As one of the legendary Monty Python team, Michael Palin has written and appeared in some of the most iconic comedy sketches ever conceived. He’s also found time over the last forty-six years to keep a near-daily diary of his personal and professional life. Now, at the age of seventy-two, Michael is preparing to hit the road with a brand new stage show. Based on his diaries, the show will feature not only plenty of sure-to-be-amusing anecdotes but also rare archive film, videos, photos and records, providing a candid insight into a hugely successful and incredibly diverse career.

What’s On recently caught up with the man himself to find out more...

Can you spot any significant changes in the way you’ve written the diaries across the decades, Michael, or have they remained consistent in terms of factors such as their style and content?

The style has sort of developed over the years. I’d kept loads of diaries as a schoolboy but only for about three weeks at a time. It was 1969, just before Python began, and I decided I was going to try and write every day. The problem was that I wasn’t quite sure how much to write or how much time it should take up. I started it and then slightly resented it taking over my life, so wrote shorter pieces. After a while I realised I was quite enjoying the process of recording what was going on in my life. I realised that if I was going to do it properly, I’d have to give some time to it - about thirty minutes a day - and try to do it nearly every day. I tend now to be firmly in the habit of doing it most mornings and writing much more than I did to start with. The other change, I suppose, is that since the diaries were originally published, in 2006, I’ve become slightly more self-conscious about names and things like that. So instead of just writing a nickname, I might write a full name because I know some time later this might be published.

When you look back on your diaries, what surprises you most about yourself as a younger man?

What surprises me is that I haven’t changed much. I’ve matured, I’ve got older, but I don’t know that I’ve got a lot wiser. When I was young I was quite impulsive. There weren’t many days off, that’s for sure, but I think I’m the same now. Work is my life and life is my work, really. I’ve always been freelance. Terry Jones and myself were always writing together, always looking over our shoulders to see where we could get the next job, where we could get a series or a play, wondering whether we should write drama or write comedy. Python was going on in the background but it was never going to make us enough money at the time. I look back and can see then what I am now, which is someone who’s tempted to try lots of different ideas, and who generally comes out the other side having done an awful lot in the process.

Did you just write and write, or did you reflect over your diaries as you were writing them?

I’ve never really looked back. I’ve read them quite often, which is very useful sometimes. There was a Python court case about three years ago and I was the star witness because I was the only one who could remember anything - because I’d written it down in my diary. The Palin Diaries appeared in court and were read - rather badly, I have to say - by the prosecutor.

The decision to publish was partly taken because various people were asking me if I was going to write an autobiography. I sort of resisted that, but then I realised the reason I was resisting was because everything was there in my diaries. I thought, ‘There’s the story, why don’t I just publish them?’ 
Up until that time I’d considered them to be private. Even my wife hasn’t read all the way through the diaries - nor would she want to because they go on a bit! But then, once they’re published, they do become a different beast.

How near the knuckle are the diaries? Are there individuals who you’ve written about who might be hurt or unhappy about what you’ve written?

I tend to be less confrontational than some people. I’m generally an optimist and see the best in people, so it’s not page after page of moans. When I try to write every morning, I do try and see the positive in that day. However, there are certain moments when you meet people and have to put down what you felt about them at the time. Some are people who I only met once, and my impression of them may have been pretty critical. Others - well, there’s the usual thing about all the Pythons I’ve worked with. Python is like a marriage in a way. You sort of need each other but at the same time you’re far more critical of each other than you probably would be of anybody outside. So there are little criticisms. They’re not major ones, they just fill out what the Pythons are like. Whether individual Pythons are happy about it or not, I don’t know.

Have you had any feedback from them?

Terry Jones said he couldn’t remember any of it, John Cleese said, ‘I didn’t say that’, and Terry Gilliam said, ‘Why wasn’t there more of me in it?’, so you get the picture? 

Has re-reading them made you nostalgic for any particular bygone era?

Yes, as you get older you do get a bit nostalgic. I look back at the filming of The Life Of Brian in Tunisia and remember it being a wonderful time, a time that’s well captured in the diary. Then there’s GBH, which was a long drama series I did for Channel Four. I remember enjoying that a lot - but the diary also shows the strain of it all in terms of the questions I was asking myself at the time. Questions like, ‘Am I really up to taking on such a major role?’ and ‘How will it work out?’ In the end the results were great, but it’s quite interesting how the different approaches are there in the diary. 

