Michael Palin

Video: Michael Palin on Brazil and carnivals

Michael Palin says he is looking forward to seeing carnival season in Brazil as part of his new series on the country.

Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show to Martha Kearney the former Monty Python star spoke about Brazil's increasing role in the world.

Michael Palin meets stammerers as part of documentary

Film stammerer Michael Palin has met six youngsters being treated for the condition as part of a new BBC1 show.

I met Ronnie Corbett once. It was during my time as a gossip columnist on this paper. I spotted him at a party and, somewhat starstruck, decided to approach and introduce myself. He was all right, I suppose, though not terribly polite. He didn't, he sniffed, read The Independent. More of a Telegraph man (must be the jokes). Anyway, he's 80 now, and BBC2 has devoted a few hours of scheduling to the occasion. First up was a rerun of The Two Ronnies Christmas Special from 1984, and then Being Ronnie Corbett, a fawning programme of dedications. We got Matt Lucas and David Walliams, Catherine Tate and Michael Palin, Miranda Hart, Rob Brydon, Stephen Merchant, and Bill Bailey. Even Bruce Forsyth put in an appearance. They all heaped praise on him, and deservedly so. After all, it wasn't them he was rude to at a party, was it? And he's jolly funny, or used to be, back in the day. Repeated clips of The Frost Report and The Two Ronnies were testimony to that. His more recent stuff, less so. That Extras sketch is great, of course - "a bit of whiz, you know? To blow away the cobwebs" - but, really, Ronnie, Little Britain? "I was just grateful to be included," was his explanation. And, to be honest, I believe him. This is a man whose raison d'être has been making people laugh; of course, he wants to keep up with the times. Why else would he agree to cuddle a half-naked Lucas in the least funny show on television?

He's the man they turned to when Brucey was too ill to present Strictly. He was caught taking drugs in Extras and entertained Bubbles DeVere in Little Britain. This year, to mark his 80th birthday, he'll have his own Christmas Day sketch show. Yes, it can only be unlikely national treasure Ronnie Corbett, the short comedian with the long career, charted here with loving input from his hordes of admirers including Miranda Hart, Rob Brydon, Stephen Merchant, Matt Lucas and Michael Palin.

Michael Palin: I'm very proud of fish-slapping dance

Michael Palin, 67, is best known for being part of the Monty Python comedy team and for travel documentaries.

Nobody does manic, despairing farce quite like John Cleese, who co-wrote and co-stars in this, his biggest film hit. He plays Archie Leach, a stuffy lawyer who is seduced by the minxy Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) - not realising that she's a bank robber and con artist who's using him for her own wicked ends. Michael Palin co-stars.

Pandora: Palin stays silent on Merton controversy

For a silent film festival, the Bristol Silents is certainly generating a lot of noise. The annual affair, which celebrates the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy, has become the subject of an uncomfortable row within the comedy community.

Five Minutes With: Michael Palin

This week, comedian and broadcaster Michael Palin talks to Matt about his career with Monty Python, his take on modern comedy, favourite countries that he's visited for his travel documentaries and squeezes in a couple of classic Python moments.

And now for something completely familiar...

The Independent talks to the predictably anarchic Pythons in Manhattan.

Forty years ago this week, Nixon was withdrawing troops from Vietnam, Je T'Aime topped the charts and Concorde broke the sound barrier. And then for something completely different: the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus aired on BBC One. We never looked at comedy - let alone Spam, parrots or lumberjacks - in the same way again. This new film celebrates the anarchic troupe's Ruby Jubilee and marks the first time the surviving Pythons have come together for a project since 1983's The Meaning of Life. It's archly subtitled The Lawyer's Cut and those Beeb briefs have been busy because it's slimmed down from a six-hour series screened in the US (as Terry Jones says, "a record so complete and faithful to the truth that I don't need to watch it") to just 60 minutes. Directed by Alan Parker, it features new interviews with Jones, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Eric Idle, as well as archive chat from the late Graham Chapman. All tell the story of how they met at Oxbridge and The Frost Report, created trailblazing television, made the transition into films and ultimately became a British institution. Which, like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expected.