RSM In Conversation Live with Sir Michael Palin

welcome everybody to the our ongoing in conversation series which started off live in person the Royal Society of Medicine number one Wimpole Street and indeed our special guest this evening Sir Michael Palin was due to come and talk at the RSM on Monday evening the first of June but this little virus cropped up and so he kindly agreed to do this as a webinar and that's why we're here we have over 2,000 registrants very proud of that and some fantastic donations to our ongoing education program so let's start off with me asking Michael a question so Michael can you tell us what it's like to be described as the nicest man in England oh it's terrible affliction it really is I could take a pill to make that go away I'd be very very happy it's just that's not something I thought of someone else thought of it for me and it became a sort of journalistic cliche because it was either me or Gary Lineker and then Gary did something rather not in I would just left alone adrift was the nicest man in England but I'm not really at all I can imagine that yes around your neck but you're also described as the most famous York Sherman and you come originally from Sheffield Iran more is the district I think you know that when we come which is the posh part of Sheffield I'm informed so just tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up in Sheffield in the 50s and like I mean we did grow up in the West Side which is where most of the money is in the big houses my parents had very little money so I was aware quite early on what it was like to not have a big car or a big house we had a fairly big house but it was always rented and all that Sheffield was a curious mixture it was a very beautiful west side of the city it had access to the peat districts of the reservoirs there was very beautiful country on the east side was just heavy-duty steel bullets one of the seal was my father worked at and they were extraordinary I mean it was there was a dark cloud moved to the time OB that over the eastern side of the city but you know it was we were kind of proud of it because it was producing all the iron steel for um for Britain especially during the war and this of course gradually fell away and ended up in the sort of the film the film Full Monty was all shot and written about Sheffield which is when behind the steel business just collapsed virtually overnight so it was always on the edge of being a big industrial city and then you got sent away to school as up to boarding school to Shrewsbury yes yes my father was at Shrewsbury School and he was determined that he should send me to Shrewsbury school so I think he felt most of my mother's valuable possessions that have been handed down to it and I I did go to I got into Treasury school he was a very pleased about that enjoy your schooling day so I I mean I wish I could say no I was fresh within each of my life and was utterly miserable and I wasn't actually because generally I'm fairly optimistic and there were some pretty awful people there but there would be in any institution and you just make sure that you find your way of negotiating your way through it and because I was on my own if you like without my parents to go back to every evening I worked out a way of living with them a number of people I didn't particularly like at values I didn't particularly like but enjoying a lot of other things such as great sports activities wonderful vocation there by the river was wonderful and a few teachers who were invaluable and I think Charles Darwin was an alumnus of that school I read somewhere is that right he was indeed he son followed me through my life and recently I became a member of the Athenaeum Club in London and if you go in there Charles Darwin's behind the bar I mean not serving but there's a huge portrait hanging behind the bar must have chaired a lot of people up over the years maybe maybe he was the inspiration for all your traveling that will come so from Shrewsbury down to Oxford Brasenose College and there you met Terry Jones right yes I actually met a man called Robert Hewson who was a from London and was rather smart and had the sort of Metropolitan confidence that I lacked coming from Sheffield we both love the gun shows we love we have spikes work Peter Sellers work also Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and we just joked together a lot until Robert suddenly said well we can make some money out of joking you know you can put a camera together for 30 minutes and and earn some money and I mean I didn't know what a cabaret was something rather naughty and Parisian but I came from Sheffield I didn't know what peach so on but he made he got me together and we did our very first comedy gig if you like on the stage at the Oxford University Psychological Society Christmas party listen to in total silence for 30 minutes I mean you read modern history there right yeah yeah enjoy the academic side of it or weed so too busy doing cabarets I was very busy doing doing cabaret acting writing making friends you know I could make friends at Oxford a different way from schools schools all regimented you made friends in your class or your your particular sporting set or whatever at Oxford you could choose from a very wide range of people and that's why got to know Terry Jones who was actually at Aston Edmund Hall at the time through acting and we just spent most of our time trying to either write devise or perform comedy and sketches and in the evening we do our history essay we had a very lovely indulgent tutor mr. Collier Eric who said look you should keep on with your acting I think he meant because you're all