S6 EP2: Michael Palin discusses Monty Python dynamics, famous fans, and ‘Life of Brian’ controversies 

27:25I mean, that was the greatest sentence in comedy history, I think, where we had this meeting. We tried to pitch it to a man called Michael Mills. And he came in and we burbled on and said, you know, have you got guest singers? Will you have guest stars? No, we don't know. What's the title? No, we don't know. And at the end of it, he got up and said, all right, I'll give you 13 shows, but that's all. And what a wonderful thing I would like that embroidered on Nightwall, really. 13 shows, but that's all. It's been said you were commissioned by David Attenborough. Is that true? Or is he just running the channel?

28:02I can't remember exactly what he was. We were very high up at the Beeb. And actually, they used to have a thing called the Light Entertainment Party. So everyone who'd done light entertainment shows would go to a Christmas party. And at the end of the first series, we were a bit grumpy about when we'd been put out. and the fact that they made sure people couldn't see it in certain areas and all that. So we whinged on and nobody really bothered apart from David Attenborough who came across and he said, I hear you're a bit upset about the programming. And I said, yeah, I mean, it's just because it's put on so late.

28:44It seems they were keeping it well away from children and all that. and he said, yeah, I agree, but you will find out that in the future this is the way you become a cult. And he said that's what Python will become, which is exactly what happened. And people made a great effort to try and see it and there were so many instances of people saying, I managed to find Python on the channel and on the BBC and it was wonderful and all that. So David had the right sort of, he knew, whereas the others just didn't want to talk about it. I, this is the personal portion of the podcast. So I was born in 1970.

29:27I was probably exposed to Monty Python content younger than is perhaps recommended in parenting manuals. But my parents had a copy of what was called Monty Python's previous album. Do you remember that one? Yes, yeah, yeah. It's really mysterious in a way because I didn't get the jokes, but I still sort of, there was something about it that I wanted to be part of. And then some of it I did get because it had the argument sketch on it, which is also considered, I think, one of the best, which you act in. I think it's Cleese and Chapman perhaps wrote it. Cleese and Chapman wrote it, yeah. Where a man goes and he wants an argument and then he has an argument about whether he's actually being given an argument.

30:06Yes. Or whether the person's just contradicting him and if that counts. I'm not really doing it. I'm not selling it as a comic firecracker, but it's very wise. No, it's very sharp and very quick and kind of perfect verbal wit. Very good, you know. Is this the right room for an argument? I've told you once. Yes, that's right. No, you haven't. Yes, I have. When? Just now. No, you didn't. Yes, I did. Yeah. Off you go. Off you go. It had a certain rhythm to it. The shifts in tone, the modulations in tone were, And a lot of the comedy is someone, explosive anger, people being genteel, and then it just...

30:44That was very much a Python thing, and I think it was partly... John's character generally was impressive, and he looked very sort of... Very tall. Very tall. That's part of it, isn't it? And took life very seriously. And a sort of saturnine face of... Yes, well, he could completely blank his face, so he could look quite forbidding. Yeah. And he did these wonderful characters that would sort of suppress their anger for a certain amount and then it would absolutely explode, you know, like in the dead parrot sketch and all that. It's dead. No, no, it's not. It's resting. All right, if it's resting, I'll wake it up then.

31:20In the dead parrot sketch, he's the customer who's bought the dead parrot? Yes, that's right. And you are the shopkeeper. I've sold him the dead parrot. And you're denying that it's dead? Yeah, I mean, I'm resolutely saying, no, it's not dead. It's just resting. and it's clearly dead and been dead for a long, long time. But why John is so funny is that he, I mean, he's very critical of things and he does get angry about things far more so than I do, but he manages to channel that into comedy. And you see, Fawlty Towers, whatever John may say, is so much, Basil Fawlty is so much John or that sort of person who will get very angry with time to be terribly nice and be very British and helpful and then it comes to an inanimate object which drives him mad, you know, so he hits the car with a stick and all that.

32:10And he can do it and make it incredibly funny, whereas other people, you might think, oh, God, this is a bit scary. Would you rage at each other when you were writing and making the shows?

32:23Occasionally, but, you know, we were British boys, we were all sort of nice to each other in a way, But when you argued about material, yes. I mean, if someone was saying, look, I think this is very funny and it should be in the show, and someone else didn't like it and they'd say, no, I don't think it should, then you would have one of these slightly difficult arguments about what is funny and what isn't funny. The great thing about Python was largely that we had a pretty good taste in humour. We knew what went into the top pile, sketches that we just didn't need any work on them but there was a sort of middle area of sketches that half worked and the writers of them sometimes get a bit sort of protective and say well you know we've not read this right or something like that and it will work very well so we'd argue there and that would be a bit shouty and John was always provoking people like Terry I mean, Terry being Welsh, John just had a go at his Welsh attitudes and all that sort of thing.

