Q&A: Michael Palin, comic, author, TV presenter, 75
Comic, author and TV presenter Michael Palin on the reason he travels, his favourite comic character and his latest ripping yarn.
A BBC executive said recently that times had moved on from the “six Oxbridge white blokes” of Monty Python. Is political correctness ruining comedy? I don’t think he was deliberately being anti-Pythonic. He was trying to make a point that comedy writing should come from any source possible. Comedy is whatever makes you laugh and laughter in a sense is its own self-censor. You don’t tend to laugh at someone being beaten up; you tend to laugh at the absurdity of power.
What’s the favourite comic character you’ve played? I really quite liked Pontius Pilate in Life of Brian because that was about authority and how it is imposed on people, and yet because he has a slight problem with pronouncing his words all the people down below start to laugh. That is the way to combat power. Once people laugh at you, it’s very difficult to gain back respect.
Your new book about the polar voyages of HMS Erebus, which disappeared in 1845 in search of the Arctic Northwest Passage, has the air of a ripping yarn — like your 1977 absurdist piece Across the Andes by Frog. What’s stranger, fact or fiction? Across the Andes by Frog was about someone who was determined to do something that no one had ever done before, quite oblivious to the fact no one would really want to do something like that — it was completely stupid. You’re absolutely right, there’s a lot of that spirit in the story of Erebus, and probably why it sticks out for me.
Do you identify with explorers? I’m partly like those people, those Victorian eccentrics who really want to travel and see lands no one has ever seen before. People say, “Why do you go there, there’s no decent hotels, the food’s bad and they’ve just had a sort of plague”. I just want to see it; it’s curiosity.
Your book gives voice to the “little people” on those polar voyages, not just famous explorers… It was essential to try to find the voice of the people who weren’t of the officer class. I really wanted to find out what the mood of the men was: were they doing this just because they’d been ordered to, was there any sense in their minds of what they were seeing and how spectacularly different and dangerous it was.
How did they cope with an often hostile environment? At one point, when they were stuck in the Antarctic ice for a long, long time, they built a pub on the ice and a ballroom. They were also doing serious things but in order to keep the fear at bay you have to have a sense of proportion — and the best way is just to enjoy the camaraderie of your fellow men or make jokes. As someone who told jokes for a long time, that was very reassuring.
In Erebus you quote the London Times on King George IV’s death: “There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures … What eye has wept for him. What heart has heaved on throb of unmercenary sorrow.” Strong words? It’s an example of a free and outspoken press which we sometimes tend to think is a modern construct, but we can see the press was freer in the time of George IV than it is now. No one would say that about the royal family now. It’s a question of people’s attitude to power. It’s happening in the US in the case of Donald Trump, although Trump is still in power, which is slightly more frightening.
Erebus: The Story of a Ship by Michael Palin (Random House Books, $35) is out now.