The Mail on Sunday 3/3/2002
Byline: ALICE FOWLER
Thirty years ago, Michael Palin first met George Harrison. By then, both men had earned the labels that would stay with them for the rest of their lives: Harrison forever the ex-Beatle, Palin "the one from Monty Python." With a similar sense of humour, the two became close friends, a bond that lasted until Harrison's death last year.
"It's very difficult to get used to the fact that George isn't here," says Palin. "He was a very appreciative man, a great enthusiast. There wasn't anything grand about him; to me, he was a friend who happened to live in a huge house in Surrey.
"I got to know him well after 1978, when he virtually saved the Monty Python film Life of Brian by funding it when EMI pulled out. From 1980, he helped to make a lot of films that I was in and became a good friend. He was always very stimulating: a funny, witty man."
In the months leading up to Harrison's death from cancer last November, Palin saw him often. "George was extremely down-to-earth about illness and death. When he got ill, he'd tell you about it. Death held no fears for him; to him, the body was a temporary vehicle for the mind. I never really believed that, though George nearly convinced me. Up until a couple of weeks before his death there was a chance he would recover." Harrison's life - like that of Palin's fellow Python Graham Chapman, who died in 1989 - seemed to have been cut short. "I had the same response when both of them died," says Palin, with profound regret.
"A relationship I thought would be permanent suddenly wasn't there. It felt as if a part of me closed down. It was like a branch being cut from a tree."
They are sad, thoughtful sentiments from a man who, both as a comedian and a traveller, has never shrunk from revealing his own vulnerability. In his series of epic voyages for the BBC - Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle - Palin has displayed affable good humour in the direst of circumstances, be it sailing across the Persian Gulf without a toilet, or supping a Peruvian brew made from old women's spittle. With his popular programmes, Palin has become that rarest of things: a man we love to love.
Today, he is publicising the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which is about to be released on DVD. When it first came out, he says, he felt acute anxiety; now his reaction is more relaxed - "The further I get away from my films, the more charitable I feel about them." And he has, after all, plenty to feel pleased about. At 58, he displays the wholesome geniality of a life well led. He is also, it must be said, rather handsome: lean and lithe with the remains of a desert tan, acquired on a recent trip to the Sahara.
This latest journey - for a new book and television series - took most of last year and part of this, and sounds every bit as gruelling as his fans have come to expect. "You end up living like a nomad: getting up very early, resting in the middle of the day and partying at night. I didn't really get any sleep for three months. You have to push yourself a bit. In the end it was remarkable."
Helen, his wife of 35 years, has learned to accept his hunger for travel. "It's not easy for her when I'm away a lot," he concedes. "But she knows I enjoy it and she has her own life and her own friends.
That's terribly important in a long-term relationship." Perhaps, though he does not say so, Helen is simply too wise to try to stop him.
Palin's wanderlust, like his humour, dates back to childhood and a repressive upbringing. He was born and raised in Sheffield, where his father, Edward, managed a steelworks. Edward had a pronounced stammer and comes across as a thwarted figure.
"My father was hampered by his inability to speak fluently. It must have made him angry: with himself and with a world that depended on fluency. If you wanted to get on, you had to be able to give speeches, talk at meetings. He was held back." Though Palin is quick to emphasise that both his parents had a good sense of humour, life in their household sounds surprisingly grim.
"Everything seemed to be very scarce," Palin remembers. "Everything was reused. Money was very tight. Lights were always switched off in the house and it was usually quite cold." Palin speaks warmly of his father and mother but it's clear family relations were not always easy. "I got on with my father pretty well," he says carefully. "But he had certain moods. He was quite a strong disciplinarian about certain things which seem trivial now: like being home in time for meals. Right into my teens, if I didn't get back for a meal there would be a very bad atmosphere for a while. But he was quite proud of what I achieved in my education. I got a place at Shrewsbury School and did well there."