the better at it you heard history but it's come back to haunt me in a way and the book I'm just written about HMS Erebus in 1839 it's a bit of a mystery I never ever thought that in the end I'd be writing history books fantastic book I've just just been reading it where does sort of craziness the sort of surrealist element to your humour come from come from Oxford or did it develop when you got to London and the kind of London scene in the in the early sixties well I mean I think it was there all the time at school you know fairly quickly what you're kind of role is and I was able to make people laugh no necessarily by telling jokes but by you know think of imitating the masters doing their voices doing their gestures observing how they were people thought this was amazing and I used to do a certain amount of that at school so I knew I could make people laugh and light my view of life was always tainted or conditioned or indeed enhanced by by humour I did tend to see the absurd side and everything that was going on whereas other people are taking life absolutely seriously and I think probably that's what helped and you and Terry Jones working together I mean wasn't your sparking off each other in terms of script writing and jokes and lines I guess you were yes yes absolutely I mean you find somebody who you can work with and it's very rare doesn't it's a difficult thing to get right it's not just they make you laugh you make them laugh there's got to be something which you've got to complement each other someone's got to provide something which the other person doesn't but it comes together to create something you both feel proud of and Terry was when we were writing together Terry was extremely good at story plot narrative I was probably my strength was in creating comic characters which we would then Terry would bind them together in a sketch or a film or whatever we were doing so that was a that was a sort of dynamic I was gonna ask you about John Cleese and Graham Chapman Graham being a doctor qualified from Bart's so yeah yeah but they were a sort of complementary writing he did but tell us that how you know through the Frost program writing for that how the sort of Python concept developed was it a sudden revelation or well no it was the frost report which was first broadcast in 1966 or late 65 was a bit like a sort of writer's waiting room David Frost had gathered together all sorts of writers from all sorts of backgrounds there were some 50 or 60 of us writers there he could he could sort of call on and everyone was competing to be in the show and a number of us were from varsity backgrounds John and Graham and Eric Idle from Cambridge and myself and and Terry from Oxford and I think because we there was a comic University tradition of doing comedy sketches culminating in the Edinburgh Festival the footlights was a Cambridge group and we called ourselves the etc we had a similar way of channeling the comedy and so we looked at each other and what they would do it what we were each doing and John and Graham were just writing the most marvelous sketches really some of some of the absolute best and of course when Python got going they wrote chief and the dead parrot and the argument sketch whereas Terry and I were writing got a little bit sand here in there bits of film and we can look to each other over the years and said like what what you do and they said actually we rather like what you do we felt well we can't do what you do they said well we can't do what you do how about getting together so in 69 three years after the frost report had trained us all up we decided to make a bid for freedom and write our own stuff so we were talking we were talking about the famous Python team and I was going to say that when I was at Cambridge in 69 to 72 we used to crowd into the junior common room and and watch those amazing shows the of all those Python shows do you have any favorites or any particular ones they I was watching the fish slapping episode on their way you get plunged in the endings of that into a river connecting to the canal at ellington yes the few slapping was I think I mean I I I defy anyone to not find that vaguely funny and we recently I was in North Korea naturally the director had brought along the clip of fish slapping danced I showed it to my guide young 28-year old Korean lady who didn't know anything about what I did back home and she watched the fish slapping Thompson and really cracked up she said this is what you do I did a long time ago I thought this is so odd she's just coming oh he's he's a fish laughs yes and what about the the Norwegian blue parrot sketch that's another old favorite that comes I mean that's that's become so well known now that John and I well I mean I would say were bored doing it but it's kind of so it's very predictable so we have to try and make each other laugh throughout it but I remember very fondly one which I do know where they even went out it was very early on it was John and myself just as French from the long and striped t-shirts talking about the the anglo-french sheep this is a time of Concord butall lamu table for sale it is and we would do a little bit of fun children we had one massage between us and the one who was speaking more than the star shman they finish doing their bit they're taking the starship from stick it on the other person and after a bit spotty came rather so dry it's a little hung down and then fell off and it was just I thought this is a shambles no one's gonna watch this it remains one of my favorite sketches it was a sort of shambolic nature but all that made it so interesting and yeah what are the what are the differences