Michael Palin: My fear for future of the BBC
MONTY Python legend and TV travel presenter Sir Michael Palin says he is worried about the future of the BBC.
He insisted that viewers were being tricked by claims other platforms were cheaper.
Sir Michael said: “People are being completely conned. We are told we have lots of different channels and lots of different options but all those options cost a bit more money.
“I have got Sky and Amazon Prime and one or two others and that is £6 or £7 a month and that adds up to more than the BBC for the year.
“I don’t use them all the time. It is this wretched idea that freedom means having much more of everything and I don’t think that is the way it is at all, freedom.”
With streaming services such as Netflix booming, the BBC has found itself under fire with questions over its impartiality and its decision to charge over-75s for the licence fee. He said: “I
am worried about the BBC because I believe the BBC to be one of the most important institutions in the country.”
On his travels round the world Sir Michael found it was admired almost wherever he went.
He added: “But I can see times are changing now.”
Asked by host Jeremy Paxman if the BBC was its own “worst enemy” on his podcast The Lock In, Sir Michael replied: “I think, yeah. It is changing. It has always changed.
“People nowadays say, ‘It is very difficult to get a programme done because of this, that and the other’ but it was difficult when we did Monty
Python. Nobody really wanted to do it. It was just at the time the BBC was very, very powerful.
“We only had one ITV channel as its competitor and it could afford to take a risk on six young men who they could not understand at all.
“So they put it on late at night to see what happened. I don’t think the BBC can do that so much anymore now. The BBC has to spend a lot of time justifying itself and explaining itself and saying why it should be this and that.
“Also it is so terribly anxious to please everybody and not offend anybody. I don’t think that is very good.”
He also told how his heart scare hasn’t stopped him wanting to go travelling once lockdown is over – at the age of 77.
He said: “I have another trip in me. Mentally I have. I want to go travelling again. I want to go back to some of the places I have been to.
“Some countries I have only been for half a day but it is not enough in any of them.”