembled a most amazing set, and it looks fantastic, but it took up quite a bit of the budget. Right. So there you go.

But overall, it did seem like a much more extreme thing, and, of course, Mr Creosote and the sketch in the Burr War with the people with all their limbs missing. Yes, yeah. Yeah, we struggled with that last film, struggled to find, you know, the right mix. Somehow, Holy Grail, well, we had the story of the Grail, the knights and all that. There are, you know, six or seven characters,

they're all knights, they're fighting the Grail. It's a narrative people know and we can make up as we go along, but it gave us a structure. Life of Brian, you know, the wrong Messiah, the birth of Jesus, all that sort of stuff, gave us a structure. The film after that, what was

the structure? We just didn't really know and the sketches took longer to write. I think in the end it turned out we had some very good stuff in there. I mean, Mr Mr Creosote is still one of the best things Python ever did. And it has all these little hidden nuggets. Yes. You have the Noel Coward song at the beginning of that sketch, which is great. And John with the wafer-thin mint.

Yeah. Just saying wafer-thin. I don't know why he came up with that, but that's how people remember it. If it said wafer-thin mint, it would have been OK, quite funny, but wafer thin, it was this terrible sort of tempted to sophisticated French pronunciation of something that was so normal. But it was a struggle to get it all,

and we wrote lots and lots of material. There was a huge amount that was never actually filmed and never got into the script. There was biggles and all that sort of stuff. But in the end, I mean, I think we got some good sketches, but it was much more like, I thought, much more like the TV shows, and there were lots of sketches rather loosely hung together with this birth, you know, birth, life, death.

The age is a man. That was a very, very sort of wafer-thin framework of the thing. Some people's favourite film. Well, there's so many extraordinary, over-the-top, memorable moments, and, you know, the Universe song is great. I think certainly Eric's songs work amazingly. Every Sperm is Sacred, of course. Yeah, but that's Terry Jones'

Oh, is that Terry? Oh, yes, I have to put you right on that. Sorry. Yes. I just assumed he did all the music. No, oh, no, no, no, no. Sorry. No, no, Lumberjack song was ours too. Right. But no, Every Sperm is Sacred, we were quite proud of that, Terry and I. That's amazing.

But yes, the songs did work well and Terry did a marvellous job of sort of creating a huge musical number out of every Sperm is Sacred. That's what made it work. If it had just been the little sketch about the man coming in and giving his children away

for charity because he can't afford to keep them or whatever. I can't remember what he was going to do. Anyway, it would have been a sort of OK sketch. It became great because of the musical sequence afterwards. Yeah. Arlene Phillips choreographed it. It's just terrific. It makes you feel really good. And there's a lot of stuff in The Meaning of Life as well

which you'd had before, but just an almost rageful sense to me of the folly of war and just very dark stuff about people going out and being chopped up for no good reason. Yes, yes, yes, the trenches sequence, yeah. Which you get as well a little bit in Life of Brian, again, Otto and the Suicide Squad at the end, who turn up and see off the Romans only to execute themselves and say, you see, every man a hero.

They all died for their country. Yes, yeah. Would you guys ever talk about that stuff, or that was just all something that you felt the same way about? No, yeah, I mean, it probably would be discussed a little bit more than if it was a straight sketch which just was a comedy sketch, a comedy idea, and it worked, then we'd all agree that made us all laugh. Put it on the pile.

Something that was perhaps more political, more crafted, trying to say something very strongly, as I say, about war or death or something, that it depended very much on how you approached it, then we would discuss that, yeah. That was quite a... I mean, we talked about a lot of things like that. And what...

Once Python had a voice, as it were, after the TV shows, and I suppose the Holy Grail came along, then you felt that people were kind of much more aware of what you were going to do next and more expectant. And that made us feel, oh, come on now, we've done Grail, we've done grell we've done life of brian both been very successful we've really got to be able to say something new and something fresh and something important as well as doing the comedy and that was a that was a bit

of a that's a bit of a sort of difficult thing to compromise is pulling in both directions one is to make the film very funny the other is to say we are the pythons. You know, we made a film about religion, if you like. We must now sort of have a view on things. Not easy to reconcile with comedy. And having a view was less important than making people laugh, I think, in the end. But that's why I think the last film had some great moments, but just it was... We were striving for an effect, which I don't think we... Or an overall effect, an overall feel to it, which it never quite got.

