Michael Palin: How Sheffield-born star used humour to avoid getting beaten up at school

Michael Palin has opened up about his experiences growing up in Sheffield, including how he used humour to avoid being beaten up at school.

The former Monty Python comic, who is a celebrated actor, travel writer and documentary maker, was born in Ranmoor, Sheffield, and attended Birkdale School in the city.

He appeared on Radio 4 show This Cultural Life, where he spoke about his childhood and the people and experiences which forged him.

He told how his earliest memories were of shopping in the ration book era, when he was allowed to tear off stamps to give to shopkeepers.

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He described his father, who was an engineer in the Sheffield steel industry, as a ‘difficult man’.

Father ‘could be quite cantankerous’

“He could be quite cantankerous and I think a lot of this was down to the fact he had a stammer all his life,” he said.

“He was a man with a good sense of humour but probably unable to tell jokes because of the stammer, so I think there was a bit of frustration there.”

He also told how while his father was happy to be working in Sheffield, he was a southerner, hailing from Norfolk, and ‘didn’t really enjoy the north’, nor did he find his job very fulfilling.

He loved reading as a boy and recalled visiting Sheffield City Library with his father, where he devoured books including Biggles and other war stories.

Palin described his mother as ‘very sympathetic’, adding: “If I wanted to tell her a story about something she would listen rather than be too busy....

Mother was ‘so indulgent’

“She was so indulgent. I would read Shakespeare plays to her, doing all the characters, and she never told me to stop. She made me feel I could express myself at home in a way my father wouldn’t have had the patience to allow.”

He was in a couple of plays at school, he said, but was quite nervous about acting as a child.

Asked when he first realised he could make people laugh, he said: “At school, in the playground, there would be fights and I would get away without being beaten up by making people laugh, so, yes, I knew I could do impersonations of teachers and all that.”

As well as his time in Monty Python, Palin spoke about appearing in the hard-hitting 1991 TV drama G.B.H, written by Alan Bleasdale, in which he played Jim Nelson, a character with a ‘lot of anger’.

Neighbours were like a ‘second family’

Asked if he had drawn on his father, he replied ‘possibly’, adding: “I could certainly tap on the unease that there was in the house sometimes when my father was particularly stressed, and being in a house where that was the way things were.

“I remember we had neighbours nextdoor to us in Sheffield and his father was a top doctor and they became a second family to me because the atmosphere in their house was completely different.

“He would come home and give his wife a kiss, on the lips, in the kitchen, in front of us all. That was quite different from how I’d been brought up, so I suppose I could understand people pushing against limits but not being able to move them.”

Palin also discussed losing his wife Helen, with whom he had been together since they were teenagers, last year.

‘Unreal world’ since losing wife Helen

“It’s not easy,” he said. “It’s an unreal world you enter, someone you’ve been with for so long and every reference point in your life is sort of connected with that person, and suddenly they’re not there, and you kind of fool yourself that they are there.

“I haven’t changed much in the house, the family still come round, we have birthday parties and all that, which Helen would have been part of, and it’s kind of dealing with the foreverness of it.”

Palin had open heart surgery in 2019 but at the age of 80 is still remarkably fit and healthy.

His latest travel documentary is the Channel 5 show Michael Palin in Nigeria, for which he travelled 1,300 miles soaking up the culture of a country known as the ‘Giant of Africa’.

Asked what he plans to do next, he said: “As long as I can I will use my good health, touch wood, to carry on being able to travel if I can or just to write. There are all sorts of options open.”