Why have you decided to embark on your first-ever solo stage tour this September and October?

Over the years I’ve done a lot of one-man shows, usually just for one evening either to raise money at a charity event or at a book festival. I’ve really quite enjoyed doing them. It’s a nice format and I like talking to a live audience, and with the diaries (Travelling To Work: Diaries 1988-1998) coming out in September I thought ‘What can we do that’s a little bit different to anything we’ve done before?’ Book publicity is a cut-throat business these days, with everyone trying to get their publicity to out-do someone else’s and all that. We’ve put 21 shows together and I can go right round the country and hopefully entertain audiences about the 25 years since we did Around The World In 80 Days.

The book is your third volume of diaries. Can you tell us a little bit about the content?

It begins with my misgivings about having embarked on Around The World In 80 Days. I discovered some little private thoughts I’d written down which seem to suggest I was deeply worried about what I’d taken on. We were going to be 80 days away from home, and there was no script. We were going to make it up as we went along and you get the feeling of someone not embarking on what he thought was going to be a legendary breakthrough in travel television but someone who was absolutely terrified. The book ends up, rather ironically, with the decision in 1998 not to do a Monty Python reunion for various reasons.

You’re celebrating nearly 50 years in showbusiness. What are your fondest or most vivid memories?

It’ll be the 50th anniversary next year, yes, and honestly my fondest memory is of Edinburgh in August and September 1964. I appeared in an Oxford University Revue with Terry Jones and others. It was the first time I’d actually been on a stage night after night to perform comedy, some of which I’d written myself, and it was such a great thrill to do that. I realised I could make audiences laugh.

You’re an ardent supporter of bookshops. Why do you feel they’re still so important?

I think books bring people together. Look at all the book groups there are now. It’s really nice to talk about a book to another human being directly. You can do it online and all that but it’s nice to come to an actual place where you can talk about books. Bookshops have that role within the community.

What’s your routine when you’re writing?

I’m totally freelance and the one-man shows I’ve been doing I tend to call things like 40 Years Without A Proper Job. It’s true; I’ve never signed a contract for longer than the duration of one particular project so I have to keep making sure I know what I’m doing and what I’m planning to do, otherwise you get sidetracked into all sorts of distractions.

When you’re on the road what’s the one thing you couldn’t be without?

A notebook and pen, undoubtedly. I’d feel naked if I didn’t have my little black Alwych notebooks made in Glasgow, which I’ve taken on all my travels and a pen with which to scribble things down. It has to be done longhand.

Do you get nervous before facing an audience?

I think you’ve got to be nervous before you step out on stage. If it felt like you were just going down to the shops or to see a movie or to buy some socks it wouldn’t be right. The engagement with the audience is not altogether natural. You’re going to be on stage and expecting 1,000 people to sit and listen to you for two hours. Being a little nervous is the price you pay for the price they pay.

You’ve got the Python reunion shows coming up. Do you know yet what formats those shows will take?

We have a script. We had a draft script at the end of last year and that’s been honed down a bit. The format is pretty much a bedrock of our classic sketches: The Lumberjack Song, Nudge Nudge, Argument Clinic and things like that which we know have worked on stage before. There are also a few extras like The Spanish Inquisition, which hasn’t been done on stage before. I don’t know if I’ll be dancing myself. There may be movement in the lower limbs. We’ll take medical advice on that.

It what ways have you changed since the Python days?

The original spirit in which these sketches were written and the reaction we had to them when they were first written – which was that they were very funny – all comes back. We couldn’t have done these shows if we didn’t believe in the material and if we didn’t think we could make the material funny again. So I don’t feel as though I’ve changed much at all and that’s a bit of a problem because I’m 71 and you can’t quite do all the things you thought you could do.

  • Travelling To Work: Diaries 1988-1998 will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson on September 11th.
  • Michael Palin Travelling to Work: First One Man Tour, Grand Opera House York, Sunday, September 28, 7.30pm