GLOBE-TROTTING Sheffield humorist, writer and documentary presenter Michael Palin is having a typically busy year at 70. He will reunite with the Monty Python team for ten shows at London’s O2 Arena in July and embark on a national one-man tour to promote his third volume of diaries, Travelling To Work, in September. He is also celebrating the DVD and Blu-ray release of Palin and Terry Jones’s The Complete And Utter History of Britain, first broadcast on ITV in 1969.

Here he discusses how to make a life out of being funny, as Charles Hutchinson reports.

What will your September tour involve, Michael?

“It’s really to help publicise the last volume of diaries, which cover the period 1988 to 1998, which is when I suddenly took this leap into the dark and became a travel presenter. That’s why the diaries and the show are called Travelling To Work. I’ve done a lot of one-man shows on stage, at book festivals, where they’re partly about the travels and partly about Python and all that, so really it’s doing a sort of streamlined version of those shows, but with some new material.

“It is basically first-half travel, then second-half how you make the change from being a schoolboy who told jokes on the class back row in Sheffield to standing in front of 15,000 people at the O2. I wanted to make it a national tour because I love getting out of London.”

Did you always aspire to work in television and film?

“I think I probably did but never ever thought I would. I enjoyed acting at school, but my father in particular was very, very stern about that. He thought the idea of being an actor would be a waste of his money and time, and my education. It was only really when I went to Oxford in 1962 where I met up with people like Terry Jones who gave me the opportunity to act in plays there and also in revue.

“So, yeah, I gravitated towards the few strengths I had, writing and performing, and just didn’t tell my father I hadn’t become a bank manager or a BBC trainee or something like that. I think, in the end, I made the right decision.”

How are rehearsals progressing for Monty Python’s return to the stage?

“They’re not going at the moment. We won’t really start rehearsing properly until about two weeks before. We’ve got a script, we know the material, but we don’t want to peak too early, we’re old blokes!”

Why are reuniting after all this time?

“It’s purely financial, I think. There have been previous suggestions, but this time it’s partly because we’ve had this court case hanging around when one of the producers of The Holy Grail decided he needed a bit more of the cut from Spamalot – and court cases don’t come cheap. Something had to push us into it, but I think if we hated the sight of each other and couldn’t face the prospect of learning all those sketches again, we wouldn’t have done it.”

What lies in store in the Python performances?

“Apart from the sketches that are well known there’s a few new bits and pieces. Certainly the presentation will be different from anything we’ve done before. The visual stuff is so hi-tech these days that we can integrate [the late] Graham Chapman much more. It’ll probably be quite moving, to see Graham up there. But it does mean we’re all together in a way.”

How do you feel about a new audience experiencing The Complete And Utter History Of Britain on DVD?

“It’s funny, everything that one does now is attainable on the internet or somewhere. When we started off doing things like The Frost Report and even Monty Python, once they’d had their screening, that was it. A lot of them were just destroyed to make room for other tapes and stuff. The Complete And Utter History Of Britain was quite a progressive show at the time. It was a bit of a risk, very experimental. But I think it’s great that people can see all the bits that survive, and can make up their own minds about it.”

Was it fun looking back at the old material?

“Yes it was. I really enjoyed doing it. At that period, I’d only been working as a writer and actor for about four years, and we’d done so much. We worked and wrote and sold our material wherever we could, whether it was The Russ Conway Show, The Two Ronnies, The Frost Report or wherever. So it was great to do a series that you could have some control over.”

Is there a dream project still outstanding that you would love to launch?

“Well, that’s a very good question, and there are things buzzing around in the back of my mind. ‘I’m not sure at the moment’, is probably the best answer to that. I hope to do a bit more acting, and maybe take on a challenge or two.”

Michael Palin, Travelling To Work, Grand Opera House, York, September 28, 7.30pm. Tickets update: Sold out ; for returns only, 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york