Michael Palin

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0:12Welcome to This Cultural Life, the show in which leading creative figures reveal the inspirations and experiences that influence their own work. I'm John Wilson and my first guest in this new series is the actor, comedian and television presenter Sir Michael Palin. A founder member of the groundbreaking and hugely influential comedy troupe Monty Python's Flying Circus, Michael wrote and performed in its five television series and three feature films, including The Life of Brian. Other big screen credits include A Fish Called Wonder, Brazil and The Missionary. Michael is also a globe-trotting documentary presenter and best-selling author.

0:50A lot of wiring. A lot of wiring. I thought it was all sort of digital now and didn't need wires. Well, we're ready. We're rolling. Terrific. Tell me when to shut up, because I did go on a bit. Take one.

1:07Michael Palin, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you. You were born in Sheffield in 1943. What are your earliest memories of childhood, home life? I think it was shopping in the ration book era. and I can remember being allowed to give the little tear-off stamp, ration book stamps, to the person who was giving us butter or marmalade or whatever we were allowed to have at that time. Your father was an engineer in the Sheffield steel industry. What sort of man was he? What was he like? He was quite a difficult man in a way. He could be quite cantankerous and I think a lot of this went down to the fact he had a stammer all his life.

1:48And he was a man with a good sense of humour but probably unable to tell jokes because of the stammer. So I think there was a bit of frustration there. I also think that he was happy to be working in Sheffield but he didn't really enjoy the North. He was a Southerner. He came from Norfolk. I think his ideal life would have been a church organist because he loved playing the organ and all that sort of thing. And there he was in a part of the country he didn't know very well and their job I don't think was very fulfilling. and I think if you have a stammer that's what happens. People, when you make speeches and deliver assessments of what's gone on, then, you know, you have to be able to do it fluently, especially then when people are much less sympathetic to the causes of stammering or the fact that people who stammered are perfectly normal people.

2:37Did it make him angry? I think it did make him angry at times, yes. And my mother, who must have lived with it all her adult life, was very good, just carried on doing whatever had to be done. She had a terrific sort of practical, pragmatic, functional way of doing things, but was lovely and funny too. Many years later, you played a man in a film called A Fish Called Wanda. Yes. A man with a severe stammer. Yes. Were you drawing on your father then? Oh, yes. John Cleese had asked me very early on, he was writing this heist movie, and one of the people in the gang had vital information also had a stammer, which is, of course, you know, whatever you may think, is a very funny idea.

3:21And he said, look, I want the stammer to sound right and realistic. He knew my father. And he said, can you sort of deliver that? And I said, well, yeah, I think I could. And I wanted to make sure that the stammer wasn't a sort of comic stammer, but just a kind of frustration when you have very important things to say. And this is John. I said, yes, come on, come on. So I think it kind of worked. The car. The car. The car. The car. Put your time. Car. Car. The car. Oh, come on! I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Here, write it. Write it.

4:07Cathcart Towers Hotel? Cathcart Towers Hotel. And it certainly got me involved in stammering. I was asked by a stammering charity to help them, and I wanted to learn much more about stammers and why my father had had a stammer, what he could have done about it, how it was treated. And so to this day we have the Michael Palin Centre, which is, I'm very proud to say, one of the most centres of excellence for study of stammering. So there we are. But was your father still alive when the film came out? No, I wouldn't have done it if he'd still been alive. It would have just been a bit too painful.

4:40How did you feel about it afterwards? I mean, having set up the charity and having, I presume now, a greater understanding of that impairment. Well, I'm quite glad that I did the part because it would have been done by somebody anyway. And I thought I did it quite sympathetically. But from what I know now, it's quite difficult. Half the stammering community, if you can call it that, thought it was great that you should have a stammerer as one of the heroes of the film. albeit a very bad man but he's not the worst of a group of very bad people and others thought no you shouldn't do this this is laughing at the stammer but it was laughing at the character who you know was more than just the stammer that was the way he played it and there was a way he actually in the end becomes one of the heroes of the film because he crushes Kevin Kline with a steamroller always nice to do What sort of cultural upbringing did you have at home?