33:32What would that mean, Welsh attitudes? Paranoia, mainly. Really? You don't like that because you can't speak about it. So your Welshness coming out, it's all right, I'm sorry, all those centuries, but you just weren't good enough to take over England. And Terry would rise to this. Really? Yeah, Terry absolutely, the Welsh button would really get him going, you get very high-pitched and all that. But that was all in the mix of Python and it was good. We had these very strong, I mean, all of us fairly strong characters, very strong ideas about what we felt about the world and how we thought what was funny and what wasn't funny.

34:17Contributions were from all different directions, which I think was very important. So it had a kind of slow build as a cult phenomenon and took off in America. It was licensed on PBS and so rolled out, which is kind of perfect in a way, because that's not really mainstream TV either. That's this archipelago of local stations that are supposed to be slightly offbeat and high-minded and advertiser free. And so you developed this. At what point were you aware that it was, you know, was there a tipping point and you sort of thought, actually, this is blowing up and this is becoming something really big?

34:54In America, yeah. It began to spread quite slowly to the various cities where PBS, public broadcasting, was seen, and that was mainly student areas where there were campuses. College towns. It was really very exciting because, clearly, it wasn't just a show they liked. It was a show that people felt was unlike anything they'd ever seen before, which, of course, was the key to the success in the States because no commercial broadcaster would have wanted their name associated with Monty Python, with a strange English programme that says rude things about women. Yeah, jokes about Proust. Yes, jokes about Proust, yeah.

35:36So for student audiences, it was a real eye-opener. It was a bit like the sort of the new music and the rock and roll and all that. This was something created by the younger generation. Yeah, it was part of the counterculture. It was their voice and it wasn't anything to do with the big commercial companies or anything like that. So I think a lot of people in America really identified with what Python was. And there was a wave of alternative, I don't know if they use that term, but they call it the new comedy. I read Steve Martin's autobiography, Born Standing Up, and he talks about being conscious that they were part of trying to create a new comedy and that Saturday Night Live in New York was doing something similar.

36:14and you had figures like John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd and others. Bill Murray. Were you conscious of having an influence on them and did you mix in those circles at all? Well, I knew that they, because I kept hearing from people that, oh, so-and-so, whether it's Steve Martin, whoever has seen your shows, really likes it. I remember Johnny Cash had seen the programmes. Elvis apparently had seen Python. I know Elvis is well-known and he would call people Squire. Yes, yes. Because he loved Python. But how do you know about Johnny Cash? That was just passed on to you by someone? No, I met him once.

36:52He was over here doing a show in the green room and we were all on the same show and Johnny Cash suddenly appears in the green room, which is just a great event anyway because he's very tall and he wears high heels anyway. So this enormous presence, this godlike figure, as far as I was concerned, suddenly there and he goes, oh, hello. And he comes across to me and says, holds his hand out and says, John Cash, big fan. Oh, wow. And then he, you know, he said he'd seen all of Python. Yeah. Because I think it was a sort of mark of identity with people who wanted something alternative. I don't think they understood jokes about cricket and vicars and all that sort of thing, but they knew there was something about this show that was its own master.

37:42It could say what it wanted to say.

37:59This episode is brought to you by British Airways. You know, travel's always been an important part of my life, both personally and professionally. Growing up, me and my family, we'd travel to America every year. my dad's American, and spend time on Cape Cod. We'd fly into Boston. And there was something about getting in touch with my American side. Although I sort of come across quite British, I'm more American than you might think. And seeing my family, being immersed in their love, and also their oddity, because, you know, they would talk like this, and they had different breakfast cereal, and they'd say, here's some Hershey's Kisses.

38:37And they didn't really sound like that. But that's the best I can do right now. Later on, I lived in New York when I was starting my work as a journalist, working on television and living in Brooklyn, flying back and forth to London. And then more recently, I've been a bit more of a homebody, but still once a year, we get away to Greece. We go to Crete as a family, which always feels like a break from the norm and a way for us as a family to kind of get in touch with each other, to spend time together without the stresses and strains of the school routine or the workday routine. So travel has always been important throughout my life and how you get there obviously makes a big difference.

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40:49Over the Python project, there still hovers a sense in which everything is not fully harmonious. That, you know, you sort of get on, but at times there's little wrinkles. In your diaries you talk about stresses at the time. Is there a way of talking about any of that that's not likely to make things awkward? Well, I mean, I can't remember absolutely specifics, but if something's very successful, if Python became very successful, then issues like who thought of what at the time or who thought of the name here and there becomes kind of important to the people who thought about it. So it's not a big issue, but if you find someone else saying, well, we had this idea that day and we wrote this sketch, and you know patently that you were the ones who had the original idea, that didn't seem sort of fair.

