Michael Palin Quotes

We read poems from the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse. Neil insisted on spilling wine over my carpet.

A good day's filming at last... John Horton's rabbit effects are superb. A really vicious white rabbit, which bites Sir Bor's head off. Much of the ground lost over the week is made up. We listen to the Cup Final in between fighting the rabbit — Liverpool beat Newcastle 3-0.

Before entering our room we had to remove our shoes. Here Ken and myself made what I expected to be the first of many faux pas. After taking our shoes off, we noticed some oriental style slippers nearby and presumed that we ought to put these on in true Japanese style. Grumbling that they were all too small, we eventually selected two pairs and were tottering to our room when one of the Japanese ‘attendants’ – it wouldn’t be quite right to call them ‘waitresses’ – stopped us excitedly and told us to take off the shoes. Then we realised the awful truth – that they belonged to people already eating there.

Denis O’B rings to say that the first-week take at the Plaza is £40,000. ‘Forty thousand pounds!’ Denis incredulates in tones of almost religious fervency. It is impressive and has beaten the previous highest-ever take at the Plaza (which was for Jaws) by £8,000, with seven fewer performances. So all the publicity has had maximum effect.

Talk to a Dutch journalist for an hour. He has 38 questions.

They are trying their best to indict a young generation, who seem to be setting a triumphant example to the older generation – an example of how to enjoy oneself, something which most Englishmen don’t seem really capable of, especially the cynical pressmen of the News of the World. It’s all very sad.

(Later in my journey I was told of an outrageous but apparently successful attempt to bring tourists to Great Nicobar. During the monsoon torrential rain comes down spectacularly. A bright Indian entrepreneur advertised a tour for rich Arabs from the arid Gulf who could sit on their hotel balcony and watch rain for a week. It was a sell-out.)

"...go all the way to Sun Alliance to Chancery Lane, only to be told that they wouldn't insure my new house because of my profession. "Actors...and writers...well, you know."

..I couldn't help feeling something of a reject from society as I walked out again into Chancery Lane...my solicitor cheerfully informs me that several big companies, including Eagle Star won't touch actors. The happy and slightly absurd ending to this story is that I finally find a willing insurer in the National Farmers' Union at Huntingdon."

If all goes well we should be in Lusaka by tonight, then Victoria Falls, and from what I hear our troubles are over after that. Zimbabwe and South Africa are comfortable, efficient, Westernized. Akuna Matata. No Problem. Wild, uncomfortable, incomprehensible Africa will give way to tamed and tidied Africa – hot baths and iced beers, air-conditioning and daily newspapers, French wines and credit cards. Lying here, listening to the aching wind in a hut by a lake in a forest, I feel a pain of sadness at the prospect of leaving behind all I have been through these past months and returning to a world where experience is sanitized – rationed out second-hand by television and newspapers and magazines and marketing companies.

Frank Muir is affable. ‘We’re all fag ends in the gutter of life,’ he replies cheerfully to my observation that the timing of success is quite unpredictable … ‘One realises that all those things like talent, looks, skill and hard work really don’t get you anywhere.

You’re not a has-been, you’re a has-now.’ I like that.

My philosophy of travel, such as it is, is that the more difficult somewhere is to get to, the greater the prize to be won by getting there. But when the prize was North Korea, I found this was not a view shared by my wife.

Of course I would do it again, but I know it would never be quite the same. Despite the best laid plans of the BBC, we ended up bustling, hurrying, rushing, improvising to get ourselves home only by the skin of our teeth. And that's what made it worth doing. The smoother the journey the duller it would have been.

I've got a false lip.

It's not a model if it's full-size. It's a ice-breaker!