5:38Was it an artistic household? Musically, yes. My father played the piano a lot, and big stuff and Bach and all that sort of stuff before supper. But really, it was a fairly sort of conventional middle-class household. I mean, the paintings on the wall were also reproductions of Raphael and stuff like that. Books, a few books, but not a lot. I loved reading and I actually used to go to the Sheffield City Library with my father and he would go upstairs and I'd go downstairs to the children's library. And I just thought that was absolutely wonderful. You know, big old war stories, school stories, all the sort of thing we used to read in the 1940s.

6:22What about your mum's influence? What was her influence on your creative imagination? She was just very sympathetic to anything new. I wanted to tell her a story about something she'd listen rather than be too busy. She was very nice that way, indulged me probably a little bit. It was my father used to go, he was a bell ringer at the local church. So he'd go down and do bell ringing on Friday night and that was a bit of a relief because he was out of the house and we could do, and I remember my mother was so, she was so indulged. I would read Shakespeare plays to her, playing all the characters.

6:56At home? Yes, yes, I'd just go through it and all and do bits of Shakespeare. own and she never told me to stop. She made me feel I could sort of express myself at home in a way which my father wouldn't have had the patience to allow. That was your first experience of performance then I guess? Yes I was in a couple of plays at school but not much more than that. I was a little nervous about acting in front of an audience. Was there any particular moment when you realised that you were funny, that you could make people laugh. Well, at school I could, in the playground, there'd be fights and all that.

7:35I would get away without being beaten up by making people laugh. So, yes, I knew I could do impersonations, for instance, of teachers and all that. What about radio comedy? How important was that? Radio comedy was very important in our family. It was a nice thing we could, all of us, my mum, my dad and me, and my sister, if she was back, would sit round and listen to Much Binding in the Marsh, or Take It From Here. Take it from here, or go away when you can take it from here. It was one of the few things that as a family we just all enjoyed, and to be a multi-group of people who were just making you laugh for half an hour, often hysterically.

8:15Well, Jim, do you realise we've been together for seven years? Yes, I knew I shouldn't have broken that mirror. I mean, although I'm perfectly healthy It's quite possible I could walk out of the studio tonight And a coping stone fall on my head Oh, it's very unlikely I'd never get up those steps fast enough That was a very important Sort of bringing the family together Yes On the other hand, the goon show Which I really, really liked I could only listen to on my own You shouldn't be up here No, don't throw me down I'm always up here

8:54Even my mother was moonshine proof. My father thought that, you know, the radio had broken when he came in and said, Why did I put it like that? He couldn't understand it at all. At all. This man is completely S-T-U-P-I-D. I heard that. Oh, you think that I'm S-T-U-P-I-D, eh? Calidly, yes I do. Well, it's a good job for you, I can't spell. The Goon Show was actually the first time when I discovered something on my own. Of course, my friends at school, some of them absolutely loved it. Not all of them. Oh, really? People who couldn't suspend their sort of seriousness found it quite hard. What's the point of it and all that?

9:42And I said, well, there's no point, that's the point. it's just the goon show is just something you listen to and it appeals or it doesn't but the great thing is people are doing extraordinary silly things and there's no sort of particular theme to it or anything like that there's just a lot of characters played by sellers and Milligan the Seacombe and all that who you grow to love and you can't quite think why because the stories are not they don't have a serious point on the beach barely visible in the moonlight i saw a body hello jim hello jim it's my body jim i always bring it with me jim always bring it with me

10:28it's interesting though with the absurdity and the surrealism the goons were clearly paving the way for python did you end up working with spike milligan ever yes i did end up getting to know Spike quite well, which was an extraordinary thing really. And in fact, I did a programme for the BBC called Comic Roots. And in one of them, I asked Spike if he'd come along and sit with me in a room, which is sort of designed like our house at home. And I got the same radio, huge great radio with three vowels, which I used to listen to the goon show on and just play a bit of goons together. Like I could not quite believe what was actually happening here was spike in the room you know spike i live for the show i mean that the the day of the week so we had the goon show kept me going for for the entire week i mean we kept me going for six years but did you know via letters or any feedback at all there was this generation growing up who had been totally liberated by no the bbc kept the kept england secret from us totally the voices isn't interesting i mean your your voices that they're crumbs i mean i'm not going to do them.

