1. Sir Michael Edward Palin is an English actor, comedian, writer, and television presenter.
54 Facts About Michael Palin
1. 2.
Michael Palin was a member of the Monty Python comedy group.
3.
Michael Palin received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2013 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019.
4.
Michael Palin joined Monty Python's Flying Circus alongside John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, and Graham Chapman.
5.
Michael Palin continued to work with Jones away from Python, co-writing Ripping Yarns.
6.
Michael Palin co-wrote and starred in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.
7.
Since 1980, Michael Palin has made numerous television travel documentaries and is a widely recognised writer and presenter.
8.
Michael Palin has been a travel writer and travel documentarian in programmes broadcast on the BBC.
9.
Michael Palin's journeys have taken him across the world, including the North and South Poles, the Sahara, the Himalayas, Eastern Europe, and Brazil; in 2018, he visited North Korea, documenting his visit to the isolated country in a series broadcast on Channel 5.
10.
Michael Palin visited Nigeria in 2023 to make a travel documentary that was aired in 2024.
11.
Michael Palin was born in Ranmoor, Sheffield, the second child and only son of Edward Moreton Michael Palin and Mary Rachel Lockhart.
12.
Michael Palin's father was a Shrewsbury and Cambridge-educated engineer working for a steel firm.
13.
Michael Palin's great-grandmother fled the Irish Famine and was adopted by a wealthy English family.
14.
When he was five years old, Michael Palin had his first acting experience at Birkdale playing Martha Cratchit in a school performance of A Christmas Carol.
15.
That year Michael Palin joined the Brightside and Carbrook Co-operative Society Players and first gained fame when he won an acting award at a Co-op drama festival.
16.
Michael Palin performed and wrote in the Oxford Revue with Jones.
17.
Michael Palin played various roles in Monty Python, which ranged from manic enthusiasm to unflappable calmness.
18.
Michael Palin played timid, socially inept characters such as Arthur Putey, the man who sits quietly as a marriage counsellor makes love to his wife, and Mr Anchovy, a chartered accountant who wants to become a lion tamer.
19.
Michael Palin appeared as the "It's" man at the beginning of most episodes.
20.
Michael Palin frequently played a Gumby, a character Palin said "had these moronic views that were expressed with extraordinary force".
21.
Michael Palin played the lead role of the peasant Dennis in Terry Gilliam's 1977 film Jabberwocky.
22.
In 1982, Michael Palin wrote and starred in The Missionary, co-starring Maggie Smith.
23.
Michael Palin co-starred with Maggie Smith again in the 1984 comedy film A Private Function.
24.
Michael Palin appeared in the comedy film A Fish Called Wanda, which co-starred and was co-written by John Cleese, for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
25.
Michael Palin appeared with John Cleese in his documentary The Human Face.
27.
In 1994, Michael Palin narrated the English language audiobook version of Esio Trot by children's author Roald Dahl.
28.
In 1997, Michael Palin had a small cameo role in the Australian soap opera Home and Away.
29.
Michael Palin played an English surfer with a fear of sharks, who interrupts a conversation between two main characters to ask whether there were any sharks in the sea.
30.
In 2013, Michael Palin appeared in a First World War drama titled The Wipers Times written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman.
31.
At the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, it was announced that Michael Palin was set to star alongside Adam Driver in Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
32.
Michael Palin dropped out of the film after it ran into a financial problem.
33.
In July 2019, Michael Palin performed a one-man stage show at the Torch Theatre, Milford Haven, Wales, about the loss of HMS Erebus during the third Franklin expedition, which is recounted in his book Erebus: The Story of a Ship.
34.
At the Kyle of Lochalsh, Michael Palin bought the station's long metal platform sign and is seen lugging it back to London with him.
35.
In 1994, Michael Palin travelled through Ireland for the same series, entitled "Derry to Kerry".
36.
Between 1989 and 2012, Michael Palin appeared as a presenter in a series of travel programmes made for the BBC.
37.
In recent years, Michael Palin has written and presented occasional documentary programmes about artists who interest him.
38.
In November 2008, Michael Palin presented a First World War documentary about Armistice Day, 11 November 1918, when thousands of soldiers lost their lives in battle after the war had officially ended.
39.
Michael Palin filmed on the battlefields of Northern France and Belgium for the programme, called the Last Day of World War One, produced for the BBC's Timewatch series.
40.
Michael Palin has lived in Gospel Oak, London, since the 1960s.
41.
Michael Palin is a supporter of Sheffield Wednesday, holding aloft a trophy and shouting the club's name while in Venice shooting Around the World in 80 Days.
42.
Michael Palin has followed the fortunes of Sheffield United and Stenhousemuir FC.
43.
Michael Palin assisted Campaign for Better Transport and others with campaigns on sustainable transport, particularly those relating to urban areas, and has been president of the campaign since 1986.
44.
In July 2010, Michael Palin sent a message of support for the Dongria Kondh tribe of India, who were resisting mining on their land by the company Vedanta Resources.
45.
Michael Palin is a longstanding Vice President of the National Churches Trust.
46.
When it opened in 1993 Michael Palin became Vice President of Action for Stammering Children.
47.
In honour of his achievements as a traveller, especially rail travel, Michael Palin has two British trains named after him.
48.
In recognition of his services to the promotion of geography, Michael Palin was awarded the Livingstone Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in March 2009, along with a Fellowship of this Society.
49.
In June 2009, Michael Palin was elected for a three-year term as President of the Royal Geographical Society.
50.
Michael Palin joins his fellow Pythons John Cleese and Terry Jones in receiving an honorary degree from the Fife institution.
51.
Michael Palin was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2000 New Year Honours for "services to television drama and travel documentaries".
52.
Michael Palin then was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 2019 New Year Honours for "services to travel, culture and geography".
53.
Michael Palin is the only member of the Monty Python team to receive a knighthood.
54.
In 2017, the British Library acquired Michael Palin's archive consisting of project files relating to his work, notebooks, and personal diaries.