It's bitty, but a great bit. Again, talking about Terry Gilliam, that crimson permanent assurance seemed to point the way to certainly a visual style that he developed in Brazil, which was a couple of years after that or something. Have you watched that recently? I haven't watched Brazil for a bit, no. I saw it recently and I loved it at the time.

Yeah. But it was very overwhelming. I was really impressed with how well it holds up. I mean, it really packs such a wallop. Yeah. No, I'm sure. I think it was an extraordinary film. The look of the film, the art direction of the film,

the way, you know, the rows of desks and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Images shot in cooling towers at the end when I'm torturing Jonathan and all that. Very kind of extraordinary. You'd never seen anything like that on film before. So it was kind of dystopian vision, but it was a lot of comedy in it,

but there was also a lot going on. There were explosions. It was all about terrorism. It was about plastic surgery, all sorts of cosmetic surgery. Yes, very prescient. All sorts of things that we now sort of agonise about were in that film.

And the constant sort of bewilderment of the main character you know he didn't know what was going on where he was supposed to be clocks didn't work devices that were supposed to be incredibly modern that didn't work properly you know where it's so so relevant i think to nowadays um where we are sort of i think in in many cases run by are sort of, I think, in many cases, run by a sort of benign communication system, which is trying to alter the way we learn about things and the way we deal with things. But it's still a bit Big Brother-ish, I think. Very much so.

And that bureaucracy that used to be about the physical world, about paper and files, et cetera, is now on the internet, of course, and it's all stored there and all the facts and figures about you and the way that Buttle and Tuttle are confused and then ruin a whole man's life just because of a fly landing on a typewriter at the beginning of the film. You feel as if people's lives can be similarly mangled online

with little bits of information. We know. Yeah. We know they can. Yeah, that's very true. The men at the desks, you know, the automotives are working away at the desks and now people are probably living in rather pleasant communities in California sort of working out ways in which we can kind of bring the world all together

into a great collective that's right run by themselves yes big brother now has a far more smiley yeah face and it's like hey come on we can all be pals we can have our cake and eat it we've got to organize things there's got to be a system but hey that doesn't mean to say we can't all have a great time while we're doing it yeah do no evil yeah uh Is that Google's catchphrase? Is it? Try not to be evil. It's something like that.

Something really, really, Python could have come up with that. I mean, really. You know. I was really struck by the section in your Travelling to Work diaries where you're writing and then making American Friends. You were around about the same age that I am now, and it seemed like a real struggle to make that film from beginning to end. How do you feel about it now?

Because at the time you seemed so ambivalent. I'm very happy now that it was made because I think the best thing about the whole process was the actual making of the film, working with the team, working with the crew, working with people like Connie Booth and Fred Molina, working with the director. It was a very happy film to make

and I think it's a rather delightful film. It's not heavyweight, but it it works it's got a good story the diary reveals how long it took us to get to that point you know like three years or so of looking for money resisting attempts to cast big names because we didn't want to and all that sort of stuff and and then the ghastly business afterwards of distribution you can make the best film in the world if you don't if a distributor is not there to push it or it puts it into only a few cinemas with no publicity, then you're stuck.

So it was really like a sort of sandwich, you know, with kind of bits of dry bread on either side and in the middle something really quite tasty, which was the actual film itself. So I'm glad we made it. I couldn't believe when I was putting the diaries together how much time we'd spent thinking about it, making it into the shape it should be. But I think we did most things right.

There were maybe differences of emphasis, finally, that we could have changed in the script and all that, tightened up the ending. But on the whole, I was pleased with the film. And I left in a lot of the material I'd written about setting up the ending. But on the whole, I was pleased with the film. And I left in a lot of the material I'd written about setting up the film, because I think people just, I wanted to show really the difference between film and television. The fact that you could do six ripping yarns within about a year and a half from writing to actually shooting.

And with film, no, they can go on and on. And it happens to lots of other people. People much better than I am have stood around for years waiting for the money. That's the nature of movies, and perhaps why I sort of, in the end, was really happy to go off and do the travel documentaries rather than make films all the time. Because the travel documentaries got made, were shown, end of story. You know, film ideas may be taken up, may not be taken up, may be made, will be made, but then won't be shown.

