Michael Palin

The former Python has every right to slow down, yet he still ventures where much younger men would fear to tread.

But you wouldn’t get the warmth, the self-mockery, the granddad jokes, or the conversation with a donkey, which was no more talkative than that parrot he once sold to John Cleese. The theoretical spine of this new journey is the Tigris. Any journey with Palin is also to some extent a portrait of the man. “I’m sure it’s picturesque,” Palin said, suppressing evident distress in order to get the shot, “but it’s getting a bit warm.” Yet he keeps spurning the temptation to wrap himself in cotton wool. Well, he can another one to the list, because Michael Palin: Into Iraq (Channel 5) is a worthy addition to his long travelography.

The masterly anthology series that Palin created with fellow Python Terry Jones is 45 this week – and now on BritBox. So how did it come about?

"I think what they meant when they said it was too expensive was that there was a great sense of place in all these, and we shot on film. With hindsight, Life of Brian had been very well received and was much admired and the Yarns are much loved, but at the time it was striking out in a different direction. With comedy fans treated to both Ripping Yarns and The Life of Brian, it was a very fulfilling time for Palin, professionally. I was about to be crucified later in the day and I was walking along the beach early and I suddenly hit on this idea of the ultimate football supporter whose team always loses. We only did nine in the end, mainly because the BBC said that they couldn’t afford to do any more because they were rather expensive, but I think that was a sort of code for saying that they weren’t getting quite the ratings! Nowadays with CGI and all that you’d probably get something that looks very impressive but didn’t have the feel of some of these great moments of effects, which worked very well and were quite hairy to do." "I was delighted to get Denholm Elliot to play the seedy consul in Across the Andes and there were some great performers in Roger of the Raj, getting Joan Sanderson and Richard Vernon at either end of the table as a Lord and Lady discussing the toast. In the days before green screen, some of the action and stunts had to be performed for real. "This was a characteristic of Python: I think some of the best performances were by people who’d written the material as well. We got a very good actor but very good actors don’t always trust the script and they try to make it funny their way – actually very often the real humour is by underplaying it completely. It’s actually very hard to write a boring character, without them just being, well you know, boring – but poor Eric was both funny and sort of lovable." "I always look back fondly on working with Terry because he was such a good companion and such a genial presence.