At school, Palin - a natural mimic - quickly found he could make people laugh. In 1953, when he was ten, he staged a regular, irreverent ten-minute show, based on the Coronation. He also spent long hours dreaming of journeys to far-flung places. "I loved anywhere that was different from where I was growing up. Names such as the Antarctic, the Amazon, the Gobi Desert excited me." After Shrewsbury he won a place at Brasenose College, Oxford, to read English. He had already acted in school plays but at Oxford discovered a flair for creating comedy. He formed a cabaret act with a friend called Robert Hewison and also became friends with a student in the year above, named Terry Jones.
After Oxford, Jones became a script adviser at the BBC and Palin worked with him, producing material for Ken Dodd and Billy Cotton, as well as acting in shows of their own.
Monty Python's Flying Circus, with Jones, Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam, as well as Palin, followed in 1969 and quickly became a hit. Palin's bemused parents grew used to seeing their son on television.
"The first thing I did that they were interested in was the Thames Television children's comedy series Do Not Adjust Your Set, in 1967. They were quite impressed by that. And then Monty Python's Flying Circus came along.
"By that time my father was quite ill. He had Parkinson's disease. I don't think he ever understood Python. My mother became quite proud of it eventually. I'd go to see her and she'd take me into shops and say, 'This is my son, he's in Monty Python - on television'." By this time, Palin had already met another supportive woman, Helen Gibbins, who would become his wife. If he seems sanguine and down-to-earth it is surely due to Helen, who met him before he became famous and has stood by him ever since. They met when he was 15, she 16, on holiday in Southwold in Suffolk.
"We were quartered in a rather eccentric guest house and Helen was one of a group of girls who had a cottage nearby," he remembers. "They went swimming every morning and I'd sit at breakfast and watch them go out. I loved their energy. I'd think, 'They seem to be girls that I'd like!'" he cries, thumping the table for emphasis. Later, on the beach, his friend suggested letting their beach ball hit the girls as they played in the sea. "They brought the ball back because they all wanted to talk to us, which I could never understand. We got chatting and Helen and I got on very well. I made her laugh, which cemented our relationship," he says, looking distinctly proud.
Through his years at Shrewsbury they wrote regularly, then drifted apart.
At Oxford they met again when, by coincidence, Hewison had a girlfriend who was studying at the same teacher training college as Helen. They realised the relationship was "meant to be" and married in 1966, soon after he graduated.
And the humour that united them has lasted. "It's possibly the most important thing in our relationship: the ability not to take each other too seriously. We don't disrespect one another, exactly; more gently send up one another. Helen has always been very grounded and given me good advice.
"Because she knew me before I became famous, her criticism is always the best." They have three children - Tom, William and Rachel, now in their twenties and thirties - and still live in Gospel Oak, north London, where they have expanded their home, absorbing the houses next door.
Early on Helen gave up teaching to look after the children, while Palin threw himself into an increasingly successful career.
Yet if Helen has made sure she has given her husband the space he needs, it has not always made for a straightforward life. Five years ago, when Palin was in Borneo filming Full Circle, he received a message to ring home. Helen had been diagnosed with a brain tumour and was about to have an urgent operation. "We agreed, in a very long phone call, that there was no point to me rushing back for the operation. She was very strong throughout. I understood that she had the resources to deal with it," says Palin, uncharacteristically formal.
They agreed he would come home when Helen came out of hospital. "Then, when I returned, I developed this terrible cold. For four days I became this person who went snivelling around the house, while Helen was recovering from a brain tumour. In the end it was almost a case of her looking after me!" he cries, marvelling at her fortitude.
For Palin, the future looks as gilded as ever. His Saharan adventure - with a book and BBC series to come this autumn - looks set to be a winner.
His only sadness seems to be that friends, such as Harrison, die too early.
What effect, I ask Palin, do such losses have? "It makes me feel that you have to approach every day positively," he replies. "I don't like to waste a day, to waste any time at all. You have to keep learning about the world."
COPYRIGHT 2002 Solo Syndication Limited
