Auckland next stop for TV globetrotter

Michael Palin began his career with a flying circus and continued it with ripping yarns, so it's not surprising that he made a successful mid-life career change by becoming an amiable globetrotter for television.

A founder member of the anarchic Monty Python's Flying Circus troupe in the 1960s, writer and star of TV comedies such as Ripping Yarns and movies including A Fish Called Wanda, Palin will be guest speaker at a Herald-Dymocks Literary Lunch at the Lower NZI Convention Centre, Aotea Centre, on Monday, February 3. A coupon to buy tickets to the lunch appears in today's print edition of the New Zealand Herald.

Palin's career began at Oxford University, where he wrote and performed revues with Terry Jones. In 1969, Palin, Jones and friends, including John Cleese, created Monty Python. The show ran for 45 episodes from 1969 to 1974, spawning five films and numerous stage shows, books, records and videos.

In 1976, the BBC began airing Ripping Yarns. Conceived, written, and performed with Jones, the tales were based on English schoolboy stories of the early 1900s.

For the next few years Palin appeared mostly in films. He returned to television in 1989 for Around the World in 80 Days, a documentary of his attempt to recreate Jules Verne's fictional journey, retracing Phileas Fogg's route using only transport available in the late 19th century.

In Pole to Pole, Palin and a crew travelled from the North Pole to the South Pole, through Finland, Russia and Africa, while Full Circle traced the Pacific, including a New Zealand tour.

Sahara, soon to screen on TV One, evoked his childhood images - palm trees, camels, turbaned travellers reclining while urn-carrying maidens in flimsy veils poured sparkling water.

"It looked fun," says Palin, "but I also knew that most Western explorers who tried to cross it never came back. The combination of seduction and severity appealed to me."

However, the funnyman is not completely forgotten. Palin last week received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the British Comedy Awards.