Michael Palin

fans I was going to say sorry about that noise they really like me yeah very popular interchangeable Michaels yeah well I think that's right that's why I grew the beard for the occasion look this is a particularly exciting night for me I'm Michael Williams I'm director of the wheeler Center and thrilled to see so many of you out here tonight our guests obviously needs very little introduction but I'm going to give a brief one nonetheless having a career that makes you a celebrated icon around the world and a national treasure at home might be seen as something of an achievement but having two careers that both make you an icon international international treasure of homes just overreaching a bit I think sorry I apologize it makes the rest of us I know I know I'm okay because that look the truth of it is to be completely honest that's a modest assessment of our guest this evening achievements alongside the twin polls of his career as a member of Monty Python and as England's most celebrated professional traveler he's also carved out formidable achievements as a screenwriter and actor a children's author a diarist and a novelist talk about nova achievement and all of this while maintaining a reputation for being funny versatile smart charming generous and deeply and profoundly nice oh shut up sorry shut up ladies really now welcome Michael Palin I am sorry about the nice thing are you a domestic of that I'm very sick of it yeah I didn't start it you know I know I'm not nice my wife will bear that out my trolden will bear that out everyone who sort of ever seen me trying but a light bulb in and and it breaks in my hand we'll hear unfailing light words I just don't swear on camera very much and I I didn't find actually it is easier to be nice to people which I don't think it's a sort of great difficult thing to work out but amazing number of people who do find confrontation preferable to conciliation but not me I'd love you all I suspect that they should you Michael thank you I look as I did real interview where you said that you'd never been to a country where it was considered rude to smile yes that's true yeah yeah that and you despite your reputation for being nice you're incredibly racist backstage which surprised yeah yeah yes well I hope to bei right that's gone down very well now see me as a fully rounded human being rather than just some sort kind of them if there's one thing Melbourne crowds love its racism okay look it's we have so much ground to cover I do want to give the audience a chance to ask some questions a bit later in the evening and it's such an extraordinary and varied career I wasn't sure where to start so I thought we're better than here tell me about being a train spotter um well it was a sort of thing you did in Sheffield in the 1950s it was all about my school I don't know if it's still the same as all about collecting things people can add collections of anything cheese labels are very popular I told kid you not cheese there was some people collected string you know the clever ones there's you know seeking a fully fulfilled sex life became trainspotters and I there was something I don't know it's something exciting about trains I think for me they represented a sort of escape in a way nice go down to Sheffield station and see my sister off she worked in London she was nine years old of me and saw these trains coming in from Glasgow and going to London I thought wow that is the wide world I'd just been to Nottingham that's as far as I'd be there's only 30 miles away so there's something glamorous about what trains represented but also I have to say it was making lists of the names of the locomotives and interestingly enough the the locomotives that came through Sheffield were of a particular class named after the British Empire and probably only be one of them now but there are sort of 50 then Silla Barbados would come through and they're you know a Dominion of Canada and all that sort of thing and I would dutifully write them down so again you've got travel there as well so was that living inside the lists list making for a minute were those early impulses to escape was that a hint of the drama mania that would take you later in life um yeah I think it probably was when people asked me you know when why do you travel which is difficult things so but I I mean I can remember from very very early on the stories I like to read were always set in foreign countries they're always somewhere exotic I loved I loved the stories of great explorers I mean it's Scotland an Amazon all that sort of thing in fact I just quick story I had to do and we got to the South Pole at the end of pole to pole I had to do a final piece to camera it was about minus 50 degrees and I'd summed up what I wanted to say right going back to Sheffield and here I was the point where my great hero had reached and you know I poured out all my feelings about what it meant to me and we finished it and it's freezing cold and the camera was about to jam and said let's go let's go and the sound guy said I think you ought to just listen to that I said father he was grinning in greeting at the South Pole you know - 50 Hey and he said just listen to it and and he was right because that my a rather odd intonation I had said at one point I remember as a schoolboy in Sheffield reading about the exploits of Scott and Amundsen under the bedclothes at night and found sandman who was attuned to these sort of as we say Suffolk nuances so I had to do it again but I mean how silly is that as I'm interested that you talk about Scott as a hero one of the looking at threads through your work one of the one of the things that comes up quite a bit is his work that's acutely aware of the tradition to which it belongs the first travel series you did was around the world in 80 days and and you were very mindful of following and Phineas fogs footsteps and your two novels Hemingway's chair and your latest novel the truth which is just out now and can be boarded over in your book shop after the event Michael told me to say that um both of them are concerned with men who are who have literary idols and heroes and people whose footsteps they're following in is that do you spend who were your big heroes apart from Walter Scott when you were young Oh Keith Miller the great Australian bowler and batsman ah he was just the greatest yeah at sporting heroes then and they are Keith Miller was a big hero who I met quite extraordinary I met him at Lords few years before he died and it happens sometimes it's happened to me you meet someone who just you have so much to say you have so much you want to sort of talk them out ask them about and he just he had two sticks he looked at me and said love your programs before anything had happened he was asking me about you know my travels and Monty Python he'd love Monty Python I said stop I want to you tell me how you hit that six over the pavilion at Lourdes and killed an old lady back in 94 so he was a he was a hero yeah travelers generally were heroes did you have acting in comedy heroes when you were growing up yes first one was it was the slapstick can cross the country representing you such a hero you know a little jacket well I lower low I can't believe it I would say Chaplin but I'm enjoying the impression Sir Norman Wisdom exactly yeah thank you very good now someone has scored that woman out yeah no I love Norman Wisdom and I have to say also Jerry Lewis I loved slapstick at that time and I remember Norman Wisdom in a particular film where they were plotting the Allied invasion and he was a tea boy coming in with the tea and they were sort of had ships and boats and this great big sort of map out there and stay right and they that brought a tea you know so we'll put those in there all right they push the team and it pushed towards Europe and all that well I thought that was funny at the time let's say me Jerry Lewis when he was sweeping leaves in the park and you know that nerdy character he swept up all these leaves then he lifts up the lawn and just goes like that run from underneath so there's two and then of course as I got more more sophisticated the goons spike