Five Minutes With: Michael Palin

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Five Minutes With: Michael Palin

Celebrities and news-makers are grilled by Matthew Stadlen in precisely five minutes in a series for the BBC News website.

This week, comedian and broadcaster Michael Palin talks to Matt about his career with Monty Python, his take on modern comedy, favourite countries that he's visited for his travel documentaries and squeezes in a couple of classic Python moments.

Sketches Michael refers to:

• Summarize Proust Competition
• The Knights who say Ni!  
• No one expects the Spanish Inquisition

An interesting word Michael uses:

• Whimsical - definition care of Wordnik.com: adjective - Erratic in behavior or degree of unpredictability

By the way, I would love to hear from anyone who was in the audience for the recording of any of the original 45 Monty Python TV shows.  Please comment below, e-mail me or contact me via Twitter
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Happy Birthday Terry Jones

Terry Jones was born today in 1942 - Happy Birthday Terry!

I met Terry for the first time outside the Nellie Dean pub, Soho, London in 1975 with Michael Palin when they were doing post production on Tomkinson's Schooldays from the Ripping Yarns series. Several years later, I met him again at the premier of his movie "Erik the Viking" in Brighton. Then he was right in front of me on stage in Trafalgar Square a few years ago (see above photo) when me and approx 5,000 of us broke the Guinness World Record for the world's largest coconut orchestra. Bully for me hey?

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