41:40The problem was that a number of sketches in the films and on TV are absolutely clear. They've not been changed. They work perfectly and they may be written by Graham and John or myself and Terry or Eric. But then there's another area where it's less clear. Ideas would come in. I mean, the Ministry of Silly Walks, I think, went through about three or four different rewrites from various people within the group because that's what you would do sometimes. You'd say, well, we've gone as far as we can with this. Why don't you take it away? And people would take it away. And so things became co-authored.

42:19but it was never sort of written down. There was no contracts. I mean, that was a great thing about Python. It was supposed to be as free as possible, just get on with writing the funniest stuff possible. But it did mean that there were those areas where people would say, well, I thought of silly walks or whatever. I mean, I claim credit for most of them. What would it matter? It's not a financial thing, or is it? No. No, it isn't entirely. No. I'm being a little bit cagey here because there are certain complications in material ownership. Yeah, everything was really divided up and everybody got a bit.

43:07I think that Eric managed to get a deal on Always Look on the Bright Side, which he didn't have to share everything with the rest of us in quite the same way. And he wrote that one, though, right? He wrote that, yeah, he did very good. It's a brilliant song. But who knew it was going to become the most requested song at funerals and that football teams are football supporters. There's a lot of money in music, it turns out. Evidently, yes. I say that, you know, you're from Sheffield, right? Take this with a big bag of salt. But one of the bits of research that popped up was the richest people from Sheffield.

43:51Oh, God, really? Allegedly. That's not one of those how rich is Michael Payne in things you see online. It might well be. And number one, Phil Oakey, the Human League. You know who I mean? I know who you mean, yeah. You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar. I just made him another£100. Yeah. Estimated worth, 85 million. Joe Elliott for Def Leppard, for Def Leppard, I don't know, is he the lead singer? 57 million. Then there's two footballers, Kyle Walker and Harry Maguire, and Michael Palin is number five. Really? What about Jarvis Cocker and Pulp? I think all those numbers I'm highly sceptical of.

44:31Yeah, yeah. That was just a sidebar that I wanted because I wanted to sing a little bit of Human League. Yes, that's good. Well, you could have sung Common People. I could do that, but I'm not going to do it. Do you know Jarvis a little bit? I've done a couple of programmes with him. Is there a Sheffield mafia? Well, he's very, yeah. I mean, no, we don't get together and sort of diss people from Manchester or Leeds or anything like that. But there are certain people who take pride in coming from Sheffield because Sheffield is neglected. I think that's it, you know. But we do produce some things occasionally, Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, whatever.

45:08Very good music, some good theatre from the Crucible and all that. It's a creative hub in a way. I'm a doctor of Sheffield Hallam University. Are you really? Not Sheffield University. No, I know Sheffield Hallam University because I was... I lived near there. After the podcast, I'd be happy to give you a full check. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for this. I'm very reasonable. I think you'll find me quite reasonable. There's something about you that I liked, and I realise now what it is. It's your ability to help out Sheffield's educational situation. It's the medical know-how. Very good of you, very big of you, considering how much you must be requested.

45:53How many fellowships do you have? Just the one. Oh, really? Oh, dear. I've got eight. Have you got eight? I think so, yes. Yeah, quite a lot. Edinburgh, Sheffield. Oxford They say you're nice and yet you're so boastful Yeah Well I'm opening up to you you see Anyone else I would Preserve the niceness as long as I could But it's beginning to crack now And what's coming out is this rather unpleasant Sort of oily kind of Sanctimonious Did you You had to give an address I assume Yeah And what was the tone of your address Oh, look, this isn't about me. Okay, all right. But what I said was, but since you've asked, no, I think I was talking about perhaps the usual thing.

46:48I can't believe I just said that. I think the idea that awkwardness, the things that you think are disadvantages are often, if you look at them a certain way, advantages. Yeah, in your case particularly. No, no. With plenty to be humble about, as they say. No, I think, well, I like what you do, but I think we share something which is a kind of, I don't know, feeling that if you're on television, it's not because you're absolutely brilliant at everything. It's because you're quite honest, you're quite direct, and you know a certain amount, and you're prepared to let other people talk rather than yourself.

47:26I mean, that's what I think when I knew the travel programmes. I know my name's above the credits but really it's the people you meet and the people you talk to that give you the material which is what you do so well well, well, I should say edited out the sermon Well, I appreciate that I think that's a compliment and I take it I think there's a sense also that I mean, it's the opposite of the wicker thing which is that recognising that you are one of the team and I think attempting to be a little bit of a team player. It was striking. I read your North Korea Journal and, you know, you gave the afterword to your director, Neil Ferguson, who's the director on the Venezuela project as well.