spike and Peter Sellers as a great comic actor but they were really I mean that was just an inspiration my first heard the goon shows which I had when I was about 12 years old and that was quite something because the late sixties were a pretty extraordinary time for comedy in the UK I mean you you'll start on the frost report can you talk a little bit about yeah that period well I was I was still at the beginning of the 60s I was started Oxford in 62 and the show that really changed things for us was was Beyond the Fringe Peter Cook Dudley Moore Alan Bennett Jonathan Miller and because he was for include pride it's a bit like us they're from University they were not from the traditional comic background and yet they were doing commercial sketches about politicians about the church about the army about the futility of the war things that were just not allowed to be said on the stage in England at that time and they were doing it so well that they were just packing the houses they became incredibly successful and after that along came the television version of it which was that was the week that was with David Frost in the chair and again sharply deliberately satirical like little boys had suddenly been allowed to run around in their Paris house when they were away and dismantling everything and that's that happened sort of in the first part of the 1960s so by the time we came along I mean the fatter the satirical move the breaking down the barriers that the the milking of the sacred cows had sort of happened and we were left with a slightly open field where was commonly going to go by the time we came along there was still traditional sketch shows the frost report where I started writing with Terry Jones was was fairly traditional with sketches and little quickie jokes and all that but where were we going to go and the the group of us and John Cleese and Graham Chapman were both writers in the frost report Eric Idle was and we kind of looked at each other's work and said oh you you know we quite like that we were on the same wavelength and four years later that soar led to us coming together to be Monty Python but the ground work if you like have been already done breaking up of other sort of conventional attitude to comedy had happened so what was the process in the writers room as Monty Python forms did you did you spare each other or did you compete with each other I mean how did how was that dynamic well we what we did was we wrote in the various writing groups that were already existed which were just basically myself and Terry Jones who'd written since University John Cleese and Graham Chapman Eric Wright II usually on his own and Terry Gilliam who was vitally important to Python I mean his animations are just so important making it different and fresh and enabling us to sort of jump from one idea to another without having to resolve it and and we would also get together and discuss a vague outlines of a show then we'd spend a week away write material bring it to the table and John would read his stuff and I would read the stuff that Terry Jones myself had written and that was it the filter was did people laugh or didn't they laugh but you had to with the reading was great it was terrific fun the first time you you know brought these things to life and it was competitive I guess but in a good way and ultimately the winner of the competition was whoever made everyone laugh so it had to be about laughter and that's worth remembering because a lot of people think oh python was concerned with with with changing the world of comedy and breaking down barriers we just wanted to make each other laugh and then hopefully one or two other people why not - yeah well I mean we know we didn't know at the time we were very shows put out very late at night the BBC were not particularly happy with it they didn't know what we were doing and they put us on in what they call the graveyard slot late on a Saturday where most series had disappeared what do you think the particular sensibilities you brought to the table were what were the things looking back at pythons work that you think were idiosyncratically yours oh that's kind of hard to say because it was such a group thing but I suppose I I had a certain with Terry a kind of sense of the of the surreal I mean I suppose you could say a Spanish Inquisition was something that I would have thought up I didn't know why whereas John and Graham would have thought about something rather more sort of logical like the dead parrot sketch or something like that you can see it's logical but there is a sort of you know that's a additive traditional sketch and but the Spanish Inquisition was just a very silly idea and I like that stream of consciousness the way of getting into a sketch from another one and same with lumber with the lumberjack song with lumberjack song was only a way of resolving a sketch that we written about a barber who can't stand the sight of blood you know and he's cutting somebody's head mm-hmm he's obviously a psychotic ooh that bad town like kill kill murder murder murder yeah how the football gone today oh very well sir Larry well you know it's just trying to sort of keep the man calm as he cuts his hair and we wrote this mitt just wasn't getting anywhere how do we get out of this well ring Terry give him something like that but then I just said oh maybe maybe just Lane say didn't want to be a barber maybe he wants to be something else my lumberjack just came into my mind and so I think I was sort of added a fairly open mind to any idea that was sort of illogical but imaginative at the same time looking back over many of us flying surface episodes there's a there's a kind of recurring dynamic between you and John Cleese with him often apoplectic and you painfully cheerful and and in the face of his mounting rage I was that fun to play did you ever want to turn the tables it was very fun great fun to play because basically John is great when he's annoyed and that's why Basil Fawlty is such a wonderful wonderful character because it's barely suppressed rage throughout I mean it's a brilliant brilliant creation I don't know how he did it without bursting a blood vessel having a heart attack each show but it was that was the relationship he would come into the shop and I'll something ordinary this parrot you know it's dead no no it's not it's rested no it's not resting and waking up then oh hello Polly and you go through all that but he always played estrellas and I would Pat it back to him the same with them another of my favorite sketches we did together was the cheese shop and which there is no cheese and you know all those things we've got this no no no no no no Wednesday oh yes I have some Wednesday down please oh sorry I thought you're talking to me mister Wensleydale it's my name so just wonderful stuff and even down to my favorite item of Python which is the fish flapping dance you know what I hit John Cleese lightly on the face with fish I knew I was annoying him slightly as I did it and and that sort of there was an extra sort of age which made those sketches work but they were I didn't think I was able to do I've never been able to do cheese shop without breaking up at some point it just is impossible especially at the end when it goes on for about so four and a half minutes and these city gents playing balalaika thing and behind and it's about four minutes of escape before John says shut that bloody noise up and it's just that gets me every time because he can he can do anger and invective so well Isis in life as well as and I suspect events murky in here and show of hands how many of you think you could recite a certain amount of at least some of the sketches Michaels mentioned about a minute it is okay we have our lawyers you know yeah you're not allowed just to be clear it is extraordinary the way they've survived though I mean comedy can date terribly quickly and yet and yet you managed to produce something that defined a generation of British comedy and is a touchstone for comedian since dear do you have a sense of why that was what it is that made it last I don't know I mean I think partly because Python did not begin