Making sense of crazy times

This is a huge book. Crikey, it’s a whopper. It’s impossible not to won- der, as you hold it in your hands and try your damnedest not to drop it on your foot, whether its author, for all his fame and eminence, is quite worth all this ink, paper, attention. And this is just the first volume. If, as seems reasonable to assume, several more collections are plan-ned, we could well end up with four such breezeblocks, between them covering 40 years of Michael Palin’s public and private life. It could take nearly as long to read them.

Nonetheless, to comedy obsessives of a certain age, Palin remains an intriguing figure. The best actor of the six Pythons, and the peacemaker in the group, he has also enjoyed the most successful career after and apart from Python. True, John Cleese did Fawlty Towers and A Fish Called Wanda, but those were 30 and 20 years ago, and Terry Gilliam has directed several fantastic films; but only Palin, I would suggest, approaches the status of national treasure, which enables you to publish books like this one. His popularity is broader, if not deeper, than Monty Python’s once was. And yet it will be Python fans who buy this book.

For the mystery remains: how on earth did Python work? It seems extraordinary now that this shambolic, often staggeringly amateur series of unconnected sketches should have held several generations of children, teenagers and students in its thrall. Three decades have passed since the ability to quote the Dead Parrot sketch verbatim became the most embarrassing thing anyone could do socially with their trousers still on. (Trousers because no girls ever quoted it, only boys.) The TV series ran for just four seasons, and reading this book you realise how young they all were; frighteningly young.