What can be said about Michael Palin that hasn't been said already? Perhaps calling him a Renaissance man, or comparing him to a shark that never stops swimming. He's something different to each generation, be it as a member of Monty Python; a unique explorer and travel presenter neither in the vein of Alan Whicker or Karl Pilkington; a filmmaker; a geographer and railway enthusiast; or as a man of letters both fictional and non-fictional. His works spans every cultural medium imaginable short of painting and sculpture, though chances are he indulges those in his spare time as well. Palin and Python are back in the news not just for court cases, but for the shock announcement they're reuniting for a limited amount of shows at the O2 arena next summer. It will be the first time since 1988 they've performed together, albeit without the late Graham Chapman. Not that Palin hasn't been keeping busy, but as well as the Python reunion he's returned to acting in the comedy drama The Wipers Times, the release of his third volume of diaries is imminent, his second novel The Truth recently went to paperback and he's also editing his own edition of Radio 4's Today Programme over Christmas, he hasn't been this prominently in the public eye in quite a while. Read on for an interview that covers pretty much every facet of Palin's varied career, including his insights into what we can expect from the reunion shows; how he's managed to avoid being pigeonholed; his onslaught of upcoming projects; his admiration for The Fast Show and Armando Iannucci; and whether or not he wants to visit Outer Space...
You were one of the strongest voices against a Python Reunion some time ago- why now, after all this time? I was never against the comedy side of the reunion. I love acting with those guys and playing comedy with them. They are the best writers and the best comedy actors to be with, so that was never problem. My reluctance was twofold- one was that I was very busy doing lots of other things. I'd been involved with a travel series the last time this came up- about fifteen years ago. The other side of this was that we all had to be united on what we wanted to do, and there was some difference of opinion about whether we should play very big venues and collect a lot of money very quickly or whether we should play smaller venues which were slightly more intimate. And the other issue was of course that Graham (Chapman) couldn't join us- (at the point a reunion was last considered) it 10 years since he'd died- so it was going to be difficult to do the sketches without him. Fast forward 15 years, and there's much more unity amongst the group- we're spending more time in London together, because of business discussions we'e had to have during the last year including dealing with the court case (regarding the musical Spamalot). I think there was a feeling that "because we're together, why don't we do something and make some money fast?" I felt that the O2, large though it is, can be intimate. I've seen Leonard Cohen there, and you could hear a pi drop when he was singing! So I wasn't so worried about the size of it. I felt we could do a few nights at the O2; that would satisfy the demand; we'll have a good time. And this was the moment just to go ahead with it.
What can we expect from the reunion shows? Will there be any new material? Yes, there will be new material. I think the show will mainly be built around standards, because people would be very unhappy if there wasn't some mention of the Spanish Inquisition or didn't see a Norwegian Parrot on stage. In terms of the presentation of the show, it'll be production values- we've got Arlene Phillips organising . There'll be lots of things going on in between sketches... And one of the good things is now technology has moved, we can use very high-quality material on screens around the stage, so Graham can be there, which is nice! We'll see doing his wonderful solo wrestling match, which was one of the funniest things I've ever seen anyone do on stage. And there will be new jokes! (laughs) I can't tell you which ones, but the linking material will have a lot of new stuff, but basic core sketches will be as people remember them.
We can't wait for the release of your third volume of Diaries... Of course it's a personal choice, but do you think more of us should take up diary writing, in this age of Twitter and blogging? And why did you decide to publish your personal diaries in the first place? Blogging is a form of diary writing; I write in an old-fashioned way, longhand in a notebook most mornings, and have done since 1969. I think the Diary as a form is very useful because what you write at the time is as close to the truth as you can get. If you look back and try to recreate a period of your life without them, you tend to make up things. It's an honest record of what you did each day and it will really surprise you that you felt way , you did something ... also, it gives you a look at what was happening in the world at that time. The reason I decided to publish my diaries is that one or two people who knew I kept them were saying "why don't you publish them?", and I said I was going to leave them to my kids and they can decide what to do with them. And then some people were coming to me and saying "when can we have your autobiography, Michael? Most people are writing theirs when they're 20. You're getting on, isn't it time you did yours?" My autobiography would use my diaries, which are quite extensive, so why use them to create a story when the story is there, being told each day? Showing all the different directions and contradictions, the regrets and the failures as well as successes... they're all in there! Why don't I just use that instead of writing an autobiography? That's really why I first decided to go with the Diaries. I have to edit them, otherwise there'd be 70 volumes! They're huge volumes anyway, but it's only about twenty percent of what I'd written. There may be personal things you say there you don't want to say in your lifetime and regret saying at the time, but as a record of my life and times; how we (Python) wrote; how my family grew up; my view of the country and what was going on... I think it's quite interesting to be out in public now while I'm still alive so I can talk to people about it. I've had some nice discussions with people who've read the diaries and liked them. I get a lot of pleasure of the diaries being in the public domain. I've had very few adverse reactions - I was a little nervous when they first came out, but on the whole it's been pretty well received.