as something planned by executives who done research into what was going to be funny at the time and come up with a plan it was just spontaneous a lot of it was very was playing on some repetition our first audience were old early audience was largely you know people at school or college who are kind of learning things at the time so the idea of repeating stuff kind of caught on it might have been something to do with that I also think that I mean a lot of the the impetus behind some of the sketches is still you can still see it around now I mean the cheese shop the idea of someone being completely hopeless when you're going in for something you want still happens you know we're all still or the gas cooker sketch you know they've got people with all these forms to fill it in the end there's about 40 people stretching down the street to come to service the gas cooker I mean that still happens with telephone companies and it god knows what you know so I think people can see relative slight relevance to their own lives the Spanish Inquisition for God's sake you knows no that's not a good way to go is it has your sense of humor changed now well I don't think so I I have to say I still find Python very funny I still like watching some of those sketches I can see there's bad stuff there as well but if you ask me whether I still enjoy them or whether I might my I've grown out of that humour I'd say no I've grown out of Norman Wisdom slightly but no I think I still find things like that that funny um yeah what what's the effect the effect on the psyche no no not that that's true because listen what is the effect of having such colossal success early in your career I mean do you did you find it hard to move on from Python when you're winning separate ways do you know we never really were aware that Python was that successful the first series went on and the BBC just by the skin of the teeth renewed us for the second series we never got big ratings at that time television shows were made for maybe a life of about a year you maybe if you were lucky you got a repeat and that was it so the weren't DVDs there was no other way of sort of of accessing the material other than watching it when the BBC chose to put it out so nowadays you can really something can start and it can become amazingly successful and all the media pick it up and network media and all that suddenly it's is the big thing and it's every and that just never happened with Python and the I mean the first time honestly that I was aware that Python was something much bigger and more influential than we thought was when it broke in America and that was 1973 I think or so before even him it's about four years after we done the television shows with as far as television is concerned we'd split up we were making movies or just about to make a movie and a guy from national from Public Broadcasting Service in Dallas Texas picked up a copy Python liked it rang the BBC in New York and said have you any more of these and they said oh well yeah yeah we have yes we've got 45 of them do you really want them he said yeah I'd love to see them sent them to Dallas he played them over a weekend and got this extraordinary response mainly from college kids and suddenly we heard this that it spread around America around the various affiliates of the Public Broadcasting System from Dallas up to New York and then up to Boston and suddenly we've getting screaming kids from demanding more of Python and we got fan mail and all that suddenly you thought hey this is America we've got a huge audience we're a big hit it was like being a sort of minor Beatles for a short while but I mean that's a long way round of answering your question it honestly we didn't have to deal with a prospect of Fame at that time it was a prospect of work and also what do we do after Monty Python but John's left to go on and do something else how do we make money United family and all that sort of thing stardom didn't really come into it at all but by the late seventies early eighties you at live at the Hollywood Bowl you you hosted Solr Night Live four times yeah including once with your mother how did that come about it was fantastic well I'd i tested something Night Live and I knew Lorne Michaels who is that was then producing it and I for my mother's 80th birthday 1984 I thought I'd take her to to New York and my sister my her there and she'd never I mean she'd have a flown never been further than I think you know Paris or something like that and I flew her over to New York on Concorde and I thought this would just be the most amazing thing would blow her mind you know but she'd never been on a plane before she thought Concorde was the ordinary way you got from New York I said look three hours 12 minutes I'm wearing New York how about that yes where do we go now she says anyway they they heard on Saturday Night Live but my mother in town I was going to host it that time and they said they said would your mother be interested in sort of just coming on the show she sounds great and so I did the opening monologue with my mother sitting in a chair knitting and occasionally tugging at my jacket to tell me to sort of make sure that my collar was right and all that sort of thing she was absolutely brilliant you know eight year old woman she was in Eddie Murphy's dressing room Eddie Eddie Murphy wasn't on that week and I said you mom you're an Eddie Murphy's dressing room what who's he since what does he see a wrestler no he's not a wrestler those kind of it and and she did it that she was so good and the only bit that they after actually as it obviously is it's a live show would she introduce some of the other acts so this is my little mum introducing this wild rock bands you know some crazy drug crazed figures and she do that and it's just fantastic and then I took her to the party afterwards there was have a party and I thought perhaps she'd want to go back to the hotel she said oh no I'm quite happy and she sat at this party and and it was lovely everyone came up and talked to her I had to drag her away about 4 o'clock from some low dive in Manhattan so yes thank you for memory that it was a lovely lovely memory of her was she a fan of path yes yes she had to be I was her son you know I remember when life and Brian came out my mother was a church-going I would say more of a social church-going she wasn't a devout follower and of course people are absolutely shocked in place where she lived outside London total scandal you have Michael's doing impressions of Jesus all these misconceptions oh god that's wrong we're putting it be you know what I mean immaculate misconceptions going around happened and as human defend me staunchly and you know her little Fez David Michael's rather overstep I know he haven't is a very funny film he's very very good he's not about Jesus it's about you know the church and ministration also she would choose terrific yeah it was your father of em well my father was no he couldn't really my poor old dad he he could never quite understand what I found funny or I mean it was a great time when I was first listened to the goons on the one radio we had in the house and I hoped my father would just let me listen to it without coming in and of course he came in just at the moment when they were doing one of those I mean I write back mother who'sa something wrong with the set old boys and then later you know he when I was listening to Elvis Presley first time I really found some pop music was he you know I discovered myself an Elvis doing the Muppet but look me up on the new something wrong with the says old boy so there some time came to pison it was very much something wrong with the set and I'm sadly my my dear dad he got is quite ill for the end of his life and he had some he had Parkinson's disease and they gave him various treatments l-dopa and all that and the manifestations of this treatment but can't quite odd you know you hallucinate when they got the dose wrong and all that and Graham Chapman who was a doctor was fascinated by my father SaLuSa Nations especially he said what form do they take and I said well you know he sees hamsters running along the