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| Michael Palin: Travelling to Work review – a ripping yarn or three | |
| (about 7 hours later) | |
| Is it a book tour? Is it "an audience with" or a comedy show? Hot on the heels of Monty Python at the O2, Michael Palin's latest offering is one of a new breed of comedy (or should that be celebrity) event, whereby well-loved stars just invite us to spend time in their company. It's pegged to the release of the third volume of his diaries, and Palin is taking it on his first solo tour. Its first half ranges across his travel broadcasting career; the second finds Palin recapping his life in comedy. | Is it a book tour? Is it "an audience with" or a comedy show? Hot on the heels of Monty Python at the O2, Michael Palin's latest offering is one of a new breed of comedy (or should that be celebrity) event, whereby well-loved stars just invite us to spend time in their company. It's pegged to the release of the third volume of his diaries, and Palin is taking it on his first solo tour. Its first half ranges across his travel broadcasting career; the second finds Palin recapping his life in comedy. |
| It contains absolutely no surprises, nor any sign of great effort or imagination exerted its assembly. But it's as genial and gently amusing as you'd expect from one of the nation's favourite personalities, and both halves are adequately supplied with eye-catching stories, of travel to improbable nooks of the globe and adventures in the early years of funny TV. | It contains absolutely no surprises, nor any sign of great effort or imagination exerted its assembly. But it's as genial and gently amusing as you'd expect from one of the nation's favourite personalities, and both halves are adequately supplied with eye-catching stories, of travel to improbable nooks of the globe and adventures in the early years of funny TV. |
| Before the interval is all about globetrotting, which Palin took up 25 years ago, for the series Around the World in 80 Days. "And to mark the occasion," he says, "I'm going to inflict on you my holiday snaps!" And that's exactly what he does, with a succession of seemingly arbitrary photos of freight trains in Mauritania, oil wrestlers in Turkey and so on. The slideshow format – and the vast range of time and geography covered – ministrates against great depth or insight, and sometimes invites banality. ("You'll see things you've never seen before," runs one of Palin's PowerPoint headings.) But the cumulative effect, as the ravishing images and exotic experiences pile up, is pretty giddying. It'll give you itchy feet – or a strong desire to have led Palin's life. | Before the interval is all about globetrotting, which Palin took up 25 years ago, for the series Around the World in 80 Days. "And to mark the occasion," he says, "I'm going to inflict on you my holiday snaps!" And that's exactly what he does, with a succession of seemingly arbitrary photos of freight trains in Mauritania, oil wrestlers in Turkey and so on. The slideshow format – and the vast range of time and geography covered – ministrates against great depth or insight, and sometimes invites banality. ("You'll see things you've never seen before," runs one of Palin's PowerPoint headings.) But the cumulative effect, as the ravishing images and exotic experiences pile up, is pretty giddying. It'll give you itchy feet – or a strong desire to have led Palin's life. |
| The second half is less slide-show, more scrapbook. First, it harks back to our host's Sheffield childhood, glued to The Goon Show on the valve radio. Soon the bricolage kicks in, with extracts from schoolboy Palin's diary, report card – and, er, a recent speech to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. We get a lost sketch from Life of Brian, about a man cured by Jesus of thinking he's a bat, and a home video of Palin, Jones and Cleese gadding about at Blenheim Palace in the 1970s. | The second half is less slide-show, more scrapbook. First, it harks back to our host's Sheffield childhood, glued to The Goon Show on the valve radio. Soon the bricolage kicks in, with extracts from schoolboy Palin's diary, report card – and, er, a recent speech to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. We get a lost sketch from Life of Brian, about a man cured by Jesus of thinking he's a bat, and a home video of Palin, Jones and Cleese gadding about at Blenheim Palace in the 1970s. |
| If this all starts to feel like emptying the tea chests at the back of Palin's attic, well, he's craving our indulgence – and who here isn't happy to surrender it? It's pleasant enough to share in Palin's fond memories of taking the Oxford Revue to Edinburgh in 1964, and later, of scrabbling around to make ends meet even when Python was in its pomp. It's more fun when the affable chat gives way to actual comedy, with an extract from Graham Chapman's autobiography that rises woozily from the page, and a wicked Enid Blyton spoof rescued from Palin and Terry Jones' little known 1974 volume Bert Fegg's Nasty Book for Boys and Girls. | If this all starts to feel like emptying the tea chests at the back of Palin's attic, well, he's craving our indulgence – and who here isn't happy to surrender it? It's pleasant enough to share in Palin's fond memories of taking the Oxford Revue to Edinburgh in 1964, and later, of scrabbling around to make ends meet even when Python was in its pomp. It's more fun when the affable chat gives way to actual comedy, with an extract from Graham Chapman's autobiography that rises woozily from the page, and a wicked Enid Blyton spoof rescued from Palin and Terry Jones' little known 1974 volume Bert Fegg's Nasty Book for Boys and Girls. |
| Oh, for more of that impious, iconoclastic spirit tonight. But that's not the point of Palin's show, which reminisces here, pays tribute there and celebrates everywhere else. It's not comedy, nor is there anything artful in its construction. But it fashions a ripping yarn or three out of Palin's life, and that's just about enough. | Oh, for more of that impious, iconoclastic spirit tonight. But that's not the point of Palin's show, which reminisces here, pays tribute there and celebrates everywhere else. It's not comedy, nor is there anything artful in its construction. But it fashions a ripping yarn or three out of Palin's life, and that's just about enough. |
| Touring nationally: palinstravels.co.uk | Touring nationally: palinstravels.co.uk |
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