What attracted you to appear in The Wipers Times? And why did you take such a long break from acting between that and GBH? Were you too occupied with your travels, or did not really appeal? I liked the script of the Wipers Times as soon as I saw it. I'm a big fan of Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, I'm a friend of Ian's and I think he's got good taste. And I've always been very interested in the first world war- I made a documentary about 2 or 3 years ago about "the last day", between the end of the war being agreed at 5 in the morning, and the ceasefire being implemented at 11. Instead of stopping everything , lots more people died after the war had ended in those 5 or 6 hours. So I'm interested in those very odd aspects of the war and the idea of humour in war is something I didn't know a great deal about. Come to think of it, it must be a very strong, binding force. In these awful conditions, the humour must be what keeps you going- that bleak, dark humour must be there. To find a script which actually treated the whole issue of humour in war, I thought "that's a first!"... and almost immediately agreed . The reason I haven't done any acting is that I think I'd done a lot of acting in the 70's and 80's- a lot of films like A Fish Called Wanda, Brazil and Time Bandits. I found that the supply of scripts that really interested me had sort of dried up. I didn't want to become a British cameo actor in Hollywood, which various people have done- you go to Hollywood, get paid a lot of money to be a Butler or something like that. I didn't want to do that, I preferred working here (in Britain). (Alan Bleasdale's 1991 drama) GBH came along, which was a brilliant opportunity and a great part. So I did that and then I felt "now I can go travelling", which I enjoy very much indeed, and that's what I've been doing for the last 25 years. But it was nice to feel I could do acting if a nice part came along, and The Wipers Times was an exceptionally good part, and I didn't miss film acting a lot because it tended to be a lot of standing around. And with the Travel shows, you work with your own little team from first thing in the morning to last thing at night- you go out there, you make the rules, you do the work... you don't have to sit around waiting for the sun to come out. We work solidly all the way through and it's a great satisfaction. I prefer that way of working I think. But I'm going to do a bit more acting in the future. I'm doing a BBC drama in the early new year.
And the same with your writing- Hemingway's Chair was such a wonderful novel (published in 1994), and one should never rush to churn out work to sacrifice quality, but something pretty special must have inspired you to take up the pen again to write The Truth (published in paperback earlier this year)? I really miss writing from my own imagination! I've written all the books for my travel series with my own new material. That was 8 books I'd written of non-fiction, and felt I wanted to get something of my own imagination down on paper. I suppose the way I'd missed writing Comedy- when we were writing Python we were churning out fiction... 2 or 3 characters a day! I wanted to create a world from scratch, but quite difficult to know what to write about and get it right. I'd had several attempts through the years in-between, and a number of them just didn't lead anywhere. I did some research, they got halfway down the line... and then the story kind of dry up. With The Truth, it was rather the opposite. I had the idea- almost the whole structure of the story- come to me one day when I was walking through Soho on the way to the BBC from my office in Covent Garden. It was about a subject that troubles me, which was the way the words 'The Truth' were used very randomly by everybody, who would the next morning admit they'd been lying. It was around the time of the politicians' expenses scandals. So I knew the theme and the story, and it actually didn't take that long to write. It was galvanised by a central section set in India- I went out there to see what was happening with an Aluminium plant in the East of . I've worked with Richard Loncraine- a marvellous director- on The Missionary, and Tristram Powell- who I'd done two television plays with- on American Friends. I trust them absolutely; we have a really good working relationship. They'd suggest things I hadn't seen ... I think that's very important- if you're not careful you can become the crazed dictator with a big project, who has to make every decision by themselves. I love being involved in the decision-making, but I very much like the discussion and the arguments, and the dynamic of working with somebody else to achieve and get it right. So I suppose in the list of things I want to do, I put Writer first, Actor second and Director third. And if I'm writing and acting then I need someone else to help me out with the directing.
Where do you hope to travel next? All that's left for you now is West Africa, Southern Latin America, Mongolia, the Caspian Basin and Outer Space! Outer Space I'm not so interested in- I do like to be on Terra Firma. Yeah, the Caspian , that'd be great! I'm not really looking at the map and ticking places off- there's lots of countries I'd still like to go to, such as Argentina, Iran, Iraq... Syria particularly, but at the moment some of them aren't really places you can go to. There are other parts of the world like the South Pacific, which I've never really been to ... As soon as I read a particular book or see a programme on a certain place , I get itchy feet! But I've got enough to do here !