Did you ever feel the urge to omit certain things?

No. When I was editing the diaries, I felt that they had to be as honest a portrait as possible because one is put slightly on a pedestal and I’ve no complaints about my life. I’ve done a hell of a lot and had wonderful opportunities to do lots of different things, but it’s not as easy as that. It does come with a little pressure, either to always be performing or in terms of finding yourself continuously called upon to do this and that, which sometimes is beyond what you want to do and beyond what you’re capable of doing, but you have to deal with that. I’ve kept the insecurities in because they’ve surprised me. 
What I was slightly concerned about, and talked to my family about, was whether to include in the published diaries more entries about the difficult periods of my life. The loss of my sister quite early on, and of Graham Chapman. When I looked back at the diary I noticed that I’d noted down my reactions quite carefully and quite thoroughly during that period. It was obviously something I had a lot to write about - especially how to deal with it - and I thought my experience and thoughts might be useful to help anybody else who’s dealing with loss of any kind. My family were all fine with me keeping that in. It’s not maudlin; it’s celebratory of lives. 

When deciding to condense the diaries into a stage show, what’s been your criteria in terms of what to include and what to leave out?

Well, it’s partly governed by what’s going to work on stage, and a lot of that is stories, very good Python stories, so there’s got to be a section about Python in the show. There are very good travel stories and photos too, so you’ve got to have those in. They’re probably the backbone of the evening, but at the same time I want to deal with areas that tend to get sidelined, like the Ripping Yarns TV series, how it came about, why there were only nine of them, what our aim was in doing them. There was a wonderful book which we’ve rediscovered called Dr Fegg’s Encyclopaedia Of All World Knowledge, which Terry and myself wrote in the 1980s. We’re getting it reprinted and I do some readings from that on stage. It’s something that people don’t really know about that well.

In Ripping Yarns, was any of Tomkinson’s Schooldays based on your time as a pupil at Shrewsbury School?

Loosely. Public schools have rules which have been laid down over the centuries - like how many buttons you can open on your jacket depending on how long you’ve been at the school, and which bit of grass you can walk across if you’re a senior. The rules seem completely petty and ridiculous from the outside, but that’s the way the schools have been shaped. All I did was tweak that slightly and introduce certain ‘privileges’, like being nailed to the walls by senior boys and that sort of thing. What I particularly liked was having an official school bully who was not discouraged. In fact he was actively encouraged; he was so good at bullying that parents sent their children to the school to be bullied by him. Ian Ogilvy - who most people will remember as The Saint - played him and was absolutely brilliant. I remember filming at Milton Abbey and it being just hilarious, especially when we had to have a stretcher come in through the school gates because one of the boys had tried to escape and been caught by the school leopard. You never saw the leopard, just this boy on a stretcher being brought back into the school. It was terrific. Unfortunately Milton Abbey School weren’t too eager to have us back again. I think Shrewsbury School would’ve had a better sense of fun about it because it was a very good school for encouraging humour.

What’s your most memorable experience while filming your travel series?

The best day was getting home at the end of Eighty Days. Actually, it wasn’t a very good day - everyone was rather rude and grumpy in London when we came back - but there was also just the sheer joy of having done the journey. As for the journeys themselves, there were many occasions that remain memorable. There were so many spectacular landscapes we were able to see - from Siberia through to Alaska - but I suppose the things I enjoyed most were meeting people; getting into situations where I would never have expected to meet, let alone have conversations with, people along the way.

And if you could use all the experiences you’ve gained in life, plus the wisdom you naturally develop with age, to give some advice to Michael Palin circa 1969, what would you say to him?

I think I’d probably say to him, ‘Don’t be too worried. Make sure that whatever you do is what’s in your head. Don’t be persuaded to do things you don’t want to do’.

At seventy-two, you show little sign of slowing down. Isn’t this a time when you should be enjoying the fruit of your labours?

Oh, I do enjoy the fruit of my labours. I very often look back at what I’ve done. I read books that are related to journeys I’ve been on and I think, ‘Wow, I can read about this part of the world because I’ve actually been there, so it means something to me’. I’ve made very good friends over the years and I’ve got far too much to do and far too many things I’m interested in, and that keeps me going.
Actually, what my life has done is stock up on all sorts of experiences which, rather than wear me out, have actually stimulated me and will hopefully continue to do so.