As a member of the Monty Python team, Michael Palin presented his fair share of spoof documentary segments (including one in which the team visited an island populated solely by lookalikes of travelogue presenter Alan Whicker).
In 1980, Palin was asked to present an edition of Great Railway Journeys of the World (‘Confessions of a Train Spotter’), travelling from London Euston up to the Kyle of Lochalsh in the west of Scotland.
Though many other personalities had contributed to the series – including Ludovic Kennedy and historian Michael Wood – it was Michael that the BBC turned to for an ambitious travel documentary that would follow the route of Phileas Fogg, the lead character from Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days.
Palin began his travels on 25 September 1988 (from the Reform Club in London) accompanied by a cameraman and photographer, and with a promise to deliver enough material for six 50-minute documentaries and a tie-in book.
He travelled first to France and then on through Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Japan, and the USA, before heading back to the UK.
It’s a credit to the BBC that, on Palin’s return, scant hours before the 80-day deadline, they saw how much material he’d amassed and granted the series a seventh episode.
The series proved a great success, and subsequent travels took Michael on a vertical journey from Pole to Pole, Full Circle around the globe, on a Hemingway Adventure, across the Sahara and up the Himalaya.
Michael Palin is possibly the perfect travelling companion – especially as he did all the work and we got to watch from the comfort of our own homes.
He’s unflinchingly polite, even when faced with the unfathomable bureaucracy that greets many cross-border travellers, attentive enough to draw us to fascinating landmarks and examples of local culture, and even though he’s one-sixth of the most famous comedy troupe to come out of the halls of Britain’s universities, it’s still surprising to discover that even the Dalai Lama knows his face.
Palin evolved from – as he put it – “a silly man to a silly traveller”.
When taking a momentary rest in 2005 while he decided where to go next, he was forced to deny press rumours that he’d hung up his travelling boots for good: “I have absolutely no intention of hanging up my boots”, he wrote on his website.
“Though I may well discard the current pair, for reasons of hygiene, they will instantly be replaced so that I can continue what I enjoy so much – the process of seeing and learning about the world.”
Presenter
Michael Palin
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Though many other personalities had contributed to the series – including Ludovic Kennedy and historian Michael Wood – it was Michael that the BBC turned to for an ambitious travel documentary that would follow the route of Phileas Fogg, the lead character from Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days.
Michael Palin is possibly the perfect travelling companion – especially as he did all the work and we got to watch from the comfort of our own homes.
