EARTH DAY SPECIAL
Despite losing his beloved wife, Sir Michael Palin hasn’t lost his sense of adventure as he embarks on a journey around Nigeria
Michael Palin in Nigeria
Tuesday 9.00pm Channel 5
I ARRIVE AT Michael Palin’s house by bike, and the great traveller, comic, Python, actor and all-round nice guy comes out to greet me. We discuss where I have cycled from (not far) and I mention that this interview will be in a special RT edited by Chris Packham. But will that be important to him? After all, he has racked up thousands of air miles over the years, albeit before we understood the impact of carbon emissions. Of course. “I’m very much aware of making as little impact on world resources as I can,” he says. “I don’t cycle, but I walk as much as I can. Not just walking on Hampstead Heath, which is just next door [Palin lives in north London], but also walking to work and around central London. It’s much easier than you think. It makes you feel physically better. I very rarely get the car out.”
We go to his airy study where I spot a few of his bestselling travel books. Every time he has a show out, it’s said travel agents steady themselves for the “Palin effect”, wherein bookings for a particular destination increase after Palin has extolled its virtues. The first time it happened was apparently after he visited Machu Picchu in Peru in the mid-90s… Palin laughs. “Machu Picchu was packed before we went there, and it was packed when we were there. But I understand the ‘effect’ did happen after our Sahara series [first broadcast in 2002], when I went to places like Mauritania, Mali and Niger, which nobody really went to at all before, or only in very specialised tour groups. Apparently my show did cause a big upsurge in people booking to go to Mali, but only from a very small base. So about 25 extra bookings.”
Does air travel, or encouraging it, worry him? Air travel doesn’t concern him as much as hodophobia, or fear of travelling. “I do think people ought to see the rest of the world if they possibly can. If we don’t, the danger is that we will become anxious about travelling. And then, we just… won’t go out. We will be prey to people who have gone around the world and tell you this, that or the other. Go and see things for yourself!”
What about the ecological impact? It would seem that Palin is more riled by a certain style of travel, namely mass tourism, than travel per se. “People who go abroad in this sort of incubated English style, perhaps in a ship with a group, and they all stay