carpet and going up his trouser leg grandpa's really really you know I thought this is very Python I said yes so what happens I'm mother has to get out of bagging all the matter is trousers and put them in his neck that's all dear I'll dad you know I can see it's very high five sir cousin would not have gone down well no no he couldn't see that was anything kinky funny in it but yeah I think he liked the fact it was successful yeah so so that period after you'd kind of made it big in America and the films started happening was that what tell me a bit about the difference between making the films the Holy Grail and life of brian and the TV show main thing about the films and the reason why we decided to do them was really that we we were control freaks in a way we felt that not only would we could be right the best staff agar also perform the best stuff and we have to film directors potential film directors amongst our band terry jones and terry gilliam so we thought well the the way on from the television show is to try and direct our own movies and writer and movies and let's have a go and that was the that was the thinking behind Monty Python the Holy Grail and the difficulty in writing was that you had to deal with a 90 minute form at least 90 minutes and whereas television was just half an hour how do you hold an audience's attention even if it's just comedy sketches for 90 minutes it's a long time so we had to find a device which would would sort of appear to be a story whilst being able to accommodate all sorts of experiments and different ideas and different characters so we came up with them with the knights of the round table because we all play the Knights it was a sort of rather amorphous story which goes anywhere and we could get the Grail not get the Grail in the end and that was why we settled on that and you know that then within that format could could play around with it a bit but we were quite what was quite important was that we should make a good-looking film as well this was quite something that you shouldn't just be funny it should look good and we chose to shoot it in Scotland and had a bit of a setback because the National Trust for Scotland would not let us use any of their castles because they had read the script and said it wasn't compatible with the dignity of the fabric of the buildings you know neither these are buildings have boiling tar going down the walls you know people impaled again some years ago no no no jokes so those up there was a private castle called dune castle and they were very nice and they accommodated us there and have to say they've reached the benefit because they get hoards of Japanese tourists now we don't go to any of the other historic castles then go to dune because they want to take photographs of the battlements from which the cow came flying over and they're very enterprising they're very enterprising little bookshop as well as selling in the history of the castle sells coconuts which they can have the coconuts that they can take away so so they've done well but um but actually considering the film was made for a total of two hundred and nine thousand pounds it does look beautiful and that was that very important to us we wanted to make sure that wasn't just comedy but it looked it had a beautiful sort of feel to it and was directed well as your relationship as a group was changing and you're kind of you're working out your career trajectory what were your ambitions for yourself at this point I mean did had you discovered you wanted to be an actor had you discovered you'd rather be right and where were where did your passions lie at that point that's a really good question I'm not really didn't think about it that way I was just assumed I'd always be acting in some shape or form but I I kind of saw that my acting was going to be really it was going to be within the Python group I mean it was wonderful material was great you could play 10 or 12 different characters in a movie I remember thinking at the time I'm going to be very spoiled and that's what comes to an end what I do play you know sort of Shakespeare on the stage and so it's kind of made me feel a bit wobbly about a future career as an actor I thought I wanted to write and yeah I had I was writing with Terry at the time and I think we wanted to write slightly more serious stuff possibly television play we'd ended up ripping yarns which wasn't serious at all but I wasn't really focusing on anything I just I wanted to write and act in about equal balance and I think as I've always felt that with writing you have slightly more control because you know you do the first draft where as an actor you you'd read what someone else has done so I've always felt that writing was was very important and I think probably at the time I thought this was the key thing that I had to learn and build them because your immediate post Python career I mean you had some some terrific acting roles I mean Alan Bleasdale television program GBH where yeah almost entirely dramatic role yeah I mean not to just sit here and flatter you but you're fantastic in that I mean it was a terrific did you enjoy doing that kind of service I'm a detective yeah I've never had I've never had enough confidence to really just go and do it like that and I do admire some people who seem to be able to do that although most actors I know actually terrified before they come on stage but but I am it's a big challenge that was 10 part series and I liked Alan Bleasdale work and it was it was all about about politics in Liverpool the end of the era of disillusion with left-wing politics in in Liverpool and corruption in the council all that I was the kind of I was the school teacher who sort of stood up to thee to the union thugs and all that sort of thing but it was more complex than that and it was a it was a great part to do really get your teeth into um and I don't think a day there was a day when I felt I can do this standing on my head each day absol think this is really tough we're going to get this right I don't let anybody down but I enjoyed I did enjoy I enjoyed doing it and again I was acting with Robert Lindsay was really good it's like acting I was lucky to act with Maggie Smith in a couple of films and that's just heaven because they bring something out of you that you never thought you could do it's you've got a really sort of raise that raise your act and yeah it turned out to be a powerful piece of work I'm never quite sure about acting quite why it works why it doesn't work I mean I know I can act because I was I've acted since school you know and you won a BAFTA for your role as Kim pile in yeah fish woman yes that's right yeah I was interested to read in you in your diary that you when you first read the script for wonder you weren't a fan particularly um no I mean John had approached me and said you got this idea for a heist movie in which one of the characters had a stammer he knew that my dad had quite a bad stammers we asked him you know how does it happen what does it mean this what's the background to it we we sort of put together a character called Ken John when when to I wrote the script when I first read it I thought it actually it was very hard very nasty and I thought this is going to be too cruel to be funny but and what John did was which is very skillful was to cast it brilliantly and to get kevin kline to play a psychotic crazy idiot killer so John could go off and play around a nice little comedy Cary Grant role and all the stuff that on the page looked very very vicious Kevin you know shooting things on me killing dogs and all that suddenly came to life when you got the various characters playing off each other and so you know in the end it worked extremely well and Kevin handled the black humour so superbly that it was it all fitted in in a career with pretty stiff competition was that your least favorite wig could you ever had to wear oh god yes wig that wasn't a wig Oh a perm yeah is a perm our mechanism well I went had a perm and my wife wouldn't let me get into bed you know said you can sleep sleep elsewhere I'm not sleeping with this man and there are various things I had to