Globetrotting Python plans Hexagon visit

AGLOBE TROTTING comedian is preparing to come to Reading so he can spill the beans about his latest epic adventure.

Monty Python legend Michael Palin has travelled everywhere including North Korea and now Iraq for a new Channel 5 series, which will be screened this autumn.

To accompany the TV show, he will bring his trip to life with a theatre tour that will be coming to The Hexagon on Monday,

October 10.

Tickets have just gone sale, and if his previous visit to Reading is anything to go by, they will sell quickly.

Palin has been a constant traveller since his 1989 show Around The World in 80 Days, replicating the voyage of Phileas Fogg. Since then, he’s tackled all manner of epic adventures across the globe.

From North Korea Into Iraq is the very latest, and will see him deliver first-hand accounts of journeys from two countries that were named by former US President George Bush as being the axis of evil.

Filming in North Korea is tightly controlled, but using photos and film taken at the time, he will share stories of a ‘tightly-controlled time bomb’, and also look at how Iraq is faring after 30 years of war and bloodshed.

These two countries are often portrayed as international pariahs, and two of the last places you’d want to visit, but Michael says the best part of travelling is looking behind the headlines and getting to know what life is really like for the people who live there.

“We shouldn’t forget that we share a common humanity with the people of North Korea and Iraq,” he says.

“In both these tough and difficult countries we found, as you will see, humour and hope, ambition, expectation, warmth, hospitality and extraordinary resilience.

“These journeys were for me a total eye-opener.

“From North Korea Into Iraq may take you out of your comfort zone but I hope, like me, that once we’ve travelled together, your feelings about these two countries, and the wider world we share, will never be quite the same again.”

Michael Palin: Into Iraq will be shown on Channel 5, and will be accompanied by a companion book, Into Iraq, published by Hutchinson Heinemann on Thursday, September 15. Tickets for his visit to The Hexagon cost £34.50, and can be reserved by logging on to whatsonwokingham.com, or call the box office on 0118 960 6060.