from the comedy before was there was no sort of punchline and the often your sketch is indeed in the middle of of the actual sketch with you know Graham channels to come in and say stop this silly yeah yeah that was did you feel then that it was a you know innovative that it would be that it was something that was going to last now 40 years plus not at all I honestly say that and I think we'd all agree we we enjoyed doing it we knew it was a bit mischievous and different and the BBC were if well quite confused by it and decided to do it good for them but they put it out very late at night on Saturday I think it was on BBC two in what was then known as the graveyard slot where they sat I had once flourished and they died and dried up and so no no programmes for doing terribly well in that slot and they said we'll put right in there but at least they let us get on with it for us we were I mean we did think that we were doing something different especially with the animation Terry Gilliam's wonderful animation and as you say the different format things stopping in the middle beginning in the Spanish Inquisition there's somebody coming on and then rushing off again because I couldn't remember the lines but we felt at the same time this just ask this it's just very in and it was a great surprise to see and has been over the years to see how Python has become cherished by a certain number of people and seen as something frightfully important we didn't feel at the time it was a way of making a living our first thing in almost our first thing in television and it was popular in America and perhaps surprisingly really as it's so English yeah well what's the Americans they sort of reveled in it now and they still do I think they watch it now yeah it's the most interesting social story how it broke in America because it got quite a subculture audience in England by 1970-71 and there were Americans including a journalist called Fred friendly who wrote for The Washington Post who came Evera said this is just great you know and kept named checking us in his reports and yet we did a film called and now for something completely different which was financed by the man around Playboy at that time Victor lounge and this was to break us in America but he just didn't people just didn't understand it and the people who are trying to publicize it didn't understand that's the important thing so we'd sort of given up any hope for being in America on on a grand scale and it was in 1973 I think quite a long time later that the man who ran the public broadcasting station in Dallas Texas happened to see Python while he was checking up BBC product in New York and said oh this is quite funny who's the Kennard can I have I take these shows back for the weekend show them to my guys out there they all loved them and they played all 45 shows of the entire weekend so we broke in Dallas and then on the menu on this sort of the schools and university circuit around America it became incredibly popular and became a cult show but I think that was because it was on public broadcasting in America there were no in the middle and I mean no no Channel with adverse would have wanted multiplied in any way because it just made everything sounds absurd Sicilian it's considered rather rude but it was just what the the students wanted and they they really took us to their their hearts and what about the films the the first one you you've already mentioned now for something completely different and then the the Arthurian legends want to pipe it on the Holy Grail any insights about those I just love some of the sketches from both of those shows well yeah I mean we were it's just very interesting that my favorite subjects when I was at school were history and geography and generally you fear well school is cool we put that behind you and off you go and that's what I thought I'm going to go into the world of television and all that I won't need to know all the dates and the Kings and and the history of this and when mercy was founded and all that stuff and then suddenly we end up realizing that we know an awful lot about this sort of stuff and you can't make great sense of it so let's make it the basis of of something comic and the the idea of choosing the search for the Holy Grail was that we could all play individual Knights and then we could create lots of other characters because the whole legend of King Arthur been written so often that nobody really knew what the truth was if indeed there was any truth there anyway so you could kind of create any characters and so you could have you know Tim the enchanter and the Lord of swamp Castle and all these people and yet still carry through the story of the search for the Grail so like all but I think the best material we did there was a certain seriousness and this was personified by Graham Chapman wonderful and the lost medicine but a wonderful game to me sorry acting fraternity because Graham had this ability to play very convincingly someone who was utterly confused about what was going on around him people said what are you doing here but you know I'm not kinky we don't have Kings here and and he would have to deal with all these choppy peasants and difficult people all that and in life of Brian he was a you know man who was a victim of you know false identification he wasn't he wasn't the Messiah he didn't know anything about that some people kept saying you know you know you're the Messiah no I'm not yes you are I know he's the Messiah I've followed a few and all these just Graham was absolutely brilliant at playing the central Syria central character seriously and that was so that was so so important I never