48:15Yeah, yeah, exactly. And sort of acknowledging that actually there is a process and not overly mystifying. And, you know, you sort of talk about the recce, which a lot of people in TV land and radio land don't realise is that usually, not always, usually a team's been out before you in order to sort of smooth the way. Absolutely. I mean, I feel this so strongly because I know, as you know, how much you depend on the team, doing all the work, making sure you can go to a certain place, you're going to be safe there, finding out the people who are going to be able to talk to on the day. You don't just walk into a room and everybody's there.

48:52That's been sort of kind of planned in a way. And I've always, well, I've obviously said that certainly in my programs, I mean, the photography is so important. I mean, 50 % is me going around. The rest is just wonderful shots taken by a very good camera team and sound team and all that. I realize that they're important. I think other people ought to realize that too. I agree. In lockdown I watched your, what was it called, Michael Palin Looks Back or something else? Yes, yes, Journey of a Lifetime. Journey of a Lifetime. Travels of a Lifetime, that's right. There was a bit, I remember I was in a hotel somewhere, I was looking at it and there were these dancers.

49:40They were somewhere in, they were the Wadabi, I broke this down recently. Oh, right. A nomadic Fulani people of the Sahel region of West Africa known for their annual Gerawol Festival. Yes. And it was exquisitely shot and there were these tall men wearing jewellery and they were doing a courtship dance, showing off their physical prowess, their pultitude, as a way of finding, I guess, a wife. And I remember thinking, wow, we'd never shoot anything like that in my programme, we've never done anything. But how enjoyable it was. It felt amazing. It felt like timeless. What's nice about that were blokes showing off to get a girl?

50:21But it wasn't, they weren't sort of... Peacocking, I think they call that. ...breaking out and lifting iron and all that sort of stuff. It was very camp and it was very... They were very feminine. With wide-eyed. And wide-eyed. There was a lot of sort of gurning. Ooh. And then going up on tiptoe and down again and all that. Ooh, you know. Would have been seen as something that would have been seen as... Quite a feminine. ...joyfully camp on English comedy. One of them I thought was tweaking my gaydar, but that might have been me. I think they weren't after blokes, although they look like that.

50:57You definitely don't think they were. We'll never know. Yeah, we'll never know. But I thought that's one of the great curiosities you find in travel. You see something completely counterintuitive. And I thought, you know, the world I'd been brought up in, Britain of 1940s, 50s, was just such a sterile place in a way, I'm afraid. The colours were grey, the morals were pretty sort of severe. I just feel the travelling I've done has given me the chance to see something about the world, which is so sort of elevating and liberating and joyful and seeing how people can live and what they can do. And despite all the sort of misery and unrest, everywhere you go in every country, there are things you feel, oh, if only we had that in our country.

51:52More peacocking, more dancing and gurning. Although we do have gurning. That's another English thing, I think. Do they gurn in Sheffield? That is a northern thing, isn't it? Yeah, yes. You're not going to get me to gurn because real girls, it's quite extraordinary. They sort of let lips go over their heads sort of thing. You take your false teeth out for that. Well, you don't, obviously, but one does. No, I put mine in for that, as I do on television. I always wear my teeth. Did you... You married relatively early, stayed married, and in a sense, if you'd had, not wayward years, but a sort of adventuresome time of loose living.

52:37What is the appropriate term? Rock and roll years? Did you feel you missed? What was the closest you got to that? I read somewhere you went to Studio 54 on one occasion or maybe a few occasions. Yeah, the nearest I got to sort of debauchery of any kind was sort of in the brief period after Python had been a great success in America and everybody was inviting us out to things and all that and there's a Studio 54. Playboy Mansion? I don't know. I think my dad would. I don't know, but anyway, you'd go to a club where Mick Jagger was there and all that. He was probably with Bianca. And various relaxants would be taken and all that sort of stuff.

53:16Really? Muscle relaxants? Yes, brain relaxants. And I was never, I just never actually able to sort of suspend my sort of faculties enough to say that I'll float off. So I never took LSD or anything like that. Really? What about a cheeky line? Yeah, cheeky line. I did, I mean, ages ago, yes. There's our headline. I mean, last Tuesday. Oh, yes. It never actually did, it never changed me at all. I found that I was able to be extremely happy and loud without taking any drugs at all, apart from, of course, alcohol, which one forgets, you know, oh, you've taken a line of this, but I'd probably have had sort of six Scotches in an evening or something like that and think, well, that's not drug-taking.

54:10That's just sort of... That's taking your thirst, lad. That's all that is. And I wish I had, in a way, perhaps been more decadent because every magazine feature tends to be about the awful things that people have had to go through to be famous. They're famous, they're wonderful, we all love their music, but they nearly killed themselves several times. Little do you know, but while they were making that classic album or that amazing TV show, they were out razzling till the wee hours, falling asleep on set the next day. Yeah, I mean, that's the way to get publicity. I'm far too dull. No, but I get it.