do during that period which were not to do with the film like sort of giving a speech here there occasionally the photos come up on me with this silly curly hair and I thought God but it was just easier it was either that or turn up at sort of four o'clock every morning and spend three hours a bit like Elephant Man have a year makeup put on so I had it firmed and that was that I don't think you should rule out going back to that look at some point that he's like very striking the other thing was that Ken's outfit what did Ken to be on these people with absolutely no dress sense at all and we went to this shop in North London with costume designer who's hazeled worked on all the Python things and she wanted to get a pair of really ill-fitting trousers and went to this shop and the man was very helpful and we kept getting these trousers and they look really good and they know now that doesn't that doesn't work I mean it's very very confused and then she got these tiny little ones which ended about here I would terribly tight around the crutch and she said yes that's lovely the master but they don't look they don't fit she doesn't matter that's great we'll have three pairs so around the time around the time wander came out you've got the offer from the BBC to do around the world in 80 days you write in your diary I must say it's very useful when researching an interview with someone for them to published all their Diaries over a year yeah that's something that's quite handy thank you for that thank you I did it for you Michael I let you just believe that you would come this interview could have been entirely me quoting you back at yourself which i think would have gone well but around that time you wrote in your diary on the eve of leaving on around the world in 80 days to bed about two o'clock and to sleep an hour or so before dawn there's no turning back now did you have it all the sense then of embarking on a new part of your career no I didn't I didn't really didn't see it as a new part of my career I saw it as a big challenge that I probably maybe should not have said yes to I'd said yes to it because involved going around the world I thought this is great I'm a love travelling I can't have expected that to be a script there was no script and we were just going to set off for 80 days of the BBC's money with a cameraman following me all the way around that's why I was sort of panicking at the last minute and I thought well it's it is it is like jumping off a cliff and we just see where we where we land there was no formula there's no precedent for it and I did see it it's just some one thing I had to get through without it up basically they're not going to think you're nice anymore now you just say I'm sorry I don't care was was it all so difficult that you didn't have a moment to think Eureka this is what the teenage boy inside me always wanted to do or did you have a moment on the trip where you just thought this is it I'm a traveler I am Walter Scott yeah and did there was a quite a significant moment because it started off with me thinking that I should perhaps be playing a character shouldn't be me I should be Phileas Fogg in the book so I playing this sort of silly Englishman abroad not very convincingly and then I you know we did fairly conventional things that started on the Orient Express you know went to Venice and all that sort stuff the third episode every all our plans have fallen apart and we were supposed to get across the the Indian Ocean to Bombay in a Dao from a place called Oman and because the boat we were supposed to take to Amman didn't turn up total change of plans we just had to get to somewhere we get a dhow so we drove I drove right across the Saudi Peninsula with the director unable to film anything because we weren't allowed to by the authorities and Founder Dao in Dubai crude by 18 Gujarati fishermen none of whom spoke English and off we set and we depended on these people for the success of our project and you know with all our technology there was nothing we could do they were going chugging along at about four knots an hour with an engine that was powered by large rubber band you know and it was just we have seven and seven days seven nights eight days with these guys and I've never been in that situation before where you you you know very slowly a kind of friendship develops and you forget everything about why you're doing this and who you are and playing a character and remember one night I got quite ill so next morning instead of just pretending it was all going well I did a piece to camera saying I feel rotten I feel lousy I want to go I don't know why I'm doing this Mon Mon Mon and people love that I said all you were really ill on that episode and by the time I got off that down I I realized that this was not only something very unusual and totally different for me it happened which was I'd been with a group of people with whom apparently I shared nothing not a language not a culture not a religion and yet we had become we become pretty close friends in a way over that time that I felt that's an extraordinary thing so it wasn't so much what we'd seen I mean what we'd seen was just the Indian Ocean bobbing around but it was actually this interplay with the people and the feeling that all the fear of not being able to speak a language didn't really matter if you're in a certain situation you can't understood each other and we devised a way of talking to each other which was bridge quite fluent in a way and that was that was a magical thing and it was after that particular episode I gave up playing Phileas Fogg and I thought well whatever thrown at me I'll just be me and be natural was that hard for you you know your career up until then had been playing parts and characters Bank comic voices and Yogi's and ferns yeah was it confronting to be suddenly laying yourself bare to your audience no I actually suddenly felt immensely relieved the thing was I didn't really know until we the series had gone out how it would be received but I I I realized that as a not having to play a part in abled me to just react to things with my own voice my own feelings I was also having to disguise anything and then when it went out and we got very very good audiences and the book sold very well I realized that actually this was an advantage the fact that I couldn't speak the language of that people saw me trying to buy a ticket at a railway station in Egypt and not be able to speak the language you know in the snake restaurant in China trying to make sense of the fact they're killing a snake by the table and all that and this was you know I what went wrong was as much a part of the appeal of the program as seen beautiful parts of the world meeting people was as much a part of the program as seen you know mountains and temples and all that sort of thing so I I felt extremely relieved not only it had worked but also thinking well you know maybe just maybe there's another way of another journey around the world one could do in some shape or form with the crew I'd been with with me being myself and that led to short pole to pole interested you mention the crew because it seems like it's another you know collaborative creative project I mean I was quite a small group and and you've more or less stuck together for the next quarter-century yeah well it certainly might cameraman Nigel meek and we've been together all the all the journeys and it's it's it's really really useful we now have a relationship well we don't have to say stand here stand there I kind of know where he is with the camera I know when he wants to get me out of the way it's something that you you know you just learn over the years it wasn't always easy I remember there's one one sequence in we were filming in a village in China and we started filming they said well you're going to go you're going to see the the old man of the village with them with the Chinese translator and they're sitting in this hut there and we want you just to walk across the through the village and and into the heart and sit down and talk and I was just so amazed by this village and the beauty of it it was just so extraordinary