thought that seriousness of you know the material and the history behind it and the performance would be the basis of something that could be very funny and you must have got a bit of flack for the sort of irreligious sacrilegious some people might say scenes from the life of Brian did you did you pick up any flack from the religious side of life on that oh yeah of course we did no no severe injuries but bit of flack was flying and I think a classic classic the evening was when John Cleese and myself went on to film a chat show called Friday night Saturday morning hosted by Tim Rice where they had the Bishop of Southwark and Malcolm Muggeridge and we were going to debate the film and I think that we sort of prepared for it because we know that this we're going to be given a bit of a grilling but people knew about religion and all that and all they did was just try and mock it and be funny and talk about where they get their thirty pieces of silver and that and it was a very to me a very shocking kind of interview because I thought all right we've we've got a film which we can defend you know Jesus is not Brian that's clearly shown because you see Jesus elsewhere preaching Sermon on the Mount all right sort of think so you know that's not true and that and the film if it's about anything it's about religious Thorat arianism and dogmatism and and people want Jesus telling you what to believe and they they just mocked it and it was embarrassing because they they thought they could win the audience and then the end they just sort of it seemed very very sort of course what they were doing and Malcolm Muggeridge called his cheap Ted strange film you know it was achieved it wasn't the tenth a three possibly so that was a very that wasn't in the sense that was the flat you know point blank father John and myself it was funded by George Harrison one of the films yes that's right yeah yeah gotta work good for George I mean thing is that II AM I'm going to finance the life of Brian and it was two people lowering the ranks of EMI and they gave us some seed money to go and build sets in Tunisia and suddenly the head of EMI Michael Michael careerists actually read the script and he said we're doing this he must be joking this is shocking disgusting horrible stuff but not yeah we're not putting our names of this and call they called off the the financing they paid us a little bit back but that was it we had a year and a half built synagogues and things in them in Tunisia and nothing to do in them and you guys are new George Harrison George turned out to be an enormous bison fan and he said you know eat then just five million dollars or give us five million dollars and people said later you know George this is just crazy five million dollars for a film I mean why do you do that said well you know I just wanted to see it very cinema ticket somebody somebody who's expensive ticket history but thank thank you joy that was just very and isn't there a line at the end of the the song that Eric Idle wrote at the end always look on the bright side of life there's a reference to you won't get your money back on this one I think yes yes what if you stay long enough in the cinema because on and on that song yeah fantastic well we've got a question from Gillian Lang who was there are extra STIs professor bang is now in charge of nice the organization that controls drug yes isn't so in the UK so Gillian said where did the Maidan Monty Python come from with the name on tape I think it's it's originated really because the BBC wanted us to call it something sensible and we wanted to call it something completely ridiculous that was just because you know we didn't want it to be called the John Cleese show or six guys and the gal or any of these things like that we said it's just going to be a very off-the-wall show we'd like to call it something like it's owl stretching time or the algae banging moment amusing and these ridiculous titles that were around and the BBC got rather cross and said look you know we've got costumes ready now and got to be labeled or they've got to know the name of the show and he said well we keep thinking of it but it wasn't until they said well you know we can't we can't issue any contracts to pay you unless you come up with a title so we worked instantly on the title but we said we want it to be they said they came up actually with the idea of flying circus I would be rather an interesting thing they said couldn't quite understand why I said mirror John Cleese his Flying Circus on John didn't want to be that he didn't want to be lumbered in the show that might be a total disaster so he said can we make up our own name and we we went to them assembly they've got a name Monty Python's Flying Circus and they you look predictably stunned like the dead parrot so what why and Lisa merchants no that's our name they said all right but everyone will know just Flying Circus in the future well let's gone to talk about a film beyond Python Oh now before we do that maybe we should talk a little bit about why it came to an end I mean obviously the sadly Graham Chapman died in 89 I think tonsillar cancer I think took him away in the end and and of course the Python brand still goes on you still work together but did things change after that but as you was that a crucial factor the loss of Graham well I think that really we had we had written ourselves out of all television material by about 1973 I think or 72 unusually because this doesn't happen very often we were a comedy group that could transfer to film and we were able to make films that did equally well but they were they all each film had to have a very distinctive feeling to