You know, it's a shifting, uncertain world. Yeah. And now, of course, you're associated with the world of travel. And this is a question that's been asked before, I think, but if you could live anywhere that wasn't the UK, where would you go, probably? I've seen so much of the world, and there's so many places that impress me and that I've loved and have enjoyed,

and yet I've always felt very strongly that my travelling was travelling from a base and back to a base. It was a bit like getting out of the harbour, doing your exploring and then coming back to the harbour, breathing a sigh of relief and saying, hey, we're back and here's our story. It was all about coming back. So, you know, bearing that in mind,

I would say there are certain places, I suppose, you know, southern France, north Italy. I like the lifestyle there. It's very pleasant. I could live in parts of America. I'm not sure now, but I used to think... Whereabouts in the States? I think I'd probably live somewhere on the East Coast.

I quite like Vermont. I've got some friends out there. Right. The other mountains, quite spectacular. Otherwise, it's quite tricky. I mean, the tough option would be somewhere where you had to learn the language and there you could possibly gain a lot from learning the language and somewhere there

was somewhere that was utterly different yes like japan for instance you know fascinates me japan and yet seems so completely and utterly foreign and all the signs are in japanese and all that and yet i feel the people are very similar to us in certain ways offshore island and all that have you been to Japan recently? No, I haven't been to Japan for years, actually. I wonder if it's because myself and Joe went there to do a TV show in 2003, and we were there for about 10 weeks or something.

And it made a huge impression. And we were in Tokyo. It was almost like somewhere in the West, but in the 50s. So very little crime, not particularly a diverse culture. You know, it was mainly indigenous Japanese people there. Yeah, very different, diametrically opposite, I suppose, from living in London. Exactly, yeah.

Where we soak up so many influences, and we like that. Well, most of us like it, I like it. And also the Japanese have always been big fans of Monty Python from very early on. And it was Spike Milligan who went out there and he said, you know, your show's out there. You know what they call it?

They call it something in Japanese and the translation is Gay Boys Dragon Show. And that's what we were called in Japan. What was it that they also had a good name for the upper class Twitter of the year? Do you remember what that was? Oh, yeah, no, I can't remember that.

Fact-checking Santa here. It was the aristocratic, deciding, foolish number one guy. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas. But they were mysterious people whose culture I don't really know much about, whose language I know nothing about. And yet they were some of the earliest real fans of Python.

And I get quite a number of rather beautifully written, beautifully crafted fan letters from Japan. And they're all beautifully calligraphed with little drawings and all that. As you say, it's a bit like the 50s. It's not all done high tech. It's actually the belief in writing and making your own little message and all that. And I think there's something I would really like there.

I wouldn't mind sort of staying and finding out. Yeah, I'd like that too. Finally, at the risk of ending on a kind of down note, which we may cut out. Yeah, it can be up or down, I don't mind. I wanted to ask you, your description of Graham Chapman's death was very moving and it reminded me a lot of my dad's death. The way you described it was almost identical to my dad's

final hours. The breathing, and I'm just talking on a practical level, the breathing, the way i'm just talking about practical level yeah the the breathing the way you described it the single tear rolling down the cheek happened i wonder if that's a thing that is a sort of physical reaction i couldn't i was confused when it happened i was like is that just an automatic physical thing or is that an emotional thing because he had a kind of thousand yard stare by that point you know he'd sort of checked out a little bit and I think that was the case with Graham as well the way you describe it well what I've heard from more than one person is that you really never know exactly what somebody who appears to be in a coma or even the last stages of their life,

are picking up and can hear or cannot hear. And I learnt that really when my dad died. And I wasn't actually there when he died, but I was there an afternoon when he was really breathing in that sort of croaky way. And I remember just sort of saying to him, was he going to die? And at the same time, someone just taking me aside and saying, you know, he can hear,

he might be able to hear what you're saying, this very often happens. So you don't really know what's going on there and what's getting through. So I don't know if the single tear is something you've said or it's just a way that the, I don't know that the system's shutting down, the eye's well up, whether that's just one of those things that happen. So I don't really know. And what I do know is that you might as well keep talking. And I kept talking to Graham about all sorts of things, the things that I thought he'd enjoy, that, you know, someone had had a bad review,

