From the Listener archive: Features, November 27-December 3 2004 Vol 196 No 3368
by Matt Nippert
By rights, his laughlines should be gaping canyons, but instead they act only as dignified and faint window-dressing for a man of his 61 years. Michael Palin has just finished breakfast, muffins and tea, and seems genuinely eager to please. "Good, lovely, thank you," he says to his publicists after being told of the day's gruelling interview schedule to promote his new book.
His niceness is almost legendary, but beneath this appealing demeanour lurks a man of uncommon drive. Over the years, he has written novels and screenplays and even produced and directed the critically acclaimed film The Missionary. He also played a bit-part in that little-known 1970s comedy troupe Monty Python's Flying Circus.
His latest project, Himalaya, saw him go up the Khyber, snaking through the world's most massive mountain range for the BBC. A local travel show produced a strange parallel, with Bruce Ansley writing in these pages on the Mayor of Invercargill, who took his own Intrepid Journey: "[Tim] Shadbolt staggers to the top of Mt Kinabalu, complaining all the way, moving with the speed and verve of a Southland Sunday and arriving at the summit absolutely shagged ('the bastard knocked me off!')."
By contrast, Palin is the quintessential chirpy Englishman, with a face that could sell used parrots. On hearing of Shadbolt's complaints, he expresses obvious delight. "Imagine that, the Poms outwhinged!" He insists that the lack of Western toilet facilities in the region is overstated. "Oh, there's a lot of running water. It's just not in your bathroom, and it tends to run downhill."
The Independent wrote that the documentary series could have been alternatively titled: "Michael Palin Visits the Places the Foreign Office Advises British Travellers to Avoid." After all, the series begins in Pakistan, where Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal lost his head and bombs go off like clockwork, and winds through Nepal, where a fullscale Maoist rebellion is under way.
"There's a sort of Python spirit in that," he says, referring to the BBC comedy series that gave him a cult following and a platform from which to launch a career as a traveller. "You're told not to do something, and so you do it."
He follows what he calls "the naive approach. 'Oh, it's a lovely country, this is lovely! Hello trees, hello mountains! This looks really nice, can we photograph this?'
"'All right, get on with it.' And then bang, bang, bang."
He argues that the perception of the region as dangerous is overblown. "I thought that they'd be waving their fists like you see on television, shouting 'Death to the infidel!' and that, but mainly people get on with their own lives, they're fairly preoccupied."
There is, however, a brief moment of seriousness as he recounts a close encounter with the Maoists in Nepal. After filming a segment on Gurkha recruitment, watching strapping young men go through the physical wringer, three men visited his camp.
"They didn't seem to be armed, but they somehow seemed to terrify the life out of the local people. And they asked to take the leaders of our group and have a word with them. The next morning, no one had come back, so we were advised to get out of there, which we did.
"That was quite alarming, because one day people had been friendly and smiling and co-operative, and the next day there was a lot of scowling, a lot of mistrust. I genuinely take the view when I travel that most people are basically decent and friendly and amazingly hospitable, and that's the natural state of things. They become nasty and ugly and angry, usually, only when some artificial crisis has occurred, and that's what happened there."
Of course, he wouldn't be Palin without ending the story on a lighter note. "Thank goodness they've never seen any of my work," he says of the Maoists. "They might have been Python fans, dragged me off, and made me do 'The Knights who say Ni!' all night long!"
Total Film magazine recently reconfirmed his title of renaissance man, judging Life of Brian the fifth best British movie of all time. Michael Caine's Get Carter ranked first, while the Python piss-take of organised religion placed well above any film in that most British of franchises, James Bond.
Although he later confides that he reads all the British press reviews of his work, he initially expresses surprise at the accolade, then makes a disarming, and perhaps more honest quip: "The fifth best movie? That's rather low down, I would have thought. Well, just after Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I'd have Close Encounters, and then Life of Brian. What else is there?"
Originally titled Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory, the irreverent yet still-relevant satire portrays a hapless plodder, Brian, whose life is turned upside down after he is mistaken for the Messiah. Financial backing for the film came from George Harrison, and the Pythons' cult status led many other high-profile fans to become cinematic partners, too - Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin members stumped up money for The Holy Grail.
Palin played an absurd number of characters (12, actually) in Life of Brian, to which he is quick to respond, "absurd characters, too!" but one in particular stands out. "I like the centurion at the end of the film, who sends people off to be crucified. 'Crucifixions? Yes? On the left, one cross each.'" He particularly likes, he says, playing a character who comes naturally: "a tortured liberal".
"He's got a lovely country home near Rome, he's into art, he's dabbled a bit with the lute or lyre, and he's not quite sure of his sexuality. Basically, he's been sent to this rather crude place, he probably hates the whole idea of capital punishment, but he just has to do it." The punchline, without which the centurion would not have made it into the film, comes from Eric Idle, saying, "No. I've been told I can go free."
"Suddenly," says Palin, of the optimistic executioner, "he becomes incredibly happy about it, it's so wonderful, at last some good has come of this awful job. How terrific, how brilliant. And then, of course, Eric says, 'No, it's crucifixion really.'"
"Oh no," says Palin, with a naive look of dismay. "He's been had again by the sharp sort of clever locals."
The clever locals in England, the tabloid press, are always keen on cutting celebrity down to size, yet they haven't managed to dig any dirt on Palin. This lack of notoriety isn't entirely to his liking. "They continually accuse me of being nice, which I think is a very dirty trick. I mean, who wants to be nice all the time?"
Well, he does, actually. He admires naturalist broadcaster David Attenborough and former high-school compatriot and recently departed BBC legend John Peel. "They just get on with their life, and do what they do and want to be judged on that alone. I think if you go beyond that, and want to be a celebrity, and attend lots of celebrity functions and gradually get divorced from what you can actually do, and become famous for being famous, that's when the vultures gather round.
"Touch wood," he says, seamlessly moving into character, "they haven't found out about my triple murders. And my troupe of Lapp transvestites who come round to my home, when no one's looking, for orgies." In faux dismay, his hand covers his mouth, which has formed a perfect "O", as he notes the running dictaphone. The mock naivety, the charm, the jokes. Michael Palin is not the son of God, he's just a very funny boy.