it and the meaning of life which in 1982 it was the most difficult of all the films to come up with fresh new material all there was some wonderful stuff in it like the liver donor who's confronted his housemates two surgeons seven come view liver give us your liver yeah but we're not dying that doesn't say anything about dying come on lie down here take a liver out with him protesting quite strongly anyway there was some great stuff in meaning of life but it was it was essentially a mess compared to the Holy Grail which and this story of the search for the Grail and Life of Brian and the Bible story and I think we felt after that we'd written ourselves out of films as well so that was 1982 we all went off to make various different films ourselves I worked with Terry Gilliam on Brazil and then John Cleese on the fish for Wanda but when Graham died I felt very strongly that any move for Python reunion wouldn't really work because the essential thing about Python was that there was written and performed by six people and everybody contributed in different ways and different kinds of writing different standards of writing but everybody was indispensable and once Graham had died sadly it was like a sort of six legged table and her legs dropped off this it's unsteady so um I felt after that personally I think others did as well that we couldn't really reunite us Python and then we of course it in the end we did we had this big show in 2014 you know one down five to go that's the o2 Arena and the reason I think we all agreed to that was because they had the technology was so good that they could show Graham they can integrate Graham's material into the show and they did so brilliantly and we would all come on at the beginning and then they'd show Graham on the screen above and the audience went wild it's lovely it was amazing auditorium there's a question from David Edwards here what was it how much fun was it to work with a Bonzo Dog doo-dah band I mean that's another amazing name isn't it yes yes very very good well we found that a group that were similar sort of humor to ourselves this was in do not just your set which is pre Python but the Bonzo Dog doo-dah them all out of art school and playing a strange instruments are seeing very strange songs most of which were drug-related and yet this was a lot of children show that which scattered about 515 but they all hello yellow tree and pink sky and the people really fusion and put it on for missiles wonderful children love this sort of thing whereas really all about some of it came out lovely neil innes that's where we met Neil Innes who sang such wonderful songs like how sweet to mean idiots and all that and they weren't there really working group to work with and distension was was truly come a comedy anarchist and he was very very bizarre man I would ring you up sometimes and like practical jokes he rang up home once talked to my wife and said we were coming back from Cornwall fans and have got some fish to bring for mr. Palin and will he be able and she kept saying what he said I've got this it's actually about oh it's about 300 weight of Scottie Cornish mackerel and anyway turned out in the end because it's tantrum there's a long elaborate sort of playing around with life that he enjoyed so much nor his meal which is a great pity not long ago so let's we better move on to travel but before I do that a fish called wonder there's a memorable character there Ken with his stammer just tell us a little bit about about why that character came up that was your invention you said he played it did Ken the stammer oh yes I mean it was in the nineteen mid 80s John Cleese came to me and said I've written this film and I liked some like you to help because one of the characters in this heist one of the gangsters has a stammer and he knew John knew that my father had a stammer and John wanted to know how a stammer worked he wanted to make sure it was kind of a you know authentic and not just some was a madman but didn't index so we saw work together on various aspects of it the psychological you know the pressure on the speaker makes it worse people can sing perfectly well stammers can sing there very well as they can't speak without without problem so John's range didn't listen said well yeah will you play this character for Ken and of such a funny film I thought well I'll have a go and I'll try and make the character someone who's sympathetic despite the fact he's an awful crook I'm trying to give him something so it doesn't just seem like a joke against amorous and for some people it worked some people it didn't work well some people stammered were offended by it and I can sort of understand that but others said well it's great that you know stammer ease it's around we all know so many people who stammer and here is Famara being character in the film and it led me in the end to be asked to give my name to a center for stammering in children and I just called the Michael Palin Center the only time I've ever given my name to anything like that and it's really been one things I'm most proud of in my life and I feel well there we arts gone around full circle if my my dear dad have been able to attend the something like the Michael Palin Center if it is something that hasn't been around when he was a kid life might have been gotten a completely different for him because it was a was an awful thing to be stuck with that they must be having difficulties with kovat crisis in the same way that the RSM is being everybody being out of the building yeah yes they they are they're doing a lot of like this a sort of digital therapy we're going on trying to do the very best we can like