大象传媒

Sir Michael Edward Palin - actor, comedian, writer, television presenter and... Tailender?

The all-round genius joined Greg James, Jimmy Anderson and Felix White for a very special episode of the Tailenders podcast.

Listen to the episode now on the free 大象传媒 Sounds app.

In a wide-ranging interview he discusses his career with Monty Python, his legendary travelogues, including his new series on Nigeria, his films and his love of cricket.

Here's what we found out when Michael Palin met the Tailenders.

A renowned travel writer and documentarian, Michael has seen all corners of the earth, with cricket never far from view, even in the midst of the Himalayan mountains.

"One amazing moment, when we were climbing up the Himalayas, and we were at about 16,000 feet and there was a cricket match going on there on this little plateau ledge, and beyond it, you could see mountains that went up to 23,000 feet, just extraordinary background. And that ended up in Wisden, actually, that photo of the highest cricket match ever photographed.

"Of course if you hit a six or a boundary or something like that takes three days to collect the ball. There's some lady down there planting seeds going 'ow!'"

Many a cricket fan will share Oscar’s memories about junior cricket and those all-important bragging rights for being a team’s demon bowler.

Oscar: “At one point, when I was 10 or 11, one of my things was I always had to have the longest run-up in the team, for no reason whatsoever apart from being able to say my run-up’s the longest. Which normally meant by the time I got to the crease I was already tired.”

Did Jimmy also start with a really long run-up?

Jimmy: “No, I was the opposite. I wanted the shortest run-up. I tried to bowl as fast as I could off a short run-up… The shorter the better for me.”

As it turns out, it took meeting an Aussie cricket legend for the young Oscar to realise he might have been overdoing things.

Oscar: “I went to a cricket camp when I was a kid, and Dennis Lillee was there. That was very cool. And one of the questions he got was, ‘How long’s your run-up?” And it was the point that I realised that my run-up was about ten paces longer than Dennis Lillee’s that I probably went, ‘Ok, I can probably shorten this quite a bit.’ So that gave me a bit of perspective on my bowling.”

When on the subject of Jimmy Anderson's recent trip to Dharamshala with the England cricket team, Michael asked the nation's greatest ever Test bowler if he got the chance to meet the Dalai Lama who resides near there. It turned out Jimmy did have the chance, but missed out due to a comical reason.

Michael: "That's where the Dalai Lama is. Did you meet him?"

Jimmy: "I didn’t. A few of the guys went to meet him. My kids are fuming with me that I didn't go. I'm not particularly spiritual or anything like that. It was in the morning and we had afternoon practice and I fancied a lie-in."

Michael: "Were you just worried, Jimmy, that he might not know who you were?"

Jimmy: "It felt like a photo opportunity rather than, you know, meeting him."

Michael: "You'd have taken a bit of the glamour away from him. I would think he'd have known that too, because he can't play cricket!"

Michael and Jimmy have both become the absolute greats in their respective fields, but how much do they reflect on previous works to achieve perfection?

Michael: "I do a bit. I need that boost of confidence. Every new thing I do, I have doubts and think, can you still do it? Are we doing the right programme? Are we doing the right place? So, you know, I look back and and I do occasionally just get the general buzz of why a show might work.

Michael: "But everything I've ever done, I'm always critical at the end. You know, if you get 90% right, that's fine. But generally, certainly 10% I always think ‘Oh, that was [bad]’.”

Jimmy: "I don’t know whether it’s the perfectionist in you, but I generally do focus on the 10% that's not as good as it could have been, and then try and improve that for next time."

In the early 1980s, Michael was on set of a film called 'The Missionary', a project that The Beatles' George Harrison had helped to finance.

There was a great buzz about the set when rumours swirled of a visit from Harrison, but when he did arrive on set, he didn't particularly want to be spotted.

"George came along with Denis O'Brien, his manager, and we were doing a scene and suddenly I noticed between the bushes, two faces peer out.

"It's George and Denis. And we’re about to say something, and then the trees sort of closed again. He didn't want to be seen, he just wanted to watch it but everybody knew he was there.

"Phoebe Nicholls was doing a scene and George was very close in the cupboard. I said: 'George, you're going to have to just shut the cupboard for the scene.' He said:' That's great, that's fine.' And she couldn't do the scene because there was a Beatle so close to her."

Having met people from all countries, cultures, and different ways of life through his storied career, Michael has come to find that one thing unites everyone around the planet - humour.

"If you can make people laugh, then then that's 75% of the way to getting them to talk to you and share a drink with you and all that.

"Even in North Korea, they don't give vent to their feelings that often, but we were stuck at an airport and the director brought a bit of [Monty] Python on his laptop and said to my guide, lovely lady, but she was quite serious, 'do you want to have a look at this? I'll show you something'. And it was the fish-slapping dance from Python. Just to see somebody who couldn't comprehend what she was about to see, and she burst into laughter.

I mean, it was really wonderful because all the control and all the polished performance she'd been told to do just collapsed straight away and she just roared with laughter."

Hear more stories from Oscar Piastri in the new Tailenders special, available now on 大象传媒 Sounds.