It is difficult to know quite where Michael Palin stands in British film comedy. His solo vehicles
have often presented him as the common man largely beset by some form of adversity or temptation.
'I always wanted to be an explorer, but - it seemed I was doomed to be nothing more than a very silly person.'
~ Michael Palin
Or as someone you visualise always in a pullover...more
'I am not a great cook, I am not a great artist, but I love art, and I love food, so I am the perfect traveller’
~ Michael Palin
Biography
His Life
- Name: Michael Palin
- Birth name: Michael Edward Palin
- Born: 5 May 1943
- Birth place: Ranmoor, Sheffield, Yorkshire, England
- Height: 5' 10" (1.78 m)
- Spouse:
Helen Gibbins (16 April 1966 - present) 3 children
- Lives: North London
- Famous For: Monty Pyton, acting, comedy, presenting TV serials, writing - all-round renaissance man
A gentle, quick-witted man, he often seems to be
attempting to stretch himself as an all-round writer, entertainer
and guide through travels -
whether the past, or the present of the
hugely successful TV serials in which
he goes around the world for the BBC. Even
the Dalai Lama has seen them and is a fan!
They are popular because Palin seems to
be one of us going off to all the places we
dream of going but never have the bottle, time or energy to do. But, of
course, he is not one of us as with the success of the travel shows and subsequent books have
brought him millions of pounds most of us can only dream of. Still the illusion that he is one of us is there and the strength of that
illusion is Palin's strongpoint and the key to his success.
But it is comedy, and his zany reputation from
the Monty Python days that have pursued him like hawks. One always
suspects that he will suddenly crook an everyday event into something quite absurb.
He was born in Yorkshire, studied history at Oxford and made his London West End stage debut in 1964. In the mid 1960s he broke into comedy writing for television, in such programmes as
The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine and The Frost Report. Do Not Adjust Your Set, which ran for two season, united him with many of the comic talents that were to make up
Monty Python's Flying Circus , which began its run in 1969.
Involved in many of the Pythons' funniest sketches, Palin was the man who sold John Cleese a dead parrot in perhaps
the best-remembered of them all. It was transferred to the big screen in the Pythons' film debut,
And Now for Something Completely Different. Palin's speciality in its sketches was the simple-minded sould
who confuses others with his lunatic innocence, varied with the occasional
upper-class twit.
MONTY PYTON (Palin central top)
While playing central characters in the Python films that followed, Palin was also working
on his own TV series - Ripping Yarns, which proved in many ways
more inventive and certainly more satirical than the original Python
shows. More Ripping Yarns followed.
Palin took solo spotlight for the first time in The Missionary, although he had a string supporting cast in this spasmodically
funny comedy about a cleric who opens a home for fallen women and becomes a fallen missionary.
Palin's comic thunder was largely stolen by Denholm Elliott and Michael Hordern in doddering cameos.
After several more Python films and videos, Palin was back in his pullover guise in A Private Function, very droll as a chiropodist who, in
the days of wartime rationing, keeps a pig in the parlour.
I know that we shall meet problems along the way, but I'd far rather see for myself what's going on in the world outside, than rely on newspapers, television, politicians and religious leaders to tell me what I should be thinking
~Michael Palin
Palin's quirkily inventive mind continued to seek diversification. He and
long-time collaborator Terry Jones, also an ex-Python, wrote a play, Secrets, which was turned into a film,
Consuming Passions, which was not well received.
Palin's profile was high after the international success of A Fish Called Wanda late in 1988, in which he and John Cleese
had the brainwave of combining typically cruelly funny Pythonesque humour with Hollywood stars (Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline) in an Ealing Studio-type
comedy about four unlikely bank robbers - The Lavender Hill Mob in new dressing. The frenetic
comedy provided more of a character role for Palin, who played a stammering animal rights supporter whose stutter proves disruptive at vital times, but who is (a bit)
wilier than he looks. The four stars tried the formula again for Fierce Creatures (1997) which was truly awful and is best rememered for John Cleese desperately promoting the film to
any one who listen.
In the late 80s, Palin embarked for his brilliant and unforgettable 80-day trip around the
world, which revealed more of the traveller and explorer in him.
He also essayed a more serious film role (albeit with satirical undertones)
in American Friends, a story of travel, romance and chicanery among Oxford dons
(of whom Palin's script provided some wicked studies) based on a fragment from the diary of Palin's own great-grandfather.
Asked what his hobbies were, this man of many parts once listed weaving, viniculture, tennis,
ballooning, acupuncture, vibraphone construction, brass-rubbing, meteorology and fish!
Around the World in 80 Days | Pole to Pole | Full Circle
Monty Python and the Holy Grail | Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
Do Not Adjust Your Set | Monty Python - The Monster Box Set
Monty Python's Flying Circus - The Complete First Series | Second Series | Third Series | Fourth Series
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Filmography
M I C H A E L P A L I N
1971: And Now for Something Completely Different
1975: Monty Python and the Holy Grail
1976: Pleasure at Her Majesty's (US: Monty Pyton Meets Beyond the Fringe
1977: Jabberwocky
1979: Monty Python's Life of Brian. The Secret Policeman's Ball
1981: The Secret Policeman's Other Ball. Time Bandits. The Missionary
1982: Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl
1983: Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
1984: A Private Function. The Secret Policeman's Private Parts. Brazil
1985: The Dress
1986: East of Ipswich (TV)
1988: A Fish Called Wanda
1991: American Friends. G.B.H. (mini) (TV Series)
1992: Tracey Ullman: A Class Act (TV Series)
1994: Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time
1995: The Wind in the Willows (TV) (voice)
1996: The Willows in Winter (TV) (voice). Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail (Video Game)
1997: Fierce Creatures. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (Video Game)
2003: Education Tips No. 41: Choosing a Really Expensive School (voice)
2007: Robbie the Reindeer in Close Encounters of the Herd Kind (TV short)
Gariiiiiii (voice)
2007: Not the Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy)
Mrs. Betty Palin / Julius Caesar / Bevis
Around the World in 80 Days 3 Dvd Set |
Around the World in 80 Days / Around the World in 20 Years 4 Dvd Set
Pole to Pole 3 Dvd Set | Full Circle 3 Dvd Set | Great Railway Journeys UK Dvd
Sahara UK 2 Dvd Set | Himalaya UK 3 Dvd Set | New Europe UK 3 Dvd Set | Hemingway Adventure UK Dvd
Travels with Palin 20 Dvd Set
Monty Python and the Holy Grail | Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
Do Not Adjust Your Set | Monty Python - The Monster Box Set
Monty Python's Flying Circus - The Complete First Series | Second Series | Third Series | Fourth Series
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Dvds
M I C H A E L P A L I N
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Memorabilia
M O N T Y P Y T H O N
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Michael Palin Links Biog. Around the World in 80 Days Pole to Pole Full Circle Dvds Search Site
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