I was rather taken aback to discover, whilst chatting to friends on a recent visit to London, that Michael Palin isn’t a universally loved, well regarded and popular figure. I’d always felt everybody liked the man. Well, it seems one or two of my friends felt he appears a little condescending with locals on his famous travels, and as such had marked him down as somebody not altogether likable.
I think the solution to their feelings has to be to read Michael Palin’s Diaries, a book I’ve recently finished. It would put the lie to the (in my view) misplaced accusation that Palin is anything other than a Really Nice Chap Who You’d Like to Buy a Beer and Have a Chat With.
The book is certainly large. Ominously so at first (650 pages in total). What can this TV actor writer bloke have to say in this amount of space for what is only the first 10 years of his diaries? Quite a lot, as it happens. They start off at the beginning of the Monty Python TV series, and conclude at the end of the year which saw the stupendous Life of Brian unleashed on the world.
The style of the book changes over the years, as Palin finds his diary writing style, and it’s ultimately an engrossing, brief but engaging style that portrays a man who is experiencing what we now regard as a great series of successes, although of course at the time it’s anything but. Struggles, disagreements and private thoughts are contained which show that even for a group of people on top of their game, bringing such differing personalities together is not an easy process.
Palin appeals throughout as a rational and down-to-earth everyman character. Very much how I like to think I’d be if, for some bizarre reason, fame struck. It’s certainly sad to hear him detail Graham Chapman battles with alcohol, and his relating John Cleese and Eric Idle’s struggles - and successes - all of which add to the dynamics of the group. His everyman take on life is apparent in the contracts to the more famous members of the group spending time abroad for tax reasons, or living up the celebrity life-style, whilst Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam seem content with life in London and productive work. It comes across as heart warming stuff.
There are remarkable insights too into the journey the group went on as they brought Life of Brian into being, how the religious focus began to whip up into the national controversy, and the groups struggle to find funding after EMI walked away late in the pre-production. The problems Palin and colleagues had with the BBC, a seemingly frustratingly bureaucratic organisation that didn’t realise what it had on its hands with Python, or even Palin’s own ‘Ripping Yarns’.
I started with a fondness for Palin, and left with that very much intact, indeed a great curiosity to dig out some of the other programmes he was involved in that I was unfamiliar with (Ripping Yarns in particular). So, I’m positively enthused at the prospect of subsequent installments to better understand this man and his life, and minded to dig out some of his travel books. I’d certainly suggest this book would be of interest to anybody who shares an interest in Python, or the man himself, and wants to understand more about the dynamic for this most ground-breaking of comedy groups.