54:53I'm similar. I sometimes feel as though I read people's memoirs of debauchery and think, oh, maybe that's something I've got to look forward to. Never too late to start. Well, it is, actually. 82 is a bit too late to start debauching, but not too late to stop having fun. It's a very, now I'm 80, over my 80s, I feel much a sense of irresponsibility somewhere along the line. Nobody really bothers you if you're over 80. You're a statistic, which is you're in the departure lounge, really. It's just a question of what particular ailment is going to get you. So, you know, just be nice to 80-year-olds.

55:30So it gives you a lot of freedom. If you feel okay, you can say almost what you want and do what you want. Do you...

55:40How do we do this? So there was... Life of Brian is, for many, perhaps iconic for the Python output. And one of the things that came up in research is you appear on a chat show. Malcolm Mungeridge is there. The Bishop of Norwich? Southwark. Southwark. Melvin. Who was Malcolm Muggeridge? It's one of those names that's always coming up and I never know who it is. Malcolm Muggeridge, he was a journalist and a writer. Then he had sort of a slight conversion and became rather sort of pompous about his life and what he'd done and all that.

56:21And what he did was, and what the bishop did as well, was assume that we were seen as juniors, up-and-coming sort of comedians, John and myself. Upstarts. Upstarts, whereas they were the establishment. And basically this is what kept Britain going and in the end these are the people Britain listened to. And that night nobody listened in the end to Muggeridge or the bishop and the bishop would say outrageous things like, well, I hope you get your 30 pieces of silver for making the film. Because they felt Life of Brian, which was an account of somebody who's mistaken for the Messiah and was falsely construed by some as a pistachio or sacrilegious or inappropriate, disrespectful towards Christianity.

57:08Yeah. So there was a reaction to it. Was this before the film came out? It was like... To me, it's an example of headline writing, and I think that's a recursive day, is you can get very good articles, you can get pieces written very well, but the sub-editor will put up something which is there to sell the paper. So not just interesting conversation between so-and-so, good points made. It's, you know, I wanted to kill myself, whatever you might have said. And I think with the life of Brian, it was just seen, Monty Python, the church, the two can never go together. Clearly what's happening is that Python are exploiting people's religious beliefs to make fun of them.

57:52Yeah, so it was a clickbait, what we'd call now clickbait encounter. I think that was. Were you conscious before Making Life of Brian that there'd be a reaction? And to what extent as well, because in America they're especially sensitive, did it run into problems there? Yeah. We were aware, and as we were writing it, it made a difference to what we wrote and how we wrote it. we did a lot of research about the period of the Holy Land and particularly about the search for the Messiah. That's documented in history and all that. So we made sure that we had some historical evidence, made sure that we didn't make fun of Jesus.

58:37And so it meant that actually we had to get rid of some quite funny ideas. One was Peter trying to book a table for the last supper.

58:52You know, 12 people, please. Yeah, when you want Friday. Friday? 12 on Friday? You must be joking. I can do you Thursday, but it would have to be three tables of four I can do you. No, no, we all want to be together. Well, sure. Monday, that's a quiet day. Okay, it's Monday. And can we all be on one side of the table? You know, we have to get this out of our system. But we realise if you put that in there, then that is doing exactly what people will sort of get you for, just making jokes about something which moves people greatly. The crucifixion was quite a difficult thing to do. But then again, if you read the history of the period, that was the way burglars, people who just broken the law in some way were dealt with in long lines of crucifixion.

59:43It wasn't just Jesus who was crucified. So, you know, we had to assume that people understood that there was a historical basis. So when we were writing it, that was important. It was important to us to cover those bases. And we'd done our research quite well for the interview with Mugridge and the Bishop of Southwark, but they just treated us like sort of errant schoolboys. It was you and John Cleese. And John Cleese, yeah. You sort of volunteered to sort of present the case? Well, I'd gone along to help John. I assumed that John would do most of the heavy lifting because he's very good and he's got a lawyer's mind and he's very clear on these things.

1:00:27I would go along as Mr Nice Guy saying, well, we're just trying to sort of write comedy and all that. But it turned out that I got very, very angry, actually. I've never seen myself in quite so, you know, unselfconsciously cross. And I listen to it now and I hear Malcolm Muggerie talking about a 10th rate film and all that sort of stuff. And I was batting it back quite strongly. You say that with withering sarcasm, you say, well, I can see you've watched it with an open mind. Yes, that's right. Yes. Yeah. I mean, the life of Brian really is about modern-day Britain in a way. All the characters are sort of characters you'd find in the country.

