WHERE better to be on a warm September evening than in York, muses Michael Palin, as he bounds on stage in a big red Spainish inquisitor's hat from Monty Pyththon's reunion shows at the O2 this summer.

"I can talk normally about my home county without being booed off, " he says with that gentlemanly charm that has equally engaged television viewers and those he met on his BBC travels.

Palin has been many places other than York on a September evening, his experiences recorded not only on camera but also in the notebooks he has to hand in his omnipresent shoulder bag and the diaries he has kept since just before Python's formation in 1969.

Those diary entries from his first travelogue, Around The World In 80 Days, up to 1998 form the text of his new book, Travelling To Work, and here he uses photographs to guide you through his memories of past trips with humour, insight and affection for his subject matter. If only nights with photo albums could always be so enlightening.

The second half is a journey too, this one tracing Pailn's steps through the world of comedy, from schooldays in Sheffield and at Shrewsbury, through Oxford, working for David Frost, the formation of Monty Python and onwards to Python's films, his other cinematic deeds and the Python comeback.

All is told with such modesty and natural wit, peppered with impersonations of Alan Bennett and The Goons and audience questions picked from a bucket, that he makes work seem the stuff of constant pleasure, even when poisoned by eating camel's kidneys.