and I quite forgotten that Nigel was there so filming away I was looking into things a wonderful place here what a marbles look at that roof that's just incredible and then this from when is that little alley lead and all that and I just heard Nigel through gritted teeth saying get in the Hawk so that we learnt we learn we learn together how to I was aware the weight he was carrying and so so over over 25 years you've been doing this travel shows now I mean it is as significant more significant a part of your career that you - was yeah do you has it a diminished your love of travel at all no not at all not at all I mean quite the opposite to travel with your family at all well yeah I do I mean we we go on family holidays I don't travel like I would with the crew we don't learn quite such adventurous journeys because my wife thank goodness is not a sort of she's not arrival for adventure travel she likes to go somewhere and sit down and be reasonably comfortable and walk around the square and and do a bit of shopping and go home but um not much of a documentary series and no there's wells great no absolutely and she doesn't follow me with a camera everywhere so we go to New York regard with some cities in Europe or something like that and I'm hoping my grandsons and my two grandsons I'm going to try and inveigle them into one day coming around the world with me I thought travels with Archie would be a great series he's only six unfortunately need get very bored grandpa where are we I'm hungry are the easily Tim parts of that I think it was exactly yeah so your most recent series is Brazil which screens here on the ABC begins this Sunday night and I couldn't help but note that your last series you said was probably going to be the last time we did one of these what was it that pulled you out of retirement when it came to the professional travel again god I'm such a liar you know I said that after 80 days that would be the last thing I'm doing and then I did pole to pole all right but that is the last thing I'm doing and then full circle around the Pacific alright that's the last thing it's just it's easier to say it's the last thing because I always think that I never know how it's going to be received and that most important thing about all these things is that they are they're entertaining you know you don't make them just for your own sort of private viewing is it's up to the audience out there how they respond how they like it whether they buy the book and if there is response is good you kind of liad to do some more and and the process I I mean I still quite enjoy it I don't know whether we're all too old now I mean my cameraman eyes will be 65 I think I'm still struggling with this thing on his shoulder admirably whether we'd actually do any more of the sort of long journeys that we've done before but going to specific places and observing them I think that might be the way I did a magazine article in Calcutta I always wanted to go to Calcutta and I found that such a fascinating city absolutely so much do and I found myself walking around it making notes for the archer and thinking where's Nigel you know what's happening here they the gaps and all that sort of stuff so maybe is we could just go and do sort of you know a month in a city or something like that I did have an idea about doing a series called work which would be you take five different big industrial enterprises somewhere in the world and just film them and the people work there and what they're producing and now good idea well I thought work oh no I think it's a winner I was just I'm going to go and do it myself because I don't usually I'm not I'm not planning on moving for a while no the because of course now I have to be mindful of the time in about two minutes I'm going to throw it to the floor for questions there'll be a couple of hours in the Isles both on the ground floor and upstairs so if you make your way to behind the usher with the microphone you'll get a chance to ask a question but before we get to that I I did find I was interested to note in your diary in June 1988 your diary records an idea for a novel and it is the idea for Hemingway's chair which took seven years fear to write will you have you always harbored a desire to be a novelist is that something that is a is a particular passion yeah I think so I think if you're interested in writing and reading as I am you can want to practice this as much as possible and I love I do enjoy being caught up in a novel I love the idea of being yeah in someone's world and I've got a very vivid imagination that all sorts of things you know places I'd like to put characters and all that so it's it's it seemed natural at some point to have a go at writing a novel but then I was also aware of the Kalam joke potential of Michael Palin traveller novelist he's writing an opera his dad designed some new fabrics for Covent Garden he's also designed the British Olympic pool and he's also downhill skier you know come on that was very Python so I was slightly embarrassed Matt writing a novel but I had to go anywhere and I miss it was quite successful and I but I learnt I learned a lot from it I felt I could do better next time round but then you know traveling Devine and it's been a long time before I got to the next one the the new novel the truth the the protagonist of that Keith Babbitt is a man who wants to be a novelist he keeps getting yes getting dragged off on to other projects and other things but he keeps going back to his study and wanting to sit down and the novel is the thing that he really cares about where he wants to write a trilogy I thought that was rather nice who start off I think I'll start with the trilogy nothing fills a publisher with more dread Zak is the first work in a projected trilogy terrible terrible thing but I was I was interested the the truth incorporates some of your travel and incorporates some of its as if those kind of two strands of your interests and you're working on together I was wondering if you could just briefly talk about the name Geary Hills yeah and the and the the community that you met there and how it had bearing on the bullet well the the story of the book involves this this journalist who's trying to find somebody who embodies genuine virtues of truth and honesty and I decided that the character he should follow would be an environmentalist because environmentally considered as near to Saints as we have these days and then I thought well it's got to be where would this this rogue environment this environmental running around the world maverick figure what kind of story would it be following and I read about a situation in in India Eastern India where a big aluminium company had built a plant and they wanted to extract bauxite from the neighboring hills and the hills were sacred to one of the indigenous tribes of India been there about two or three thousand years and there were their sacred Hills and they were fighting against this and they were on to probably a losing battle because once you know the the juggernaut of big industry rolls everyone gets gets kicked out and I thought this isn't this is interesting there was it was an environment less you so I actually went to see what was happening there in order to get a general feeling of what I might write about and in the end it was so fascinating that I I took it as a specific and just change the names and basically in the name Geary Hills in erisa in eastern india there is this vast plant in the middle of middle of nowhere and it's heavily patrolled and nearby are these communities of three or four tribes called main ones called the dong Lea cond and they were the ones who were going to be cleared out and I was very fortunate to have a guide who took me to the village right below the sacred Hills they have several villages and it's very unusual for them to let an outsider come there because everybody to be honest any white man is considered to be going on the way to the plant and it's considered to be an enemy so I was lucky to go there and I found this a village which is very you know simple people were them the men were out sort of in the in the woods and all