MICHAEL PALIN at The Royal Concert hall

At this moment i am currently reading Michael Palins diaries covering the years 1969-1979 called collectively the Python years.So it was a very welcome , refreshing coincidence when i got wind of an appearance from Michael as part over the ever-growing , increasingly popular Conversation Pieces.It must be over a decade this format has been gracing Afternoons at the Royal Concert Hall.The very first person i saw was the charming John Suchet ( the ITN news anchor ) who appeared twice in successive years in the late nineties promoting biographies of Beethoven.These were wonderfully relaxed lunchtime engagements , yet highly informative occasions , including exclusive first time piano performances of recently unearthed Beethoven sonatas.

Most events are held in The Strathclyde Suite , a large windowless ante-room within the Concert Hall with a capacity of about 400.This particular event was held in the Main Concert Hall itself , with a Capacity not much short of 3,000.From what i could tell it was near enough a complete sell-out.Quite an achievement for one o'clock in the afternoon.

I have recently admired Michael Palin all the more as he made what must in the field of commercial future commissions , especially from the US , risky , brave and highly commendable trip to the Palestinian Literary Festival held in Ramallah and illegally Occupied East Jerusalem earlier this year , an event in which the Israeli Army showed their true merit by storming one of the functions pointing guns at organisers;guests and attendees.it seems the Israeli Army has caught the bug of never missing an opportunity to embarrass and show themselves of in full view of the Worlds glare.

We were perched on the second tier of the arena when Michael came onto the large sofa -to-sofa setting along with the interviewer.I noticed from my birds eye view he has a very full crown of hair , a lovely brown soft chestnut colour.Impressive for a gentleman of 66ish.

The conversation , itself , revealed what is pretty apparent in the diaries.Though the career of Palin can be seen as a seamless linear path of one success after another , the diaries reveal the anxieties; insecurities ; worries ; concerns and fears of a freelancer who perpetually finds himself facing a void every time a project ends.One constantly finds in the diaries the detach from the popularity of various Monty Python activities co-insiding with the lowest ebbs of inter-relations of the individual members as they are struggling with the job (or lack of jobs) in hand.For example the timelag from the making of the Holy Grail to it being a box office smash in about 18 months.When the film is at the height of its popularity we find the Python team on the point of break-up as they have run out of fresh ideas and find their are little or no takers of the projects they are trying to proffer.We also find that Python breaks bigtime onto the US market just at the point when the team are on the verge of total collapse caused by mistrust of each others commitments to the Python project.

Palins take on The Meaning of Life does reflect what one notices in the Film itself , after the glorious successes of The Holy Grail and extraordinary achievement of the Life of Brian which were due to the team working cohesively in what turned out to be single narrative continual bona-fide films , the estranged and territorial break-up of team working made The Meaning of Life into the disjointed series of sketches , albeit some very good ones , that marked the end of the road.Michael , himself , who was always the linkman in the team , the person all the members would talk to when they would not be talking to each other , said that the team probably stuck around two years more than they should and by the end all the innovation and freshness had gone stale.

Lastly Palin talked about his own venture into projects on his own , things really picked up when he stared in the Great railway Journeys series for the BBC, though Around the World in 80 Days really sky-rocket his career into the status he enjoys today.Apparently , though he was never told this at the time , he was 4th choice for the role , behind Alan Whicker and Noel Edmonds among others.