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Michael Edward Palin, CBE (born 5 May 1943) is an English comedian, actor,
writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the
comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries.
Palin won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role
 Early life and
career
Palin was born in Broomhill, Sheffield, South Yorkshire. His father was an engineer
working for a steel firm. He started his education at Birkdale preparatory school,
Sheffield, and later Shrewsbury School, Shrewsbury. When he was five years old at
Birkdale, Palin had his first acting experience playing Martha Cratchit in a school
performance of A Christmas Carol. At the age of ten Palin, still interested in
acting, made a comedy monologue and read a Shakespeare play to his mother while
playing all the parts. After his school days in 1962 he went on to read modern
history at Brasenose College, Oxford. With fellow student Robert Hewison he
performed and wrote, for the first time, comedy material at a university Christmas
party. Terry Jones, also a student in Oxford, saw that performance and began
writing together with Hewison and Palin. In the same year Palin joined the
Brightside and Carbrook Co-Operative Society Players and first gained fame when he
won an acting award at a Co-Op drama festival. He also performed in the Oxford
Revue with Jones.
In 1966 he married Helen Gibbins, whom he first met in 1959 on holiday in Southwold
in Suffolk the county he returned to in recent years to live.
This meeting was later fictionalised in Palin's play East of Ipswich. He has three
children with Gibbins. While still a baby, his son William briefly appeared in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail as Sir Not-appearing-in-this-film.
After finishing university in 1965 Palin became a presenter on a comedy pop show
called Now! for the television contractor Television Wales and the West. At the
same time Palin was contacted by Jones who had left university a year earlier, and
was writing a theatrical documentary about sex through the ages. He asked Palin to
help him write it. Although this project was eventually abandoned it brought Palin
and Jones together as a writing duo. Together with Jones, Palin wrote comedy for
various BBC programmes, like The Ken Dodd Show, The Billy Cotton Bandshow and The
Illustrated Weekly Hudd. They were also in the team of writers working for The
Frost Report. Other members of this team were Frank Muir, Barry Cryer, Marty
Feldman, Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett, Dick Vosburgh and future Monty Python
members Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Eric Idle. Although the members of Monty
Python had already encountered each other over the years, The Frost Report was the
first time all the British members of Monty Python (Terry Gilliam is an American)
worked together. During the run of The Frost Report the Palin/Jones team
contributed material to two shows starring John Bird: The Late Show and A series of
Bird's. For A series of Bird's the Palin/Jones team had their first experience of
writing narrative instead of the short sketches they used to write.
Following The Frost Report the Palin/Jones team worked as actors and writers on the
show Twice a fortnight with Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Jonathan Lynn, and the
successful children's comedy show Do Not Adjust Your Set with Idle and David Jason.
The animations on Do Not Adjust Your Set were made by Terry Gilliam who joined the
cast on Cleese's recommendation and was the first time the Palin/Jones team worked
with him. Without Jones, Palin was asked by Cleese, who was eager to work again
with Palin, to perform in How to Irritate People together with Chapman and Tim
Brooke-Taylor. The Palin/Jones team worked together again in The Complete and Utter
History of Britain.
During this time, Cleese contacted Palin about doing a show which would become
Monty Python's Flying Circus. Cleese and Chapman were offered a show by the BBC who
had seen them on The Frost Report and other programmes. Cleese was reluctant to do
a two-man show, for various reasons including Chapman's reputedly difficult
personality. At the same time, following the success of Do Not Adjust Your Set
Palin, Jones, Idle and Gilliam, were offered their own series. While this series
was still in production, Palin agreed to Cleese's proposal and brought Idle, Jones
and Gilliam along. The formation of the Monty Python troupe has been referred to as
a result of Cleese's desire to work with Palin and the chance circumstances that
brought the other four members into the fold.
Monty
Python
In Monty Python, Palin played various roles, which ranged from manic enthusiasm
(such as the lumberjack of the Lumberjack Song) to unflappable calmness (such as
the Dead Parrot vendor or Cheese Shop proprietor). As the latter, he was often a
foil to the rising ire of characters portrayed by Cleese.
Palin frequently wrote with Jones for the sketches, including "The Lumberjack Song"
and "Spam". Some sketches Palin wrote by himself, (or began by himself) such as the
"Spanish Inquisition sketch", in which a fairly widespread catchphrase was created:
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
Other
performances
After the Monty Python television series ended, Palin collaborated with Jones on
the television comedy series Ripping Yarns and the play Secrets, from the BBC
series Black and Blue. He also appeared in All You Need Is Cash as Eric Manchester
(based on Derek Taylor) press agent for The Rutles.
In 1982, Palin wrote and starred in The Missionary, co-starring Maggie Smith. In
it, he plays the Reverend Charles Fortesque, who is recalled back from Africa to
aid prostitutes.
He appeared in Terry Gilliam's films Time Bandits, Jabberwocky, and Brazil. His
biggest international role in a movie outside of Python was as stuttering would-be
assassin Ken Pile in A Fish Called Wanda. The film was such a success that Cleese
reunited the main cast almost a decade later to make Fierce Creatures.