1:01:12You know, there's the pompous people and all that. And they're sort of carrying the crosses and all that. And Terry Jones is being very decent and the procession's going up. And he says to Eric, who's a cross, look, let me take that for you for a bit. I can see you're having a bit of struggle. Oh, thank you, thank you very much, thank you. He takes the cross and Eric just rushes off, you know, and you don't hear him again. Excuse me, excuse me, and there's a sort of public schoolboy who's a centurion. Come on, get in line. This isn't my cross, which I think is one of my favourite lines in the film.

1:01:56This isn't my cross. Oh, yeah, get on with it and Terry gets crucified. Little things like that, sort of sharp talk and people sort of getting run over somebody else, very much present day. And did it have problems getting distributed in America? How much pushback was there over there? What we had was on the first night various religious groups protesting against it, but it was every religious group. You had the Catholics, you had the Jews, you had the Protestants. So it was a really ecumenical outrage. A unifying project, in a way. Yes, it brought people together in their hatred of this film, which they hadn't seen, because they were telling people not to see it.

1:02:40This is the ridiculous thing, you know. You mustn't see this film because you won't like it. Well, can we see it? No, no, no, you can't see it. Then you might like it. Barmy. Very Pythonic, really. when you think back to writing comedy and what works well there's this ever-present tension isn't there and and we find it in our own time that um things that are would have been considered perhaps funny or appropriate are no longer considered funny or appropriate but in general you know comedy is a release valve isn't it and we joke about things privately that we might want not want to be seen to joke about publicly i guess i'm wondering whether you feel this Is that unavoidable?

1:03:23What is your compass in attempting to navigate the terrain of what's an appropriate level of tension and iconoclasm and when it's too much? I mean, I generally feel that comedy is underused and it's a very good form of reaction and protest. And I just generally feel that nowadays if you do have a strong point of view and you are protesting, you haven't taken it very seriously, which is sort of fair enough. But I think comedy shows that not only that what makes us laugh is that all of us are different and we all react in different ways, but there is not one single way of progressing forward. There's always going to be someone on the outside who says, I don't believe in that, like the Python thing.

1:04:12You're all individuals. The man at the back says, I'm not. There's always going to be that happening. And I think it defuses the sort of centralised view of how we all behave and how we should behave. So my feeling is that the best way of dealing with, whether it's Putin or Trump or anybody else, you might think you're having trouble with, is to try and mock them, actually. I'm sure there's something in that. I think there's a broader point, though, which is more awkward. I remember being sent an essay once at university. It is all humor by its definition subversive. And I've sort of been thinking about it off and on ever since.

1:04:53There's a sense in which comedy is subversive of authority and that's helpful and feels virtuous and just. But comedy can also be subversive of morality in general. And there is such a thing as people laughing at victims or laughing at the vulnerable. I'm not trying to be pious about it. I almost think comedy has no moral value, positive or negative. It's just an energy that infuses life. Well, if you say comedy is about the differences in life and about acknowledging those differences, then you have to say, well, it's going to be some people are going to find physical differences or whatever, of course, for humour.

1:05:37I mean, that's just the way it is. And I don't think you can sort of say, well, humour's going to be used surgically and correctly and morally justifiably at every occasion. It can't be. You're going to find people laughing at people for the wrong reasons or whatever you might think. I mean, I remember my father had a stammer and it was quite a severe stammer. And I can remember my friends at school would come up to the house and if they didn't know him, they wouldn't sort of laugh then and there, but later they'd laugh and you'd find them going, oh, pa-pa-palin and all that sort of stuff, which was very hurtful.

1:06:20And, you know, that just is, that's the way it is. Most people don't stammer, so someone who has a stammer seems to be unusual. And I was put in a strange position of being asked by John Cleese if I would play a stammerer in a film, which is A Fish Called Wanda. And John said, look, I remember meeting your father. I know he had a stammer. You understand what stammers are. You would be able to portray a stammer as it is rather than just a comedy kind of ba-ba-ba-da-da-da. And I knew, you know, the various strains and stresses that my father was under. And I accepted the role largely because it was a very funny idea that there's this gang of awful people and the one who has the final bit of vital information has a stammer.

1:07:09I mean, whether you like it or not, that's a funny idea and indeed in the end many stammerers thought that they have a sense of humour as well and they can laugh at that. So I felt it was, you know, I could do that and rather than sort of say there's no such thing as a stammer, bring stammers out, it's there, we know about it, here it is in a film, it's an important part of a film, It's there for a comic reason. Anyway, the long and short of it was that afterwards, various people who were trying to set up a stammering centre for treatment of stammering in children got in touch with me and said, look, would you be prepared to give your name to this?

1:07:51And I said, absolutely, because it was a chance to find out why it happens. At home, we never talked about it. We never analysed what my father went through. I never knew why he had a stammer, why it started. Now it's much more talked about, and I've learnt an awful lot about what my father must have gone through when he was young, what stammerers do go through, how they want to be seen. And so I'm just saying that comedy can take you in a good direction, even though you're laughing at something which is different and unusual and may seem a bit cruel. Yes. And context is important. your position in that, you know, the fact that you had experience of it.