11:37Where did the voices, do you just sort of think about those as you were madly drunk one evening? I don't know, I think that Colonel Chinstrap in Itmar was the basis of the inspiration for Major Bloodnock. Ah yes. Where did Eccles for instance? I often wonder. The last character was the little Jim one. He's falling in the body. That little one, little Jim is one of his brother. they just just by chance like a we had a good summer yeah that's how it was one good summer I thought was a very nice because you know spike was a little bit on the manic depressive side he found it very hard work writing these brilliant scripts that we all laughed at really took it out of him he had nervous breakdown so one good summer was I know what he meant you know you look back nostalgically and say ah everything was just perfect and of course it wasn't if you were writing it.

12:30It was bloody hard work.

12:36On This Cultural Life, I ask my guests to choose the most important influences and experiences that have inspired their own creativity. And the first moment you've chosen, Michael, is meeting Terry Jones in 1962 at Oxford University. How did you meet Terry? It was the first day there and we were all sort of in the front quad, getting to know each other, all the people in the history set. And there was a man called Robert Hewison who thought he was very funny. And I thought, come on, I'm the funny one. I tell the jokes here. And the thing about Robert was that he made sure that I didn't become a hearty, as he called it, and go off and play football and get dirty.

13:16And that's what he said. There's other things we've got to do. And we shared a love of the goon shows and Peter Sellers and all that. And he said, what we've got to do is do a comedy act together. I mean, what do you mean? In front of people or just for ourselves? No, no, in front of people. In Oxford you can get money, you get£30 a night if you're doing cabaret at a big party. Big money. Yeah, big money. Very big money. And maybe it was£3, I can't remember. There was a three in it somewhere. Anyhow, what Robert did and what was so important was that he moved me away from, I suppose, the sort of career path that my father was kind of thinking of me doing, getting a good job as a sort of you know doctor or manager or something like that.

14:02And Robert moved me away for three years into a world where I met other actors and other writers and the most important meeting I had of course was Terry Jones. Terry and I got on very very well right from the start and he was he was a a marvellous performer, very, very bright. So Robert, myself and Terry Jones used to sort of get together. I was chosen in 1964 to be a part of the Oxford University Review at the Edinburgh Festival, quite a big thing. And sort of, I suppose you could say the four funniest people or five funniest people in the university were sort of chosen. And I was selected for that.

14:43And that, Terry was in the review as well. This completely changed my life. because there I was with a slight worry about performing in front of large audiences, performing to full houses every night. The review was very, very popular. David Frost came to see us, you know, some talent spotting and all that. Who would have been a massive star at the time because he was hosting... That was the week that was. That was the week that was at that time. What does our failure to get into the common market really mean? Let's find out. Now, sir, you are a government spokesman. Yes, darling. Imagine you're downcast.

15:15No, no, I'm poking. But getting into the common market has been one of your policies for 18 months now. It has been the government's policy, yes. Your only policy? Yes, yes, it has been the government's policy. But never mind about that. There's plenty more where that came from. Were you aware that Frost was in the audience? Oh, yes, yes. Later he came backstage and met us all. And I suddenly realised that there was a possibility of my using the things I could really do fairly well, which were sort of tell stories, make people laugh, and do good impersonations, which seemed, you know, the sort of thing that my father would have said was completely irrelevant and a waste of time.

15:56But no, suddenly there was a little glimpse that perhaps there was a future in just writing and doing comedy. And that's the way I went in the end. Were they sketches that you were doing? Yes, it was sketches. It was quite different from what David Frost was doing at the time, which was satirical stuff. we were doing, I suppose it's slightly more surreal I felt more confident doing characters who were funny rather than just jokes It was probably a couple of years later that you ended up writing for David Frost on The Frost Report

16:35So this is one of your first jobs in television and put you in the room with Terry Jones but also with John Cleese and Graham Chapman as well. And Eric Idle. And Eric Idle. Just tell me something about working on Frost. That's a different kind of comedy that you're having to explore there. Thank you very much indeed. Well, Frost gave us quite a bit of freedom. I mean, it was only a half-hour show and had all the best writers around, you know. And it was strictly the material. If it was funny, it was in. if it wasn't funny it wasn't in but there were different kinds of things there was little bits of film Terry and I wrote little bits of film which no one else did other people did very good Barry Cryer was there of course wonderful one-liners the two Ronnies and John Cleese doing the three classes one written by John Law I'm upper class I look up to him I have got innate breeding but I have not got any money so sometimes I look up to him I still look up to him because although I have money, I am vulgar.

