Michael Palin

Michael Palin to host Today Programme with John Cleese

The two Monty Python members will discuss The Life of Brian during the guest editing of The Today Programme between Christmas and New Year.

Interview: Michael Palin

Recently, Tellyspotting had the great good fortune to sit down with Michael Palin at the BBC Syndication Showcase meeting in New Orleans. Michael was in town to talk about his newest project that would be coming to PBS in 2014, Brazil with Michael Palin.

Although the Pythons were originally inspired by a title (Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory) to make an irreverent biblical comedy, Life of Brian is not about the son of God. It's about the guy in the next-door manger, born on the same night: Brian Cohen. It was an easy mistake to make; even the three wise men were momentarily fooled. Predictably, the film caused wide­spread outrage; accusations of blasphemy prevented it from being screened in many countries, while the marketing campaign cheerfully capitalised on the protest, proclaiming the film "so funny it was banned in Norway".

In spite of his obvious lack of divinity, and the fact that he's more interested in women and anti-imperialist politics than religion, Brian (Graham Chapman) is plagued by followers convinced that he's the saviour. The real Jesus is glimpsed at one point delivering his Sermon on the Mount, but Brian is so far back in the crowd that the people around him are wondering what Jesus meant by "blessed are the cheesemakers". Brian fixates on a rebellious young woman called Judith and gets tangled up with the People's Front of Judea (not to be confused with the Judean People's Front). A series of misadventures and misunderstandings lead him to Calvary, where the whole Messiah mix-up reaches its painful, and tuneful, climax.

The film was shot in Monastir, Tunisia, for $4m, with financing from George Harrison's HandMade Films, and each of the Pythons plays at least three roles. Michael Palin played 12, including a Boring Prophet and an ungrateful ex-leper who complains that, by curing him, Jesus has taken away his source of income.

These days, Life of Brian exists less as a film than as a series of endlessly quoted gags floating around in the popular imagination. People who have never even seen it can still chuckle heartily at "What have the Romans ever done for us?", or whistle Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. It's not like the Pythons took the narrative terribly seriously either: at one point, Brian is plucked out of a tight situation by a visiting alien spaceship. This is not necessarily a shortcoming, more a classic Python method of sending up something rather silly that has been taken far too seriously for its own good.

Michael Palin says he will never stop travelling

The former Monty Python star, 70, said globetrotting keeps him "up to the mark mentally and physically".

Our host sounds understandably delighted as she introduces a gem of a guest: Michael Palin. The great man is mildly thrown by Millican's technique of lobbing risqué one-liners at her interviewees ("Do you think travelling men make better lovers because they're good at finding stuff?") but there are treats for Monty Python fans: Palin sings the Lumberjack Song in German and brandishes a dead parrot at one point - for a moment it's as if the ark of the comedy covenant has been opened a chink. Elsewhere there are good riffs on deleting programmes from your set-top box and In The Night Garden, plus a typically cheeky query to antiques expert Tim Wonnacott: "How often do you polish your tallboy?"

How we made Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

Michael Palin and Terry Jones recall the hilarity on the set of their 1983 classic - and reveal what Mr Creosote's vomit was made of.

In David Frost: Hello, Good Evening and Farewell, a tribute to the late presenter and interviewer, we learned that there was far more to the man than a memorable greeting. He was, said Michael Grade, the first real television creation. By which he meant that Frost didn't start in another medium and migrate to television. He went pretty much straight from Cambridge University to television fame. There was no gap year.

He instinctively grasped what made watchable television. He interviewed everyone in the days when everyone could be interviewed: Muhammad Ali, Enoch Powell, Idi Amin, the Beatles and, of course, Richard Nixon. It's hard to believe that anyone else could have landed the exclusive Nixon interview and also fronted Through the Keyhole. It's hard enough to believe that Frost did it. Alas, he never managed to fuse these two achievements into a Through the Keyhole on Nixon - Loyd Grossman: "There's an orful lort of yellow damarsk. A sheik, perhaps, or a master criminawl."

For a time there were rumours that Frost wasn't well liked by some of his contemporaries. Peter Cook once called him the "bubonic plagiarist" for muscling in on his satirical territory. But everyone here was emphatic that Frost was one of nature's nice blokes. Michael Palin, the nicest man in the world, even said he was very nice. And what of the tribute itself, which was presented by Jonathan Ross? In a word, nice.

Ian Hislop, Michael Palin and the 'Wipers Times'

Ahead of a TV comedy series about the satirical Wipers Times, we pay tribute to the bravery of its irreverent editors.

Michael Palin to star in new TV drama by Ian Hislop

Monty Python actor to star in BBC Two show charting how first world war soldiers published a newspaper from Ypres battlefield.