SO, Michael Palin, what will you be discussing in your Great Yorkshire Fringe conversation with comedy historian Robert Ross at the Grand Opera House, York, on July 28.

Your comedy heroes when growing up in Sheffield? Monty Python? Ripping Yarns? Travel tales from Around The World In 80 Days, Pole To Pole and Full Circle? Film roles in Jabberwocky, Time Bandits, Brazil and A Fish Called Wanda? Your writing, from a play to limericks, a novel to diaries?

"We'll see. We never plan it absolutely word for word," says the 75-year-old South Yorkshireman. "I know Robert well enough to have the confidence that he knows everything I've ever done.

"We can go off in different directions each show, and won't know exactly what it'll be about, except that it's about comedy, my life in comedy, my heroes in comedy and that hopefully it'll be funny. We never really stick to the question; we veer off on various tangents; it a free-form show."

Looking forward to appearing at York's Great Yorkshire Fringe, Palin says: "The nice thing about doing this show, doing it to a Yorkshire audience, as a Yorkshireman, is that for once I'm not actually selling something [such as a new book]. "So instead you can talk about the history of comedy, how it's part of your life."

Ironically, Palin does have a book on the horizon. "It'll be out in September," he says. "It's called Erebus: The Story Of A Ship, about a ship that had the most extraordinary life."

Palin documents the maritime (mis)adventures of the HMS Erebus, part of a doomed, disastrous 1845 British expedition in the Arctic in search of a Northwest Passage across northern Canada. Erebus, under the command of Sir John Franklin, became trapped in ice, resulting in the deaths of Franklin and his crew. After 170 years, the ship was rediscovered on the seabed in Queen Maud Gulf in 2014, prompting Palin's interest in Erebus's fate.

"Writing the book was just an idea that came to me because I wanted to learn more about this ship I'd heard about," he says. "It was too complicated to do a TV show – getting to the South Pole and North Pole – but instead I was given 18 months to research and write the book, which you'll be pleased to learn will be published by Hutchinson!"

Turning to Palin's comedy roots in Sheffield, he recalls enjoying "laughing outrageously" at Norman Wisdom in Man Of The Moment and Jerry Lewis too; going to see Sheffield pantomimes, Morecambe & Wise and comedians Ken Platt and Albert Modley. "Later the new inspiration was Spike Milligan and The Goon Show because it was completely fresh and new. Everything about it was naughty and silly and subversive, and yet here it was on the BBC Home Service, but I had to watch it on my own, away from my father, as it was like him hearing Elvis Presley on the single radio in the house for the first time, when he thought the radio must have broken!"

Monty Python's Flying Circus, the burst of new comedic energy from Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Terry Gilliam, would emerge in the aftermath of Spike Milligan's surrealist Q5 show in 1969. "If you'd seen Spike's series earlier in the year, you would sort of been surprised by us, but Spike was Spike, and we were dealing with nonsensical ideas in a slightly different direction, and we caught on with a small audience with the BBC hiding us away late at night because they were nervous about us," says Palin.

Humour, in whatever form, is part of the British DNA, but why so? "Why humour is so important to us might be because, unlike other nations, we've been fairly settled and we can laugh at our [political] leaders without them thinking of the threat of revolution," says Palin.

"So there's a tolerance of humour, going back to Hogarth and Rowlandson attacking the Establishment way before we were, and that was because of the way society was set up, stopping us from seeing humour as a dangerous threat to order."

At 75, Palin is as busy as ever. "I've always found that the work I do is so enjoyable, so fascinating, that it's not an ordeal, it's not something I resent doing," he says. "Whether making a film, or travelling, or writing a book, I've been extremely lucky to have had those opportunities, though I do get tired and anxious about what I do, but in a good way."

Reflecting on his career as a humorist, what makes something funny, Michael? "To me, humour is just one of those things that's very difficult to decide how it works, except that you know when it works and when it doesn't. You have to have funny ideas, be able to do a voice or a character and be able to tell a story till the only thing they can do is laugh... and, like Billy Connolly, for example, you have to have great timing."

If Palin were to ascribe himself a legacy, beyond wanting to make people laugh, he says: "The most important thing I would impart is: 'Don't be afraid to do something a little different and rise to each challenge', which is the only way to achieve things, and if there's a little anxiety along the way, that's all part of it."

Great Yorkshire Fringe presents Michael Palin in conversation with Robert Ross, Grand Opera House, York, July 28, 2pm. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york. Great Yorkshire Fringe runs from July 19 to 29; the full programme and booking details can be found at greatyorkshirefringe.com

Charles Hutchinson