Michael Palin Interview

The legendary Michael Palin is smiling broadly. "How am I going to condense 30 years into two hours?" he laughs. "Most people ask how I will stretch it out to fill two hours! you have taken the optimistic view!"
The Monty Python legend is Ireland- bound with his Thirty Years Tour this month; the show is based on three volumes of his celebrated diaries which cover the years 1968-1998. As well as scintillating anecdotes about life with the revered comedy troupe, his award-winning travel programme and sundry other artistic endeavours, the beloved Briton has a little extra up his sleeve.
“There will be lots of great material and archive clips of films and videos which I found,” he explains. “The idea is to mix the well-known with the unexpected, with a slightly greater proportion of the unexpected.”
The tour also coincides with the publication of the paperback edition of his third installment of diaries Travelling To Work, which spans 1988- 1998, the decade in which he became our televisual guide to the globe.
“It can be exhilarating, especially when you go to villages in Pakistan or Bolivia, or somewhere in the Peruvian Jungle,” he says. “I find places that are completely out of my familiar world most fascinating. It is also very rewarding to realise that even in remote places like that you can connect with the people; that is wonderful.”
His diaries have proven quite a sensation; one of the key things Palin hopes people will take away from the show is how worthwhile the habit actually is.
“It’s really rewarding,” he nods. “I found when one writes a diary, it keeps an account of time passing, so it doesn’t just slip through your fingers. My determination to keep a diary was severely tested because Monty Python’s Flying Circus really began to take off shortly after I started. We were working so hard, how did I find the time to write this stuff down? But I did persevere.”
Can Palin pinpoint the exact time he realised the show was becoming an international sensation?
“I remember hearing that Paul McCartney, one of my enormous heroes, liked this little BBC show called Monty Python’s Flying Circus so much that he would stop recording sessions whenever Python went out,” he laughs. “All the musicians had to watch Python! This probably cost thousands of pounds in musicians’ fees!”
Last year’s Monty Python reunion shows were the catalyst for Palin deciding to do his own tour.
“I really look forward to playing with an audience because they govern the show,” he says. “It is not a one-man show, it is a two-man show. It is you and then there is the audience. And how they react, and what they like and what they prefer governs what you talk about. It’s two-way. I like to keep it loose, so that I can adjust to that.”
The sell-out reunion run not only saw the seminal outfit take to the London stage, but they brought along a stellar cast of guests.
“Well, a lot of them were people who just wanted to come and see the show,” he smiles. “Stephen Fry was great, he's our friend too. Mike Myers really enjoyed it, he is a huge fan, Paul Whitehouse came along, but Harry Enfield didn’t. He said if it was really good, it would depress him but if it was really bad, it would depress him too."
“The reactions were quite surprising,” he admits. “Mike Myers kept saying, ‘This is terrific! This is terrific’. I thought he was exaggerating but he meant it! Noel Fielding was brilliant too.”
The reunion shows (which it is said were to pay legal fees and to cover back royalties owed for Spamalot the musical based on their 1975 film Monty Python And The Holy Grail) marked 34 years since the Pythons last performed on stage together. What was the chemistry like after such an absence?
“Well, we all agreed to do it, so we put aside any difference, about lifestyles or whatever,” he says. “And rehearsals went well. But I think everyone was uncertain about how it was all going to be on the night, and how we were going to play sometimes intimate comedy in front of 15,000 people. I don’t think any of us really expected quite such warmth from an audience. It was like the years had rolled back 45 years. It was just terrific to do it again, and a great shared experience.”
Fellow Python Terry Gilliam has also put pen to paper and will publish his memoirs this month.
“Yes, the book looks great, I have a copy,” he says. “Funny story: I did Radio 5 Live a while ago and someone told me there was a rumour that Terry had died. I said, ‘Oh no, I’m meant to be seeing him on Thursday night!’ Variety Magazine in Hollywood had, in error, published his obituary. It gave us such a laugh. I asked him what it was like and he said: ‘It is a bit weird! I was in my house on my own that night, and I thought, “My God, what’s happening here?!”’ It was great publicity for his book!”

Michael Palin’s one-man show comes to the Olympia Theatre for one night only on Thursday, October 29. Tickets available from Ticketmaster.ie and from outlets nationwide.