that people were saw sitting around nothing much was happening but you know that's their way of life they lived under these very long thatched Hut's coming right down to the ground had beautiful necklaces jewelry all that sort of thing and I was quite moved being there knowing what was happening up on the hill but what really really sort of made the most intense impression for me was that we were standing there and I saw a older woman disappearing down the track towards the forest and behind her was this boy same age as Archie was about that time has been about four or five years old just skipping along behind her and there were guy asked what was happening so much she's going to get some wood in the forest and that's her grandson she's taking him along and I thought you know here's this complete love innocence he's in the middle of this this village she's protected he's secure he's so happy just to be going off to do what I would like to do with my own grandson something like that and yet when permission is given to extract that bauxite the hill behind him will be crushed thirty feet at the top of that hill will be removed that be giant bulldozers will be trucks and his family will be taken away from there and they'll put your little cabin somewhere else and I just thought that's absolutely that's not right you can't do this and so I thought well rather than fabricate a story I would I would use a lot of the background of what I saw there that story and more comes across beautifully in the novel which is an extraordinary terrific read there was a there was an article about you in the independent on Sunday in the UK that was talking about the kind of travel writer you are and it referred to general curiosity unfeigned empathy and a rare combination of diffidence and courage and I thought that it was probably more effective a descriptor than nice yes yes and I love that yeah yes a better way to go anything that is nice free yeah so much the better well now is your chance to ask questions of Michael the house lights are going to come up a bit and you will see where the microphones are in the aisles now obviously we would be thrilled beyond belief if you just recited quotes of your favorite comedy you know in slabs of ten minutes each and that would be great but here's an idea let's not do that hahaha Michael may have a reputation for being nice I do not so if you could keep it brief so that as many people as possible get a term we would be in your debt just over here hi Michael Bex first of all for fabulous talk a John Cleese quite famously when he was on Desert Island Discs said that you would be his sort of luxury item even if you were stuffed um so could I pose a two-point question first of all if you were to be the one who was stuff what sort of position do you think John Cleese would have you in if you would have a sort of revenge option of having John Cleese stuff what position would have him in haha I mean you're tired of getting that exact question that is extractor huh that is very personal um I don't John has a slight obsession with me I have to say it's always talking about me and he claims that the luxury I was a luxury item because he would need a radio because I talk all the time so he probably want me stuff in mid mid mid mid conversation if John was stuffed I think I'd probably like him to be stuffed in that marvelous moment in the fish slapping dance where he picks up the fish from behind his back and instead of just hitting me with it which would have been the obvious thing to do so take saying well the skillfully little moment of military precision just thought absolutely quintessentially defines John's humor little attention to detail so I have him stuffed holding a fish for quite some time bumper isn't it question asker them sell these in the crop store here in Melbourne they're all they're all gonna be questions about stuffing I have to warn you that's already four there's a big stuffing big stuffing ground rest here up there on the balcony thanks for coming to Melbourne Michael I hope you're enjoying Australia my question is through all your travels and you said the importance of many people were is important of seeing the mountains and the the monuments what have you learned about humanity by meeting all these different people what what commonalities bond us together like what have you seen can you hear that I can't it's a little echoey a final question about off the back of your your travel what have you learned about humanity that you didn't know before you saw these parts of the world is that doing your justice sir okay sorry about that it was all is it nice things at the start yeah no no no it's just well I I'm I'm sort of quite optimistic in a sense because I don't I find that as I travel the world rather going back to that moment I talked about on the DAO that it is the people who are you think are most different from you in in their sort of general estate condition amount of money whatever who actually are the closest to you and it's the easiest to make a connection with because there's a straightforwardness and there's a desire to welcome you to be hospitable as soon as people have a lot of money a lot of wealth incomes sort of the desire to protect it and the suspicion that someone's going to get it the less you have the less suspicious you are the more open you are and I think it's something worth worth remembering really we all think we could have so much and so many things to come define what we are and actually the happiest people I've ever met a people in Sora agricultural communities who help each other anyway because that's how live and that's how they that's how they survived and so I found that kind of encouraging because I think we tend to think that there's two sorts of people as them on us and that there really is new to them there are us if I may say that just getting down to their level and not being sort of ah I do not mean catalyzing to the rest of the world not Finland because we have more wealth we have more possessions that makes us better people understand what it's like to have less and you will find the most inventive people in the world and also the people who support each other most of all and I was think that's some encouraging encouraging sign for the future hi Michael it's fair elaborate from all the way to Melbourne hi em in your talk you speak about the things that you've done buried and the inspirations that you've had I was wondering if you have any people in your past who you've sort of seen what they've done and gone I wish I'd thought of that oh um I'm um probably I'm just trying to think really um well Johnny Cash Bruce Springsteen you know I wish I'd thought of that I mean I do in my own sort of area I suppose I'm always aware of the the success and nd what David Attenborough personifies because I feel that he is the perfect teacher and that he has not changed the way he does what he does for 50 years and very often when I've been so thinking about doing a series and how you do it and whether you change it and get a gimmick here and there I look at David and I say he just defines what he's doing he knows what he's doing he has the information he puts it across and that's it there's no apart from that and I always celebi that and I often think gosh I wish I'd wish I knew more know I can go around the world I wish I knew what that tree was called or what you know why the you know the rocks in that particular area some produced this kind of natural habitat for this kind of strange creature and all that you know I I do I I think I've missed out somewhere along the line in understanding the world the way he does and I admire so much the way he puts it across and Norman Wisdom that's a here adds to your travel experiences is there one in particular sorry I'm a dyke oh um that in hindsight is a brilliant story but the reality of the situation you think oh my god never again can actually it's about career regrets I think okay if that's a not too reductive about things that you've approached where you can still say on paper why you did them in your thought they're a good idea trips or stories where as in hindsight you think