you there's a problem of funding and all that trying to keep it going but it is it's a charity I feel personally so it's so important because it's not very office Tammany is not a popular cause I mean cancer quite rightly heart problems and all that tend to get more money but stammering does I know personally how it affects people and the you know the awful difference it can make to a life and the difference it can make to change your life if you if you can manage it so I think it is so important and I just hope I know they'll keep going because they're terrific therapists doing great work that's a Michael Palin Center for stammering children right yes I think that's what it's called yes and that's the arsc which the Association for research interests and Rachel you can check we can check that out let's move on to the traveling Michael and just tell us how I think it started with around the world in 80 days the Jules Verne what gave you the idea or did the BBC come up and say would you would you do it for us the BBC came up and asked would you do it for us they said we've got this idea in fact the baby seat where I got wheel wire to was I think the head of documentaries and whatever but said it's such a it's such a major project and such a confidential project that I can't talk to you over the phone I'll have to come to your house so he came out to my house and talked for a while and said we have chosen you for all your various qualities of some adventurous honest human connection fun human laughter and geographical sort of interest to become the man who will go around the world in 80 days in 1988 to see if they can still do it as they did in 1888 whenever it was when it was first written without taking any aircraft and I just the idea of going around the world immediately grabbed my attention because I've always loved I'd love for in travel and not done much of it but I'd love asses his globe's maps stories of adventure on that so I said yes only when I got to I think we were in Madras and there's some problems of the ship hasn't been burned out and we were waiting for our own ship two days later that the director admitted that I was the fifth person they'd asked to do it so you know they'd be very nice to me as they'd be very nice to others including no LED moons and smiles kington and wicked of course was first on the list and Omar Ahmed saying on that trip of all the places that you travel to which was your favorite and why there must have been some adventures because that's one of your seven major travels wasn't it was the first well it was the first one and it was a it was a little I was unsure how to how to do it to be honest I mean very plainly had I been chosen because I was an actor and therefore did they want me to be a sort of joke Phileas Fogg character like in in the films and the Mike Todd film and all that or was I being chosen as a serious reporter which of course I was not I wasn't a very good very good at doing interviews and all that sort of thing oh you know how was I supposed to play it no one seemed to quite know so I'm just there and busking my way through Europe doing a bit of chat here and there and sort of feeling that well I've got to I've got to create the story so I've got to be I've got to be a bit Phileas Fogg ish and then when we everything went wrong in Saudi Arabia and the ships didn't turn up and we had to get the Dow that hadn't been sort of checked out or anything like that where he took it from Dubai where we were not supposed to go I was supposed to go from my mom and we were going to spend seven days on this now with a crew of 18 Gujarati fishermen only one of whom the captain spoke a little bit of English there was nowhere to sleep except on the deck the laboratory was a barrel hanging over the back of the ship yes literally climb out of the ship and into the barrel to sit and do what you had to do it's kind of quite tricky because we'll appreciate this because you always have to know where to put the tube in the right place for the first time i sat there i sat in this barrel and faced the ship stupid uncle might you know lower area was not aligned with the aperture very embarrassed but there we were so so for seven days we were with these fishermen and we just really learnt to get on just a moment we've struggled with the language I learned a bit of what they their language they learned a bit of mine I blew up the globe by taking with them and showed them where we were going and in turn they made us food we brought food from Sainsbury's which were going to eat around the world and they said we'll make you curries and they shared the courage they made which were delicious on board the ship with us at the end of seven days total bond of being created between you know reasonably well-paid professional BBC crew from England and hugely under play underpaid sailors from from Gujarat in a very slow sailing boat but we we needed them more than far more than they needed us and they were so good and at the end I remember hugging some of them and say well you know I really miss you guys and that changed my whole attitude to travelling and I realized that I hadn't once thought how am I going to play this you know how am I going to report on this or how am I going to make light of this and me be sort of David Niven on the Indian Ocean and I just peed myself and from then I realised that was the best I could do is just to be myself and hope people appreciated that I think you've sort of created a special type of tourism that does relate more to the local people that rather than the sort of five-star hotel business past flights which many of and what about some scrapes Michael guy you