1:08:34All of these things play a role, I think. Are you all right for a few more minutes? I'm aware we've been going for a little while. Yes, I've got to go in a short while. Only I've got to go to the Chiropodist. To have a look at your feet? No, just for a drink. Yeah. Okay. I mean, it's lovely talking. We'll motor through the next bit. But I did want to... You moved to Channel 5 at a certain point. Maybe this is a bit talking shop. But I always thought that it was odd that the BBC hadn't managed to keep hold of you. Did you feel underloved? No, not at all. Not at all. I mean, I value the BBC greatly.

1:09:16I'm an enormous supporter of the BBC. Not necessarily the way it behaves all the time, but I think about what's less appreciated, which is radio, the BBC World Service, which is being cut scandalously because anywhere I've gone in the world, people say, BBC, yes, we listen to that. That's why we know about what's happening to our government. So, I mean, there are good things, bad things. I had done about five or six long documentary series with the BBC. All I'd been well looked after, very well supported. it was just I think when one's done that much the people who you originally worked with all that have gone, they've moved on new people are coming in it's not just Michael Palin doing travel shows you've got other people wanting to do their stuff and so the emphasis shifts slightly from giving you everything you want to saying well yes you can do this but we'll have to have this and we have to be sure that you do that in interference which we hadn't had before and so Brazil I think was the last one we did together but mainly it was just I drifted away from doing long television travel series and I did some acting and did some Python.

1:10:40So you took a break and then when you came back it felt more... Well, when I came back, I came out of the blue because I got this call from somebody at Channel 5 and ITN saying we have heard that there is a chance that we could get a film crew into North Korea. It's very rare, but things have changed there. Would Michael Palin be prepared to come along and do it? So, of course, absolutely, no question. Yeah, I'd love to see North Korea. But they're quite different to the BBC long series. These were just three weeks in a country that had its own problems rather than travelling across frontiers and all that.

1:11:20So it just kind of, out of the blue, because of North Korea, presented a way of doing travel shows again that I was happy with. And I have to say that Channel 5 have been really good and very supportive. We've done now four countries, I think. Nigeria, Venezuela, North Korea. And Iraq. And Iraq. Yeah, yeah. You've been saddled with... Yeah. This is really going to put your back up. He said. The epithet, nice. Yeah. It's sort of a leitmotif. Is that the term? Through a lot of the coverage and the interviews. Yeah. Michael Payne is so nice. Oh, God, yes. He's so nice. It's a bit double-edged, isn't it?

1:12:05We want to be friendly, don't we? We don't want to be bland and saccharine and a bit sort of safe. John Cleese has said, you'll see this because it was in the programme that was about you, Michael has put all his energy into being affable and sometimes it's a little hard to find out what's going on underneath. Yeah. What's going on underneath?

1:12:30How could I be different from John Cleese? No, it's just, well, I'm generally a sort of conciliator. I don't seek arguments. I don't seek opposition. Some do it very well. John does it very well. John thrives on argument. He's very, very good at arguing. I'm not really. I kind of drift away. To me, it's very much about the person you're talking to, how you respond. And you have to be open and say, well, I don't know quite how this is going to go, but whatever. And I do find that being reasonably open and encouraging people to talk is the best way of getting any response from anybody at all. So, I mean, I think nice is a kind of rather one sort of word.

1:13:25It's one. And I hate being called the nicest person. But then Gary Lineker was called the nicest person in Britain for a while. He threw that off eventually. Yeah. Do you think, and it's an appropriate, probably, quality for a presenter. I suppose, what's the downside? And maybe that if you're required to be not nice, that it's uncomfortable. And it's interestingly striking when you think about your encounter with Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southern. In some ways, that was uncomfortable, it sounds like, but in other ways, that may have been... No, it was rather good. Finest hour, but one of your moments that you should be proud of.

1:14:03Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, well, you know what it's like if you're on television and you've, I mean, if you're going around the world, you're speaking to people, meeting people. You can either have a view of your own, which is there, and you're trying to make sure that you can sort of explain this to people and make them realize, you know, what you're doing. or you can just go there as openly and nakedly as possible and find out what they think about you and what they want to talk about. Do you think that's true? Well, what I also think is that you sort of need to have, even if you're playing the straight man or you're the sounding board, you sort of need to have parameters, don't you?

1:14:49Yeah, yeah. And you need to have some sort of sense of where the guardrails are. Of course, yeah, yeah. I mean, I suppose I admire those people who have more of a willingness to be awkward. And I sort of think if the shit hits the fan, do you have it in you to sort of say, no, you know, here's where the boundaries are. And actually, you have to cultivate those qualities as well sometimes. Yeah, absolutely. I hope one would, really. But I just think that you've got to be the way you are. I've always been interested in people. I've always liked to make friends rather than make enemies. to find out what we agree together rather than what divides us.

