Monty Python star Michael Palin's modest thoughts on mortality as he opens up on sad death of wife

Sir Michael Palin says he doesn't worry about death too much
-Credit: (Image: PA)


Sir Michael Palin has revealed his thoughts on death after his beloved wife died in recent years.

The comedian has revealed he doesn't worry about it too much as 'it's going to happen sometime soon' anyway.

When probed about his own mortality, he said: "I’m in my eighties and lots of people don’t make it there. So I don’t have any great worries about death. I mean, it’s going to happen sometime soon, reports the Mirror.

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"I hear people say Euston station works are going to be finished in 2033 and think, ‘Oh, I won’t be around then.’ But I’ve got so many interests — either books I’m researching or future travel series — which make me forget about mortality.”

The TV travel host is releasing a book of his diaries later this month titled 'There and Back'. In a promotional interview with The Times, he heartbreakingly admitted that his late wife's clothes are still hanging in their wardrobe more than a year after he death as he is keen to carry on as if she is "still here".

The 81-year-old added that he always loved the "sort of undramatic steadiness" of their relationship and whilst he does not want to move home he finds some things difficult remaining in their London home.

He said: “It’s very odd, not having her here. But that’s not just about travel. It’s about coming back from a night at the theatre or dinner and the first thing I want is to tell Helen, ‘That was crap,’ or, ‘That was wonderful.’ I still feel quite bereft, because it’s the little things. The people we knew over such a long period whom I can’t talk about now to her.

"I still find that very difficult. But there we are …”

It seems there is a slim chance Palin will try to find companionship with anyone else. And he added: "I shared my life with someone for so long that I find it impossible to think of sharing it in the same way with anyone else again.

So in a way, I’m sort of freer.”

Sir Michael met his wife whilst holidaying in the seaside town of Southwold, Suffolk, and later fictionalised the encounter in a 1987 TV drama for the BBC titled East Of Ipswich.

The pair had three children and four grandchildren and celebrated their wedding anniversary just two-and-a-half weeks before her death in May last year. She died after suffering from chronic pain and kidney failure.

In October last year, Palin spoke of feeling "lopsided" and without a "rudder" after his wife's death.

At the time he said: "We were together for a very long time. We were married for 57 years and I met her before that so more than two thirds of my life was spent with her. And so you form a kind of unit.

"You don't realise that until someone's gone and then it's slightly lopsided, like something tips over, and your rudder goes.

"You end up thinking it was just me but I need my partner there to sort of keep me on the straight and narrow.

"It's not the great things that you've said, very often a lot of things that are unsaid because if you know somebody really, really well, you don't have to sort of analyse everything or say everything, you just know the way they will feel. So I had to get adjusted to that."

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