were mentioning a food issue in on the Sahara trip yes we were in a refugee camp in Algeria and they were again people with the least give you the most it's so wonderful anyway they'd actually bought a camel bit of camel for us and we were there for about a week and the camel is pretty good buy on Monday but by Friday it was a little bit high Friday I'm giving a bit of camel liver it doesn't taste very good but you can't be rude the lady who made it presented to me with such love and affection and sadness to see us go on our way so I took it and the rest of that day I was incredibly ill and to stop an entire convoy of vehicles through the desert and throw up with everyone sort of turning away and saying oh my god came it was a real what Barry Humphries used to write that sort of Technicolor you on wonderful sort of multi-coloured bombing for the desert and all my crew were very embarrassed and it was one of our sort of Herald security people were just it wasn't he was just some one the drivers actually came along an older man and just gave me some water and put his hand on my brown don't touch that he's actually come back on that so this went on I have to go an interview the head of a guerrilla army out in the desert and so I would just go in and I I would be able to control myself just long enough to ask him a few questions about his plans to take over that part of Africa they don't have to spare I couldn't go out and I just checked the script there's no girl quick vomit and then come back and carry on there's a most bizarre day when it got worse I won't tell you the Toyotas in some of those places and well yeah I think didn't you run into problems with gorillas in Nepal when you were doing your him alia yes we were we were with the the Sun pops the world problems at different times I mean now where we were in central Africa and Asia and places like that we wouldn't be able to go there now be there's so much terrorist activity there and jihadists are roaming through the desert and Nepal you can now go - it's fine but when we were there it was quite tricky in the worst that the Maoist opposition were very strong there and they wanted to get rid of the government we were in this small village with our Gurkha officers showing us around and and suddenly they appear in the end in the evening before we were going to film the next morning and all the local people saw shied away and these guys came and said we just would like to talk to your director and your officer please and they took them off and went to talk to them in somewhere in the in the forest nearby and neither of them came back for a while the director came back much later and said they they're actually going to keep the officer under arrest and they did and he was the first time that the Maoist alesci kidnapped and arrested a British officer this great fear or worry about it but it was quite it was quite hairy them because that all the villagers thought we were trouble and they couldn't wait to get us out and shouted at us as we left which was not the way they were when they arrived there were rather Pleasant scary you know there's a question about what you put your favorite place in the world would it be somewhere in Amarna or the himalayas as some people pronounce it or you somewhere near Machu Picchu is mentioned yes there's there is a place called which is quite extraordinary ver or a bomba which is tributary of the Amazon and it tumbles through the Andes and then into the Amazon and it was our way out of Peru and we were doing full circle so we'd gone to Cusco he gone to Machu Picchu then instead of going back to Cusco as most people do we went on up there remember and came to this extraordinary Rapids which led into an area called the Goodman age and it was what violent white water flow the rock jagged rocks coming out we were we were in sort of like long open canoes really being driven incredibly deftly by the local people in and out of the rocks but there were so many times I thought this is it you know sheer basalt walls come out we veer straight up and then then turn me off just before we came to the wall and we ended up suddenly in a paradise of clear calm water this is called the I think that's called the Pongo to my age and it's on the borders of of Peru and and and the board remember in the Amazon River and it was just sheer black basalt walls with water running down great big sort of black butterflies the size of your hand flying around and after silence and peace after the ordeal of the rapids and I remember thinking well this is heaven you've had a medical crisis not long ago Michael and I think talking since our audience mainly medics you know you you ended up in hospitals talk us through that experience well about five years ago I was diagnosed with a loose mitral valve and my cardiologist Malcolm Walker said well then maybe you just carry on at the moment just necessarily mean there's going to be any problem any curtailment of your activities you're a fit man you'll know when something is going wrong and for five years it was fine and I suddenly found the the end of last sort of beginning of last year's I was my right and running on the heath I have stood heath and it's all getting a bit more difficult and I was getting rather breathless so I went to to see him and he said yes we'll keep an eye on this because it may be getting worse I was doing some filming I was playing a character called the Green Man in a BBC series called words--all gum each Stoney Mackenzie Crook and I was very heavy weight had to carry her I've had a huge packed an enormous coat embroidered with all sort of you know the leaves and the trees and the flowers of