Best-selling author and comedy legend Michael Palin is going back on the road, with a new 13-date UK tour this autumn. There and Back – The Diaries Tour 2024 will bring to life Palin’s upcoming Diary (called There and Back, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on 26 September).
The tour arrives at Portsmouth’s Kings Theatre on the 23rd of September and there are still tickets you can buy!
It is 10 years since Michael’s last published diary, Michael unlocks volume four of his life and times, from 1999 to 2009. As the centuries change and Michael heads into middle age, he’s busier than ever. In this new show, with the help of rarely seen photos and video, Michael brings these momentous times to life as he talks through this latest Diary to take us backstage on this most productive decade of his life, whilst always, in the background, showing us the wider world, one of infinite possibilities and new and unimagined dangers.
Chatting to James Rampton about the tour, Michael said, “It covers how my career panned out during that decade. I actually had no plans to carry on travelling at all. I wanted to go back to acting and writing. I was in fact writing a novel at the time. But I ended up being tempted back to globetrotting and in the end made a number of TV journeys that turned out to be among the best..”
“And then, “There were all these other things going on in the background. We think it was quiet time. But of course, there was 9/11, 7/7, the CJD crisis, when cattle were burnt in enormous numbers, and the war in Iraq.”
“On a happier note, “I was gathering a number of very good friends around me. There are people like David Attenborough, Barry Cryer, and Alan Bennett, who feature a lot in the diaries. I always benefited from their wise words, and I feel very privileged to have spent so much time with them.”
Talking about his enduring friendship with his fellow members of the Monty Python team, Michael said, “The best thing is, when we do get together, we still make each other laugh. That’s the basic thing which holds us together, our humour and our delight in laughter and the same kind of jokes.”
Michael smiled and said, “John Cleese does a very good satire of my travel shows. He always says, ‘Who’s seen one of Michael’s travel programmes? All he asks is, ‘Where did you get that hat?’’
You can grab tickets now by hitting the link here.
