I REPORTED this week about Michael Palin coming to town to launch the latest special exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. No hardship there - I like Michael Palin. Everybody likes Michael Palin. It’s practically the law.

There’s literally nowhere on the face of the earth Michael Palin can go without people coming up and bothering him with the Dead Parrot sketch. You don’t need me to tell you that he is a legend.

Yesterday I was in the car with my grandad (73) and my sister (27), when the following conversation actually happened:

Grandad: “I saw your story about Michael Palin.”
Me: “Oh good.”
Grandad: “It wasn’t until you bought me one of his travel books I even knew he used to act and things as well.”
Me: “You didn’t… you didn’t know he was in Monty Python?”
Grandad: “No, not at all.”
Me: “You didn’t know he was in Monty Python?!”
Sister: “Neither did I actually.”
Me: “How could anybody not know that?!”
Sister: “I had no idea.”

Pushing down the instinctive reaction to fling myself out of the moving vehicle in dirty protest at two generations’ worth of lack of knowledge, I safely got to my destination and duly decided it couldn’t all be in vain - and that this was a job for Youtube. Here goes.

Where better to start. Nobody expects their loved ones to not know who Michael Palin is, kind of like nobody expects the Spanish inquisition:

The simple but effective art of the fish slapping dance:

One of many roles in Monty Python’s Life of Brian:

He even once gegged into an episode of Home and Away:

Don’t worry, Michael. Plenty of people still love you. Some a bit too much though – here’s an insanely painstaking array of relevant clips set to Justin Timberlake’s Sexyback:

Oh, and not to overlook the cultural aspect of things, the exhibition he opened, Art in the Age of Steam, is really very, very good.

• Post to:
•  del.icio.us
•  Digg
•  Newsvine
•  Nowpublic
•  Reddit