17:46But I'm not as vulgar as him, so I still look down on him. It was really kind of a very good area for experiment. It was a short programme, so you had to be quick. You had to deliver very fast. The longest item would be three minutes, something like that. So how do you go from Frost Report alongside your future Monty Python teammates to actually forming Python. I mean, how was it commissioned? Well, Cleese rang me up in, I think it would be 1969, and said, look, we've enjoyed... There was a series that I'd done with Terry and David Jason and Eric Idle called Do Not Adjust Your Set, which was for children.

18:27I'm the fantastic Eric Idle. And I'm the short David Jason. I'm the violent Michael Palin. I'm the round and cuddly Terry Jones. And John had been doing, at last, the 1948 show, which is very similar stuff, but for adults. And he said, you know, we like what you're doing, and I said, I love what you're doing. He said, shall we get together, let's do something that's fresh and different and new. That was the basis on which we started, which was to try and carry on the evolution, if you like, without sounding too pompous, of television comedy by using film cleverly, by doing away with sketches that have to have a punchline, and generally shaking it all up, you know, being quite disorderly.

19:15And that's what Python really was. I mean, people say, oh, it's very rude and disgusting and all that sort of thing, which it wasn't really. It was just disorderly in terms of comedy. Yeah. Well, we had Gilliam, of course, by that time, Terry Gilliam, terribly important in bringing that quality of the animation. Very sharp, very funny. So we were able to experiment. How did it work in the writer's room then? Was there a kind of a creative hierarchy? John and Graham and Eric had all been with the footlights. Terry Jones and myself had done the review at Oxford. Cambridge, of course, as ever, were much better organised, ruthless and aggressive but we'd all honed our material quite well so there's a certain similarity there Gilliam was a sort of wild card and in the writing it was very democratic we would have a morning of silly ideas which was just great and someone would have to write them all down and then at the end of the morning you'd say well you go and write that and I'll go and write this and we'd go away and write in our separate groups Terry and myself Graham and John Eric on his own and Gilliam on his own and you'd then work up material that we sort of discussed and bring it in, see if it played and at the next meeting it would be read out.

20:36Interesting though that it continued to be factional in a way, that you continue to write alongside Terry Jones and then the Cambridge boys stuck together. Yeah, we did try breaking away from that but it's a very interesting point. I mean, I knew Terry so well and we had written comedy material for three or four years together and writing with John I found a little more difficult. We did try, but John had a different way of working, a more systematic, careful, thorough, line by line, let's get this right thing, whereas Terry and I were just, oh, that's funny, and he pulled, on to the next. But characters were always important for you and it's interesting thinking back to the series and also the films, Life of Brian and The Holy Grail, your characters are often mild-mannered, they're polite, frustrated, and sometimes the roles that they play, it's the accountant, the bureaucrat, the bank manager, is it the chartered accountant who wants to become a lion tamer?

21:34Oh, yes, that's right, yes. Were you channelling aspects of your own character into those characters, do you think? Probably. I could do them, that's all I can say. I could do shopkeepers very well. And John and I did a lot of shopkeeper material, dead parrot, cheese shop, all that sort of thing. and I could be the boring shopkeeper. I wish to make it complete. Sorry, we're closing for lunch. Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complete about this parrot that I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique. Oh, yes, the Norwegian Blue. What's wrong with it? I'll tell you what's wrong with it.

22:05It's dead. That's what's wrong with it. No, no, it's resting. Look. Look, my lad, I know a dead parrot when I see one and I'm looking at one right now. No, no, it's not dead. It's resting. Resting? Yeah. Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue. Beautiful plumage in it the plumage didn't enter into it. It's still dead. No, no, it's resting All right, then If it's resting I'll wake it up Hello, Polly, I got a nice cuttlefish for you when you wake up, Polly Parrot No, it moved That was you pushing the cage I did not Yes, you did And these characters were quite good because I could play in partnership with John with John sort of aggression and impatience.