After filming for Fierce Creatures finished, Palin went on a travel journey for a
BBC documentary and, returning a year later, found that the end of Fierce Creatures
had failed at test screenings and had to be reshot.
Apart from Fierce Creatures, Palin's last film role was a small part in The Wind in
the Willows, a film directed by and starring Terry Jones. Palin also appeared with
John Cleese in his documentary, The Human Face.
He also assisted Transport 2000 and others with campaigns on transport policy
issues, particularly those relating to urban areas, and has now become president of
Transport 2000.
Palin has also appeared in serious drama. In 1991 Palin worked as producer and
actor in the film American Friends based upon a real event in the life of his great
grandfather, a fellow at St John's College, Oxford. In that same year he also
played the part of a headmaster in Alan Bleasdale's Channel 4 drama series
G.B.H..
Palin also had a small cameo role in Australian soap opera Home and Away. He played
an English surfer with a fear of sharks, who interrupts a heart-to-heart between
two main characters to ask whether there were any sharks in the sea. This was
filmed while he was in Australia for the Full Circle series, with a segment about
the filming of the role featuring in the series.
Recognition
In 2000 Palin became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his
services to television.
In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted the 30th favourite by
fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
Each member of Monty Python has an asteroid named after him. Palin's is Asteroid
9621 Michaelpalin.
Travel
documentaries
Palin's first travel documentary was part of the 1980 BBC Television series Great
Railway Journeys of the World, in which — humourously reminiscing about his
childhood hobby of train spotting — he travelled throughout the UK by train, from
London to Kyle of Lochalsh, via Manchester, York, Edinburgh and Inverness. At the
Kyle of Lochalsh, Palin bought the station's long metal platform sign and is seen
lugging it back to London with him.
In 1994, Palin travelled through Ireland for the same series, entitled "Derry to
Kerry". In a quest for family roots, he attempted to trace his great grandmother —
Brita Gallagher — who set sail from Ireland 150 years ago during the Great Famine
(1845-1849), bound for a new life in Burlington, New Jersey, USA. The series is a
trip along the Palin family line.
Starting in 1989, Palin has appeared as presenter in a series of travel programmes
made for the British BBC Television. These programs have been broadcast around the
world in syndication, and were also sold on VHS tape and later on DVD:
Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days (1989): travelling as closely as
possible the path described in the famous Jules Verne story without using
aircraft.
Pole to Pole (1992): travelling from the North Pole to the South Pole, following as
closely as possible the 30 degree line of longitude, over as much land as possible,
i.e., through Europe and Africa.
Full Circle with Michael Palin (1997): in which he circumnavigated the lands around
the Pacific Ocean counter-clockwise; a journey of 80,000 kilometres starting on
Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait and taking him through Asia, Oceania and
the Americas.
Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure (1999): retracing the footsteps of Ernest
Hemingway through the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean.
Sahara with Michael Palin (2002): in which he trekked around and through the
world's largest desert.
Himalaya with Michael Palin (2004): in which he travels through the Himalaya
region.
Following each trip, Palin wrote a book about his travels, providing information
and insights not included in the TV program. Each book is illustrated with
photographs by Basil Pao, the stills photographer who was on the team. (Exception:
the first book, Around the World in 80 Days, contains some pictures by Basil Pao
but most are by other photographers.)
All six of these books were also made available as audio books, and all of them are
read by Palin himself. Around the World in 80 Days and Hemingway Adventure are
unabridged, while the other four books were made in both abridged and unabridged
versions, although the unabridged versions can be very difficult to find.
For four of the trips a photography book was made by Basil Pao, each with an
introduction written by Palin. These are large coffee-table style books with
pictures printed on glossy paper. The majority of the pictures are of various
people encountered on the trip, as informal portraits or showing them engaged in
some interesting activity. Some of the landscape photos are displayed as two-page
spreads.
In 2005, Palin presented Michael Palin and the Mystery of Hammershoi, about the
Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi, whose work he collects.
In May 2006, he embarked on a new project, currently called Michael Palin's New
Europe, which includes visits to 21 countries once in the Soviet bloc and
Yugoslavia and that are now either part of or future members of the European Union,
as well as countries like Turkey, which are applying to join the EU. The New Europe
travels are intended to produce six one-hour programmes for BBC 1 and a book, both
planned for release in late 2007.
Palin's travel programmes are responsible for a phenomenon termed the "Palin
effect": areas of the world that he has visited suddenly become popular tourist
attractions — for example, the significant increase in the number of tourists
interested in Peru after Palin visited Machu Picchu. In a 2006 survey of "15 of the
world's top travel writers" by The Observer, Palin named Peru's Pongo de Mainique
(canyon below the Machu Picchu) his "favourite place in the world".
In honour of his achievements as a traveller (especially rail travel), Palin has
two British trains named after him. Virgin Trains' Super Voyager number 221130
carries his name externally and a plaque is located adjacent to the onboard shop
with information on Palin and his many journeys.. Also, one Railway have named a
British Rail Class 153 (unit number 153335) after him.
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Michael
Palin - Manifesting Generator - Biography