somebody didn't like it, had a bad review, you know, sort of mean little things, but I knew he would love were he still conscious. Whether that got through, I just don't know. And have you developed strategies for dealing with that, or is it always just the same? No, I mean, it sounds an odd thing to say but around about 1989 for instance three people I knew very well. My mother was one, Graham was another and a very

good friend of mine an American guy called Al Levinson who was a real rock and a wonderful guy to sort of just just chew the fat with and talk about life. All three died within a period of about two or three months. I've never had a period quite like that since. Touch wood. Nobody very, very close to me has died. But, you know, I don't know what I'm trying to say, really. I think I have exactly the same sort of attitude which is to celebrate someone's life till the last moment i just hate this sort of dreadful solemnity that happens and

sort of curtains get drawn all that um most of the people i know you know they're jolly people who've entertained me and we've had great times together so i think of them and what they mean to me and what what we enjoyed while we were still alive. And I know they would have enjoyed the curtains being open and, you know, a wine bottle being opened and all that. And that kind of gives me a sort of way of dealing with it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You weren't able to think of a My Biggest Moment thing, were you?

Well, I did think of My Biggest Moment. Oh, yeah, but it was a bit corny. Go on, then. The birth of my son. Uh-huh. My first son. I'm not saying the other two weren't also big moments, but actually being there when Tom was born was just the greatest thing.

What year was that? 1968. Right, so you were right in the middle of Pythoning. No, no, we hadn't started Pythoning. Had you not? No, Python was 1969. Right. Tom was born in the middle of doing Do Not Adjust Your Set

and The Collegial History of Britain. So he was the pre-Python baby. The other two came afterwards. But that was just sensational. And having a son, really, that was just lovely. Sorry, there should be something more epochal, but that's the one that I thought of it. This is an advert for Squarespace.

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There we go. Michael Palin. It was a great pleasure to meet Michael Palin, and I want to thank him very much for his time and for putting up with some observations about those Monty Python films, which were perhaps a little over-reliant on impressions formed as a 12-year-old. Anyway, he entertained them all very charmingly and it was

really great to meet him and i hope i'll see him again sometime i want to thank his daughter rachel very much and thanks as well to my pal nicky waltham for basically getting michael on the podcast i really appreciate it thank you very much indeed. I owe you drinks and favours. Thanks very much to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for production support. Thanks, Seamus. And that's pretty much it for this week. I'm going to try and keep these podcasts a little bit more regular in the forthcoming weeks, if I possibly can. Until next time we are together, please take exceptionally good care. You've got to be careful. There's maniacs out there. Did you know? There's people wandering

around on a hair trigger. Antagonists. People that just don't like the look of your face. Or maybe it's just my face. I don't know. In fact, it just reminded me, yesterday I was driving into town, driving into Norwich, and I was pulling out from a small road onto a larger road, and I was joining a queue of traffic, slow-moving traffic, joining a queue of traffic, slow-moving traffic, so I thought that it would be acceptable to pull into that queue ahead of a fellow that was approaching on the larger road. But he did not appreciate it, and when I got into that queue, he pulled up right behind me and he was gesticulating wildly it was very theatrical I could almost hear what he was shouting uh the abuse that he was hurling at me for the benefit of the person in his passenger seat saying what an absolute tool bag I was for pulling out in front

of him I'd like to point out that it was in no way dangerous. He was coming at a fair lick the other way, but there was no danger of us having a collision or me being unsafe because I'm one of the best drivers in the United Kingdom and I would never do anything unsafe. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But this guy was incandescent and he wasted no time overtaking me as soon as we got to the roundabout. He zipped around me, got in front of me, and then we spent around the next 20 minutes traveling more or less bumper to bumper in the traffic to pretty much the same destination in Norwich. But he would have been happy though, because he taught me a lesson. I've taught you an absolutely lesson that you will never soon forget about pulling out in front of me into a road. And the lesson now has been hammered home by me being in front of you in the traffic queue, just ahead of you, but still in front. And that's where I belong,

with you behind and wishing that you were in my car with me ranting about what a giant idiot hole you are in your stupid pulling-out-in-front-of-me car. You've got to be careful. There's highly strong characters out there. And I'm one of the worst of them. So watch out! I love you. Bye! Bye. Thank you.