Michael Palin: On the road again

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

The nation's favourite traveller retraces the steps of his most memorable adventure.

ANDREW MARR: It's been twenty years since Michael Palin set off on what he calls his "second career" and his first around the world trip, and since then he's taken us all to the corners of the earth - from the Himalayas to the Sahara. But one of his most memorable moments is still from that very first adventure on a dhow, a traditional sailing ship, sailing off to Dubai - from Dubai rather to what was then Bombay. He's just come back from searching for his original shipmates, and before we speak to him here's just a very quick reminder of that first journey.

CLIP: 80 DAYS AROUND THE WORLD

ANDREW MARR: Michael Palin's with me now. It must be a little bit strange watching 20 years ago.

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes.

ANDREW MARR: I suppose all your life, you see your previous, earlier selves in front of you?

MICHAEL PALIN: I know, it's really quite, it's really quite worrying really. I mean I feel slightly detached. I'm not the same person as on that dhow.

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

MICHAEL PALIN: I felt rather a sort of idiot on the dhow trying to be rather Jules Verne-ish and all that sort of thing.

ANDREW MARR: But there were some very engaging people around you and you've been back to try and find out what's happened to them.

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes, I was not particularly in favour of retracing steps - sounds like they've done everything else and now he's going back to do it again. But this particular journey on the dhow was remarkable because we were with these people for seven days - eight as it turned out in the end. There was no radar, no radio. We were absolutely out of contact - I mean they wouldn't let it happen to a BBC crew nowadays - so we absolutely depended on these fourteen, fifteen Gujarati fishermen to get us across to Mumbai and indeed to make the programme work. And it was an extraordinary relationship that developed. And as soon as we got to Bombay of course it ended. They were sort of shoved off somewhere else and I went to the Taj Hotel and was shown into a nice room and all that sort of thing and I felt for a moment I'd really touched the lives or their lives had touched mine in a most extraordinary way.

ANDREW MARR: And without giving it all away, did you find them again?

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes we did. Yes, we did. (laughs) Not all of them, but we found the captain again and they live right up in North West India - a little place called Kutch, which I'd never been to before. And, yes, it's a rather, it's a nice story because it has a happy ending.

ANDREW MARR: Because you caused sort of national consternation when you announced that you were going to stop travelling on camera pretty much.

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes. Well I never really said that.

ANDREW MARR: Oh good, so you're not

MICHAEL PALIN: And if I did say that, I've lied because I said after 80 Days that was the last one and I've lied seven times since then. We've done seven more series. It's just that when people ask you, "Are you going to do another series?" and you don't know if you're going to, the best thing is to probably say no. If you say yes, they say "Where?" and then you're immediately caught up in something which you might live to regret.

ANDREW MARR: Now you're wearing an English poppy. I'm wearing a Scottish poppy here

MICHAEL PALIN: Oh really?

ANDREW MARR: an anatomically correct Scottish poppy - no oak leaf.

MICHAEL PALIN: What's the difference? I've never heard

ANDREW MARR: No oak leaf and four petals.

MICHAEL PALIN: I wasn't given the option. Ah well, but then I'm not Scots.

ANDREW MARR: But you've made, I was going to say you made a very moving film for Timewatch about the last day of the First World War

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes.

ANDREW MARR: when I had no idea so many people were killed

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes.

ANDREW MARR: the fighting went on.

MICHAEL PALIN: I didn't realise. I mean Timewatch asked me to front it - that was all - but they had done the research and they had found out that between ten past five in the morning when the Armistice was agreed upon, everyone agreed we're going to stop this war; between then and 11 o'clock when the ceasefire actually came into force, a lot of people were sent into battle. Attacks were mounted, especially by the Americans who'd just entered the war and wanted to give the Germans a real sort of kicking.

ANDREW MARR: Yeah. Let's just watch a little clip of that to get a sense of the programme.

CLIP: TIMEWATCH: THE LAST DAY OF WORLD WAR I

ANDREW MARR: And one of the � I think probably the most extraordinary story in that film, which really rocked me, was that an American general realised that one town still ahead had running water in the baths and so attacked it and killed huge numbers of, huge numbers of his men in search of a bath.

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes, yeah. It's, it's just one of these events. You think the war ends. Someone decides the end of the war - that's it, let's all stop - and it just isn't like that and it runs down in a really � And the other story I thought was extraordinary was that Wilfred Owen whose grave I was seeing there, he died about six days before the end of the war but it took seven days for the telegram to get there. So there were his parents in Shrewsbury, hearing

ANDREW MARR: War over.

MICHAEL PALIN: the bells going, the war's over

ANDREW MARR: Armistice.

MICHAEL PALIN: knock on the door. "Sorry, your son died seven days ago." So all these elements which we don't really understand now, and in war you can't explain everything and very, very strange things happen.

ANDREW MARR: Now before we finish, you're also heavily involved in a transport campaign which people I suppose, given you go round the world, why wouldn't you be involved in a transport campaign. But this used to be Transport 2000.

MICHAEL PALIN: Yes.

ANDREW MARR: It's now Campaign for Better Public Transport, Better Transport.

MICHAEL PALIN: Campaign for Better Transport, yes, yes.

ANDREW MARR: And your big thing is railways - we should have more railways.

MICHAEL PALIN: Well it was founded to sort of counter Dr Beeching's cuts all those years ago and it developed into a very well informed lobby group in favour of public transport and better public transport. Not just railways but integrated transport. Just sensible measures to get people off the roads and into other forms of transport. And being quite prophetic, I mean Crossrail was discussed by us in 1986. Whenever motorways were opened and people said "Oh this is going to solve the problem", we said "Motorways will just attract more traffic." Oho, people laughed - but we were right, we were right lad.

ANDREW MARR: Always right. You're going to join us later on, but for now thank you very much indeed.

MICHAEL PALIN: Thank you.

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

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