God never again gosh that's a hard question I mean I don't think I've gone up any totally blind alley I think there are things I could have done much better you know I well no I mean yes there are things I've done much better that's all I can say you don't give me any great detail because it's part you did say in one interview that you can see the weakness in everything you've ever done sometimes doing almost alarming degree yeah are you a harsh marker of your own work yeah yeah I I wish them well never things are never perfect that's that's a given but I always I'm always looking at my work in the heat if only we done done it this way or that way generally speaking you can be 90 percent happy with something you've done and I've done that with many things but it's that extra 10% that you see when you've done it oh if only but that's I'm sure everyone does that in a way I hope so you know maybe Wordsworth that's the same you know daffodils daffodils oh god I wish I'd I wish I didn't donuts would be so much more interesting so perhaps everyone does that I'm sorry I can't be more helpful and give you a definite sort of clear answer on that but many definitely Donuts is pretty clear-cut sir and down here um 13 years old Japanese girls so Monty Python for the first time and she was struct with a sense of humor in a different kind of comedy and she decided to be a Monty Python when she was little but her neck her dream never come true and she didn't know the avenue how she can be the Monty Python but interesting fate brought her 15 years later to show Michael Palin a Tokyo and she was very happy but still she had to live her own life and feed a baby get married travel around the world and I couldn't say thank you to mr. Michael Palin after another 15 years later she finally had opportunity in Melbourne to decided to go into the comedy what would you say to this girl any comment and the advice and if she have the latest fan letter would you like to receive it from her well you know she sounds like she's a sort of person who succeeds and whatever she does and good luck I mean the great thing about going into comedy is you've got to make people laugh so pretty quickly you'll find out whether they were only good at it or not so I mean yo good luck I've found when I did comedy it was always very important to have somebody with me they're helping create the stuff and also acting together sometimes as well that's a I found that's a very important thing but yeah well fantastic sorry I wanted to say very outstanding thank you Michael Palin my name is Mayumi Norberto and I'm very lucky to see you again after 15 years of the full circle and hope I can give you the fan letter thank you Michael if you could keep any possible answers brief because the questions are going to go just be clear we're not here for you ah one over here would be great thank you hi Michael firstly thank you for such an incredible body of work and my question actually relates to Python my favorite Python work was Life of Brian and I wondered if you could take us to how that into how that project developed because it was such a controversial piece of work at the time yes yeah well originally if we did a Holy Grail and then that gradually quietly that did did well where are you as it is a you are yes you started there you know there yeah madly well know that do well so there was a thought well maybe we can do another film and I think those Eric who first came up with the title jesus christ lust for glory and we can't have all laughed a bit like you laugh now it seemed a great idea and it kind of the idea of doing something about the Bible story gradually you know it sort of settled amongst us and we all came up with various different ideas and some of them I have to say were sort of more general jokes schoolboy jokes about the Bible story that seemed sort of you know actually when we thought about we've got to be cleverer than that and we got to be if you're going to write about the Bible story you've got except that there in Jesus people believe in Jesus weave Jesus has to be it without to be clear that the film is not just about Jesus though we did have some very funny ideas that came up there was some the the Last Supper sketch in which they go to the restaurant and they can't find a table you can't do a table for 12 I'm afraid we can do you for threes or do a six at nine o'clock but you have to be out by 10:30 and you know nice stuff but is rather depended on Jesus being present there so in the end you just came up with the idea of being able to do the Bible story through a false messiah of which there were many around at that time historically all we did a lot of reading actually and we read our stuff and and indeed there were many false messiahs so that was we can use Brian as a way to get into the story and the story really in the end we felt quite felt quite deeply about this it is actually not about a personal faith or anything like that it's about the people who assume the authority to dispense that faith and how they get people to believe and how people believe quite falsely and completely ridiculous things like the sandal up and all that sort of stuff and that that was the sole motive of the film really and so it was a kind of sort of I suppose you could say it's an anti Authority film in a sense not a film about about Jesus or personal belief but it gave us the chance to do some you know some pretty funny stuff along the way and I think it's the most successful thing we've done actually I'm glad that even with those those high ends of anti-authoritarianism there's still room to get bigger stickers in I think that's yeah that's a relief yes I'm not saying they were clever say never Trevor that wasn't my criticism I don't know yes yes yeah biggest biggest dick yes yes that's now I've got very sad news we've only got time for one more question there are there's more than one person at the mics I'd ask you to self-select if your questions stupid please move away for the mic now okay I'm so sorry I'm gonna randomly have to throw it over here for the last question I was wanting to ask about your travel how much is forward planned and how much is spontaneous you mentioned the Chinese family before was that spontaneous or forward planned well we have to plan before you do the journey really you've got to plan roughly a route and on route there are certain things that you might film like there's a carnival or there's a restaurant or whatever there's something happening in that particular area which may produce a story when II when I get to actually talk to the people there that is spontaneous I don't know quite what what we're going to get out of a conversation maybe just either I will work or it won't work we do very little reshoots we don't do second takes we try and get it spontaneously each time and so you know it is it's a mixture of of planning to make it look unplanned if you see what I mean and that that's that's kind of the the intention because when I well I do travel I mean what motivates me is is is my own experience of the world and the wonder of what I see and that's best done by not knowing too much about what I'm getting into so that on camera you get the reaction and you get the freshness which is which is important sounds like the perfect combination of the train spotter and their narc it Commedia now you help me bring that all together I'm so glad I thank you yes yes ladies and gentlemen please join me in thanking Michael Palin thank you thank you now thank you very much thanks thank you

Channel: WheelerCentre

Views: 121,791

Rating: 4.8396335 out of 5

Keywords: Ideas, Melbourne, Australia, Conversation, The Wheeler Centre, Victoria, Writing, Michael Palin (TV Writer), Comedy (Theater Genre), Humour (TV Genre), Book, Books, Library, Author, Monty Python, John Cleese, Writer (Profession), Brazil, A Fish Called Wanda, Royal Geographical Society., The Truth, Novel (Literary Genre), Michael Williams, Saturday Night Live, Around the World in 80 Days, Life of Brian, Mayumi Nobetsu, Full Circle, Reading

Id: CEb7gi7W-_4

Length: 75min 31sec (4531 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 26 2015