22:48Getting increasingly irate. Yes, getting increasingly irate in a very funny way. And me being rather difficult and impeding his sort of whatever he was trying to do. That worked very well. So, I mean, I think John wrote a number of the shop sketches. And I was always cast as the shopkeeper. But I also, I just liked people who, I don't know, under pressure as well. I mean, oddly enough, the Spanish Inquisition, which is very well known, is just about someone who can't get it right. Our chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and fear, fear and surprise. Our two weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency.

23:24Our three weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Our four, no, amongst our weaponry are such elements as fear. I'll come in again. So that's a character observation. It's also about affability, isn't it? It's a kind of recurring trait of so many of the characters. And that really is you. You are famously the nicest man in Britain. Now's the time to change that. Come on, what makes you angry? You know, lots of things make me angry. But they're tiny things like everybody else finds. You know, people who drive very close behind you on the motorway, people who throw litter out of car windows, silly things like that.

24:07And they get me very ratty. But generally speaking, I find you get far more out of people. and the relationships I've made have worked much better because we've become friends. Did the comedy ever become competitive in the writing room with Python? Yes. I talked about it being factional, but was it fractious as well? Well, like every bit of creative work, of course they're at fractious. I mean, with Terry, I didn't always agree. That's not the way to produce good material. You've got to have someone saying, that's not funny, this is. And yes, there were real problems sometimes. I mean, I remember the wonderful sketch that Terry wrote about Mr.

24:47Creosote, the diner who's huge and explodes. That's in The Meaning of Life. Yeah, The Meaning of Life. It didn't go down particularly well the first time it was read and all that. I think I read it and I didn't read it terribly well. And then a bit later on, John came back to it and said, remember that thing about the exploding man? There were things I quite liked in that. So I said, well, look, let Terry read it, because Terry wrote it. And from then on, it became one of the great star sketches of that film. Finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint. Oh, sir, it's only a wafer-thin. Well, I couldn't eat another thing.

25:29I'm absolutely stuffed. Bugger horse. There were other things that we wrote sometimes that John and Graham and Eric didn't like and vice versa. That competition was very, very important. And we set our standards fairly high. You wouldn't think so from looking at some of the Python materials, dreadful, but generally we set our standard fairly high. And when it was good, it was great and it was breaking new ground. It brings to mind, there was a late-night discussion show in 1979, I think it was called Friday Night, Saturday Morning, in which you sat alongside John Cleese and had to defend the life of Brian in the film against this sort of complaint that it was sacrilegious, laid by, I think it was a Bishop of Southwark and Malcolm Muggeridge.

26:09Yes, yes, yes. Would you imagine that your scene, for instance, of the Sermon on the Mount is not ridiculing one of the most sublime utterances that any human being has ever spoken on this earth? Of course it is. No, no, it's making fun of the guy who's remembered it wrong and of the people who don't understand it and miss the point. I think that's really unfair because I think that a lot of people looking in will think that we have actually ridiculed Christ physically. Christ is played by an actor, Ken Colley. He speaks the words from the Sermon on the Mount. He's treated absolutely respectfully.

26:39The camera then pans away. We go right to the back of the crowd to someone who shouts, Speak up, because they cannot hear. Speak up! Shh, quiet, Mum. Well, I can't hear you a thing. Let's go to stoning. Shh! You can go to a stoning any time. Oh, come on, Brian! Whoa, you'll be quiet! Now, if that utterly undermines our faith in Christ, I started off by saying that this is such a tenth grade film that I don't believe that it would disturb anybody's face. Yes, I know, you started with an open mind, I realise.

27:14Is that the closest we've come to see you riled in public, do you think? Well, people were quite surprised. They said, oh, you look really angry. I said, well, yeah, I do get angry. It was because the two people representing, if you like, the conventional religious view, that this was a film of making fun of Jesus, which, of course, it wasn't. all our protestations were dismissed, you know, because they knew they were the people from the religious hierarchy. And, you know, Malcolm Muggerie saying this was just a tenth-rate film and all that. And I said, this is not a sort of discussion. That's what got me angry, you know?