1:15:31That's just me since I was quite young. And as a result, I've always been quite popular because I get on with people. But you know the limits. You wouldn't get on with people who you felt were sort of unpleasant people doing unpleasant things. Of course you wouldn't. So it's not being kind of just bland and saying, in the whole world. It's just how you meet people, how you talk to people, the sort of people you tend to be with, the sort of people you tend to admire, the people you tend to read about. That's, you know, I think honesty is the best thing and I'm honestly a conciliator.

1:16:22Welcome back. Thank you for listening. or watching if you're watching on Spotify. That was very enjoyable and a pleasure to talk to someone. It's always a thrill if it's someone I grew up with. I'm not exaggerating. I listened to that Monty Python album probably 10 ,000 times, mishearing a lot of it. I didn't even understand most of the jokes. And some of it is still funny. As I say, I checked. I watched the old sketches. Comedy tends not to age well, am I right? Like Shakespeare, we love Shakespeare. it's powerful, it's moving, it's insightful and psychologically complex. I'd argue it's not that funny.

1:17:02Like sometimes there's an amazing production that brings it to life. Comedy in general, Mark Twain is still quite funny. Dickens at times, some of the characters are quite funny, but a lot of sketches, especially old TV comedy, haven't held up that well. Python is still funny, I'm telling you and may even at times approach some of the value of art. I was once reading Franz Kafka in the Penal Colony. Have you ever read that story? It has some of the qualities of a Monty Python sketch. It's a sort of strange collision of surrealness. I don't know if you've read it, it's the one about a guy and they tattoo him to death.

1:17:44It's horrific with the crimes. It's like There's an inmate or a prisoner at a prison, and his punishment is to be tattooed to death with the crimes, I believe. Have you read that one, Millie? All you Kafka fans out there. But it's sort of a bit like a Python sketch where there's this mash-up of the absurd, the surreal, and the horrific. And also you get that sense from talking to Michael that he brought some of that whimsy, some of the surreal qualities, but maybe Cleese brought the anger, and that's an ingredient that's important, sort of ramping up to that pitch of rage that could really surprise you.

1:18:27That's my kind of humour. Fear, rage, pain, anger. There's nothing as funny as that, is there? A cheeky line. Seemed to just slip past him. He said, oh, cheeky line, sure. and then he kind of redirected into beer and having a drink. It wasn't like he was chopping out thick lines of gag. He wasn't honking huge ropes of Charlie. We don't know that he was absolutely hoovering scarface-like mountains of marching powder. Is any of that usable? Probably. I think so. Unlikely fans, this is on the list. How are you enjoying people at home? Viewers, people in Radio Land won't know this. We're still using the teleprompter.

1:19:25It's a totally different viewing experience. Millie's not on the floor anymore. She's in a seat like a normal person. She's remote controlling the teleprompter. Colony privilege. It doesn't make any sense. Johnny Cash it says on the teleprompter because he was a fan it turns out of Monty Python was he a fan of Weird Weekends? we'll never know why are you making it about you Louis? I'm just wondering I was once on a programme with Archbishop Desmond Tutu it would be going too far to say he was a fan of what I do but there was a clip of a space channel from an early Weird Weekends episode and they showed it as part of the, it was an Irish chat show and Desmond Tutu was there and he found it funny.

1:20:12So I guess he was a fan. Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a fan of Weird Weekends, kind of. It's hard to, there aren't big, well, no, I sound like Sean Penn. There aren't those big stars like Johnny Cash and Elvis now. Yes, there are. Yes, there are. Timothee Chalamet. I wonder if he's a fan of Weird Weekends. I don't think so. Why do I keep mentioning weird weekends? I'm trying to make fun of myself because that's like 30 years ago and it sounds ridiculous.

1:20:45The new series is enjoyable. It's amazing to see Michael aged 80, 81, cavorting, goat-like. I mean in the sense of being nimble, because goat can mean sexually overactive. I don't mean that. but goat-like, cavorting, prancing in the wilds of Venezuela, underneath a waterfall at one point, on a boat, off a boat. I was watching thinking, I don't think I could. I mean, I'm at the age where you get on a boat and you want someone to hold your hand. It doesn't feel very manly. Can the fishing man hold my hand when I get on the boat? So there's that. It's available to watch and stream now on Five. He's also released a book of the same name that's available now.

1:21:42And I think he's planning another one. Long may he continue. Anyway, that's it for this week. All that's left to do are the credits. The producer was Millie Chu. The assistant producer was Amelia Gill. The production manager was Francesca Bassett. The music in the series was by Miguel de Oliveira The executive producer was Aaron Fellows This is a Mindhouse production for Spotify

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