the field sounds like a walking tree and very end of the shoot this was in July I had to walk up a fairly steep slope and I just my heart suddenly virtually stopped I realize I couldn't go on and never experienced anything quite like that so I stopped and listened and relaxed and then I went to see my cardiologist and he said yes I'll put you in touch with someone called David Lawrence who'll go and tidy up inside your heart and in September of last year I went into Bart's and had a wonderful experience in the sense that it was all done amazingly efficiently they were wonderfully friendly people there and and it's great hospital to be in actually I loved it because history there as well so yes it's about this now I'm now recovered estimate and there's a link there because your son will who yet a lovely man like just like you and nice man and he and he's working with Marcus sexual one of my buddies too for the celebration of the 900th anniversary of that Hospital founded in twelve eleven twenty three and so they're raising money for the restoration of the Great Hall yes yes that's right it was quite quite a countenance will have been working that the the raw Naval College in Greenwich and doing it being responsible for the restoration the paint it all there and this was seen and obviously approved of by the Bart's heritage people they said come in and do bus it was really about the same time as I went in to have my operation so you know I was will was being booked to restore Bart's restoring me so let's color rather rather needs but it's a I mean the Great Hall is magnificent and the staircase with the wonderful ogre paintings it needs a bit of cleaning it needs a bit of tidying but it's going to look absolutely wonderful I think I think Bart's is such a great institution really and stretching back to the 12th century and all that sort of me I really think it's going to be a marvelous marvelous of jewel once it's renovated wish will and and Marcus all best luck with that yes 900th anniversary is in three years so they've got three years to raise I think quite a few million pounds so any any any very rich donors might like to make a contribution take my son off my hands yes please it was another scrape you almost got into and I was reading at the end of round the world in 80 days there was a connection with the Clapham train crash was that right you were almost ready to board that that particular train yeah that's an interesting thing I mean we were we were going healthful leather across the Atlantic and a Danish ship which had promised to get us into felixstowe on the 79th day of the 80 days which was was cutting it very fine and suddenly towards England and he veered off and went to the heart from me said to the captain what's happening said well you know he'd just be stopping here at a bit of wheat acres on timber - I mean we thought we came straight to felixstowe in it Oh we'll be all right we'll meet that that evening a number of the crew got very twitchy and started looking at tide tables for ferries and trains and said we could tonight take a ferry across to Portsmouth and a train tomorrow morning - to London in the end we decided everything was there we trusted the Danes and they got us to felixstowe on time and eventually I got the train and then the underground - Oxford Circle and it was there that we saw in the newspapers that had been a terrible train crash at Clapham Junction a lot of people killed and I suppose could say it was very likely that we would have been on that train if we taken the first option well another close shave in a lifetime of close shaves I think well thank you so much Mike Lee's we've nearly out of time now so in spite of a couple of technical hitches there the fire alarm and it was a room of your house had burned down in the newspapers two weeks ago yes that's right yeah well that was the result of me writing a comic piece about recovering from from heart surgery and all the things that could go wrong including my kitchen burning down and someone picked it up and taking it absolutely seriously and it ended up with me being in a burning kitchen and my 86 year old neighbor who would have sex duple heart surgery only a week before dragged me to safety someone read this and took it literally so it's just little they know about problems heart surgery well thank you so much for the it is true you are the nicest man in let me to talk to you too I've got a couple of announcements to to make because the the RSM has you've already heard it continues its mission to educate doctors not just in the UK but all over the world actually so anybody who would like to support our academic and educational efforts please do make a donation don't forget Michael Palin zone charity for stammering children and don't forget Bart's heritage too so we've got three plugs to give and I also wanted to mention that tomorrow Simon Wesley our president is talking to amazing mark dr. Margaret McCartney next week next Wednesday he's interviewing Philippe Sanz International lawyer extraordinaire and my last announcement is that jaynewick Witte is doing virtual wine test tasting for the RSM on three consecutive Thursday starting next Thursday so the warring drinkers amongst you please do register for that signup and drink some wine with us but a final farewell to the amazing Sir Michael Palin Michael Cheers you and thank you so much thank you

Channel: Royal Society of Medicine

Views: 5,126

Rating: 4.8490567 out of 5

Keywords: RSM, RSMLive, In Conversation with, In Conversation Live, Royal Society of Medicine

Id: B8aZk8LfvCY

Length: 56min 1sec (3361 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 04 2020