No 125: Michael Palin came to my birthday celebration

Last night my wife and I, along with my mother and ex-Monty Python and seasoned traveller Michael Palin had a little get-together to celebrate my up-coming birthday. It was a truly fine evening and a great way to celebrate the passing of another year. There was also about 150 other people who, due to a confusion over the invites, may have been under the mistaken impression that they were attending a Guardian-organised ‘Evening with Michael Palin’ rather than a Clark-organized birthday party, but I let this pass.

Michael was in excellent form. Entertaining and jovial, telling a series of engaging anecdotes and stories. In a slightly quirky twist he didn’t bring me a present but instead appeared keen to talk about his recently published Diaries. Again I let this pass.

During the evening we heard how the BBC didn’t engage on Monty Python until the final third series was well underway. For the first two series it had been buried in a late night slot and so busy were the BBC comedy controllers with the likes of Dads Army and Morecombe and Wise that they didn’t interfere, or indeed watch, Python until it had become honed. Comedy might have been very different had they not left it to gradually develop.

He shared that his favourite sketch is the (now iconic) fish-slapping dance. This led to a slightly off-beat, yet strangely revealing, discussion about how fish are funny (think Haddock or Halibut) but pumas are not. We even heard how Michael was not the first choice for his ground-breaking and style-setting travelogue series ‘Around the World in 80 Days’. Rather frighteningly Noel Edmonds was an earlier and preferred option. Travel documentaries could have been very different.

Mr Palin is a truly fascinating character. Generous and engaging, honest and clearly values-led. Spending an evening with him, albeit with 150 strangers, was a great way to mark the passing of another year. He is one of my heroes (I have many). I just have to keep reminding myself that, wonderful though he is, he is not the Messiah. He can be a very naughty boy.