From thetelegraphandargus.co.uk
MICHAEL Palin began keeping a diary in 1969, and he’s kept it up ever since. His first scribbles coincided with a meeting with the BBC about the notion that would become Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
His ongoing tour, in which he selects aspects of his diaries and brings them to life via images and video clips, naturally includes a good chunk of Python with references to his co-performers throughout.
But Palin, now 81, has enjoyed a second career as a world traveller, and so the show is equally balanced with memories of his various trips to far-flung destinations.
Call it a combination of subtle name-dropping and glorious globe-trotting, and all greased with humour.
The cast list within the 10 years of Palin’s diaries from 1999 to 2009 is extraordinary: everyone from Tom Hanks to the Dalai Lama by way of George Harrison and the late Dame Maggie Smith, Palin’s co-star in A Private Function.
Says Palin: “I make no apologies: I love diaries. They’re a completely honest account of what happened that day.”
And as someone who finds the humour in everything he does and sees, Palin is a natural.
He tells of meeting Jaws author Peter Benchley, once a speech writer for Lyndon B Johnson, for whom he sought to deliver foreign words phonetically. Hence, for LBJ, the country Nepal unfortunately became “nipple”.
Then there was the pitch to the BBC to make his travel series Sahara, which was met with the disbelieving response: “What, four hours of sand?”
He recalls the waspish wit of Maggie Smith during filming on location in Ilkley for A Private Function. They were eating a mixed salad, which was found to contain a piece of glass. “A very mixed salad,” muttered his unimpressed co-star.
He proudly presents a poll of religious films in which 10 per cent of those taking part nominated Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ as their favourite. The other 90 per cent selected Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the movie that was funded by ex-Beatle George Harrison just because he liked the sound of it.
And then there’s his remembrance of the awful news of the 9/11 attacks, which he heard whilst deep in the Niger on one of his travel shows.
As an octogenarian Palin references his children and grandchildren and gleefully reads from an alternative children’s book co-written by him and his Python collaborator Terry Jones: Bert Fegg’s Nasty Book for Boys and Girls.
Think advice for running children’s parties where the special ingredient is a rampaging Bengal Tiger. It’s all delightfully daft, off the wall, and supremely subversive, just like its ageless author.
* Michael Palin’s There and Back Diary Tour continues until October 15. The book is published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, priced at £30.
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