Back in time:
Michael Palin (right) retraces his routes around the world from his armchair in Travels Of A Lifetime. Jim Maloney reports.
Michael Palin retraces his memorable journeys.
Thirty two years ago he set off in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg to travel around the world in 80 days.
In the spirit of Jules Verne’s 19th-century novel, it would be across land and sea without planes. This was the start of Monty Python star Michael Palin’s reinvention as one of TV’s most-loved travellers.
In the four-part series Travels Of A Lifetime, he looks back on the programmes and his diaries to reveal how the series was made and the impact it had.
Fans and friends, including Sir David Attenborough and Joanna Lumley, reflect on his achievements.
Flicking back to 1989 we see him then, at the start, boarding the opulent Orient Express in London to take him to glamorous Venice.
“When I was growing up I dreamed of travel and adventure,” Palin says. “Then one day that dream came true. For three decades I’ve been lucky enough to travel the world, making documentaries and sharing my adventures with millions of viewers.
“All through my travels I kept a diary. I always thought it was really important to keep a record. I mean, every day is precious. You are seeing things that you’ll probably never see again in your life.”
After his time with Monty Python came to an end he was looking for what to do next when he had a call from the BBC asking him if he would be interested in doing a modern-day Phileas Fogg.
“The idea was beautifully simple. It was a race against the clock. We were toying with a new way of doing documentaries where I would be filmed all the time with hardly a moment of privacy.
“But the enormity of the task had me worried and it was tied in with how I was going to present myself. Could I be funny for 80 days? Everyone agreed it had to be Palin being
spontaneous so nobody was going to step in and say you shouldn’t say this or say that because that would be against the spirit of it.
“But it was a full-on experience for me. I was carrying the show and I kept telling myself that failure wasn’t an option.”
It was after he had left Venice for Egypt that he really felt his adventure begin in earnest.
“Arriving in Alexandria was a big moment because it was my first real moment of ‘foreign-ness’. Up to that point I was in a European perspective and suddenly I’m in an African perspective where everything felt very different – the heat, the smells the sound. I was excited and I thought that was where the fun began.”
Viewers warmed to his sense of helplessness at the bustling railway station where he tried to buy a ticket to Cairo.
“There were no English signs at the train station. I just had to go there and ask for a ticket to Cairo.
“I felt completely incompetent but it was that incompetence that people seemed to enjoy. It’s like they were thinking, ‘Well, we would have been in the same sort of situation if we’d had to buy a ticket at Alexandria’.”
Finally, checking into a hotel in Cairo, he was looking forward to a relaxing bath only to find there was no hot water!
In Saudi Arabia, he fell behind in his schedule but had a memorable journey on an open-topped boat, called a dhow, across the Arabian Sea to India. His talent emerged for engaging with people from different backgrounds – a presenting style that became his signature.
“I felt a great curiosity about the people I was with. I wanted to get things on a personal level.
“China and Saudi Arabia were the only two countries on the journey where we had that extra element of fear of offending some authority.”
Following the success of Around The World In 80 Days, the second episode follows his ambitious journey from north to south in Pole To Pole – an incredibly challenging route across the USSR, Africa and, finally, Antarctica.
The third episode has him on a 92,000-km route around the Pacific Rim in Full Circle, taking in Russia, China, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand and North and South America. And finally, he sets off to explore the Sahara Desert. “After that first series I never thought it would open other doors for me to do further travel shows, but that’s what happened, and I was delighted.
“I learnt that my desire to travel from an early age wasn’t something false. It wasn’t something I had romanticised. It was very real.”