The full Python

Where next for Michael Palin? Andrew talked to the travelling python.

Michael Palin

ANDREW MARR: Michael there's going to be a special screening of East of Ipswich at this High Tide Festival...

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes, yes exactly. Yeah.

ANDREW MARR: .. that you're involved in. Tell us about that.

MICHAEL PALIN: Well it's a festival in Halesworth in Suffolk.

And I know that part of the world very well.

It's where my parents retired to, where I met my wife and all that.

And it's a festival in, I think only its second or third year. And it's, it was primarily a theatre festival to get first time writers interested in the theatre. And they can benefit from getting more experienced theatre people come down. They do workshops.

They do all that sort of, sort of thing. So it's really a good opportunity for new, new writers to put on theatre. And this year they've gone into film, you know put their toe in the water and East Of Ipswich which I made in nineteen eighty six I think is ..

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

MICHAEL PALIN: .. going to be one of the things they show.

ANDREW MARR: You are famously and sadly going to stop travelling you said, going around and round the world.

MICHAEL PALIN: Well I've said that after every series. And I've been seen to be a ..

ANDREW MARR: Ah, so you don't mean it?

MICHAEL PALIN: .. serial liar. I've always gone back.

ANDREW MARR: Oh good.

MICHAEL PALIN: But I, I don't know. I, you know it's one of those things.

It's like an addiction. I love travelling. I love the sort of buzz of going to a different country, seeing a different place, tasting different food, meeting different people.

But I think you know that doing a series and a book each time is quite a, it's two years, two years work.

ANDREW MARR: So maybe shorter travels though possibly?

MICHAEL PALIN: Yeah shorter travels I think.

ANDREW MARR: Yeah. Yeah.

MICHAEL PALIN: Cos I find I've done now seven series in the last twenty years. I've got to kind of sit back and think what have I seen? I've seen so much. I've been incredibly lucky.

And I don't want it just to become a blur you know. I want to know more about the countries I've been to.

ANDREW MARR: East of Ipswich has a sort of, if I can, if you don't mind me saying so, a kind of Alan Bennett-ish feel in some respects. It's a particular style of writing.

MICHAEL PALIN: That's, that's high praise.

ANDREW MARR: Oh good.

MICHAEL PALIN: Yeah.

ANDREW MARR: Well I just wondered, I mean if you're going to do less of the travel documentary styles whether you might be turning your hand again to screen writing?

MICHAEL PALIN: I'd like to. Because I mean I started off if you call Monty Python imaginative writing - I suppose it was you know.

It was fictional writing. And I'd quite like to, to do something fictional again.

ANDREW MARR: Do you have ideas at the moment bubbling away?

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes I've got a, a few ideas. But you have to be sort of - the problem was I mean I made a lot of films at one time. And films they're sort of big efforts where there's a hundred people on the set and all that.

And you've, you know becomes incredibly complicated. Whereas the great joy of doing a travel programmes, had a crew of seven people.

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

MICHAEL PALIN: And we made the decisions. We went round, the BBC trusted us, we brought back the material. It was edited by a brilliant editor.

We had about ten people all together, provided the BBC with the programme. And there's something wonderful about working with a small team like that.

ANDREW MARR: And you don't have that extraordinary mad, dysfunctional sort of ... family you had when you were doing the Monty Python. Your diaries�

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes. Yes.

ANDREW MARR: It's absolutely amazing sort of psycho-drama week by week.

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes. Well the great thing about Python was we were, there were a very small number of us who believed what we were doing was really, really funny. And had to persuade the rest of the world that it was.

So we had a permanent sort of grudge against anyone who tried to tell us what to do. And, and in a sense that sort of honed my own sense of independence and control.

ANDREW MARR: You've probably quite wisely always kept away from politics. But I wonder with all this Tibet stuff whether you, you feel strongly - Tibet being a place that you've visited?

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes. I mean I only steer away from it because I don't feel qualified... I don't know enough about the places. What's happening in Tibet does, it can't help but affect you if you've been to Tibet ..

ANDREW MARR: Sure.

MICHAEL PALIN: .. the country itself and the fact that it, its language and its culture is being slowly sort of morphed into China.

But then this is just, there are benefits to - and Tibetans have told me that. There are benefits to investment in the country and all that. But I just don't like to see a small country ..

ANDREW MARR: Sure. Sure.

MICHAEL PALIN: .. threatened.

ANDREW MARR: I mean you, you actually met the Dalai Lama. There's a wonderful ..

MICHAEL PALIN: I did.

ANDREW MARR: .. little clip of it, cos it's, it's one of ..

MICHAEL PALIN: Yeah. Yeah.

ANDREW MARR: .. slightly surreal television moment wasn't it?

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes. Yes.

ANDREW MARR: Let's have a look at it.

MICHAEL PALIN: Ah ..

VIDEO OF MICHAEL PALIN AND THE DALAI LAMA PLAYS

MICHAEL PALIN: They should play that every night shouldn't they? Yes.

ANDREW MARR: That, that's, that's not, that's not a bad puff is it: "Practically every day."

MICHAEL PALIN: No that was the second best thing that ever happened to me - meeting the Dalai Lama after hearing that Elvis Presley loved to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail. So they're the two great, key moments of my life.

ANDREW MARR: Really? So that's, that's ... that's not a bad - is there anywhere you'd still like to go that you haven't been?

MICHAEL PALIN: Well I've, I've, I've not been to sort of the Brazilian, Argentinean side of, of South America. Nor much of the Silk Road. I think that, that would be very interesting.

ANDREW MARR: Fantastic.

MICHAEL PALIN: And I haven't been to the Middle East at all. Would love to go to places like Armenia and Georgia ..

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

MICHAEL PALIN: .. and all that.

ANDREW MARR: Well very interesting at the moment as well. And you're doing a documentary about the last day of the first world war?

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes that's right for BBC Timewatch. It'll hopefully be on the ninetieth anniversary of the end of the war. But a fascinating story of what happened in between the armistice being agreed and the cease fire six hours later, of course ..

ANDREW MARR: Cos presumably some people got killed.

MICHAEL PALIN: An awful lot.

ANDREW MARR: Really?

MICHAEL PALIN: Thousands, thousands were killed in various theatres of war. And fighting went on right up to the last minute. People were killed within a minute of the whistle blowing saying "Right, over lads. Stop now. It's peace". Horrible.

ANDREW MARR: Horrible. Okay. Well we'll in a sort of way look forward to that. You know what I mean.

MICHAEL PALIN: No I think it will be interesting.

ANDREW MARR: Thank you very much indeed for coming on.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

Your comments

Disclaimer: The BBC may edit your comments and cannot guarantee that all emails will be published.

E-mail this to a friend

Printable version