What are your thoughts on the state of comedy in our country these days? I'm finding that the really clever stuff is mostly coming from the States, whereas younger comedians aren't given as much of a look in, and we're reverting to the bad side of 70's audience sitcoms... I'm not really qualified to pass judgment, as I watch very little new comedy, I'm sorry to say! There are exceptions - I love the mockumentaries like Twenty Twelve and The Thick of It. I've also seen some of Veep, which is very funny. I think (Armando) Iannucci and people like that are producing excellent stuff. Twenty Twelve was particularly acute and on-the-button. That's the sort of thing I pick up and watch, and like. There's not a lot more that I've seen- my taste goes back a long way. I still find John Le Mesurier and Arthur Lowe in Dad's Army one of the funniest comic combinations ever. The impression I get is that comedy has sort of become introspective and... what was great about Monty Python was that it was just very silly and extroverted. It wasn't meant to leave you which a feeling of how awful the world is and how nasty people are. It was just about how absurd the world is and how silly people are. There's something about Python, whatever it does, that makes people happy to listen to it and watch it. It's not a hard-hitting show that lays bare how hard the world is. So maybe there's been a change in that Comedy's become a little more self-conscious. I used to love the silliness of the Fast Show. I think they were great.
What else do you have planned apart from the reunion? Can we expect another novel or travel series in the next couple of years? Has there been any movement on Terry Jones' Absolutely Anything that you're lending your voice to? I can tell you that Absolutely Anything is going ahead- not that I'm doing much, just one of the voices- I think that's going ahead next Spring. I'm sort of on a cusp period at the moment. I'm busy putting together the various segments for the The Today Programme . I'm just completing the third volume of my Diaries, which goes from 1988 to '98, and they'll be come out Autumn 2014. I'm planning some kind of short tour to talk about them, as well as 25 years of Travelling. We'll be rehearsing the Python shows in June; and I'll be acting in a short drama series for the BBC - I can't tell you much about that yet.
What advice would you give to any aspiring comedians, writers or travellers? My advice would be very general- remember to be yourself; remember what you've got that is your particular talent. Don't try and ape somebody else; don't try and hitch yourself to the coattails of anyone else. If you're any good, you'll have something that you particularly want to say and a particular way to say it. Think "what are your strengths?" Is it stand-up? Is it directing? Is it writing? and try and make sure you remember who you are and that you're different from everybody else. That's the first thing. The second thing, which seems to contradict that, is that if you can find a good partner to work with, then that's hugely important. I've always worked in teams from the first revue I did in Edinburgh in 1964 right through to writing with a team on The Frost Report; with Terry Jones; with the Python team... If you can keep your own individuality and yet be inspired and supported by somebody who has an equally idiosyncratic talent, that's the important thing. Be yourself, but be yourself with somebody else you trust and want to work with. It's important to have a partnership, I think.
You're an author, a comedian, an explorer, a writer, a diarist, a geographer, an advocate of research into stuttering... do you find your heart truly belongs in one of these fields above the rest? I really go where the wind blows me! I've been lucky, because I'm bad at concentrating for a long time on one particular thing. I've a low boredom threshold! I remember growing up thinking this could be a disadvantage. People kept saying "You've got to decide, Michael! At some point you've got to decide what you're going to do!" And I've been very lucky, as I've managed for nearly 50 years in the business to not quite make up my mind about what I want to do! I have certain talents and abilities- I can write; I can act; I have a curiosity about the rest of the world, which is hardly a talent but it's something which enables me to go to certain places and make programmes- and they all seem to be part of a general mix. I'm very happy having that kind of life. I'm waiting, really, for ideas to come along... I don't like the thought of resting on laurels. I want to keep doing new things as long as I can. It's not a question of finding one particular thing. In the back of my mind is a feeling of "how well can I do whatever I'm doing?", not just get seduced into something I'm doing purely for money or prestige, rather than for the enjoyment of it. I love the fact I can live my life doing lots of different things, and hopefully help other people to understand how much there is going on in the world rather than how little.
Monty Python Live (mostly): one down, five to go will be at the O2 arena on July 1-5, 15, 16 and 18-20. The Truth is now available everywhere in paperback from Phoenix Press. The Wipers Times is now available on DVD. Michael's edition of The Today Programme will be broadcast on Radio 4 over Christmas.