Palin’s reminiscences were a sweet affair, but what a shame he was unable to revisit the people and places he came across more than 30 years ago
Travelling by dhow from Dubai to Mumbai, Michael Palin gently placed some headphones over a sailor’s ears. It was 1988 and the former Monty Python star was reprising Phileas Fogg’s journey in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. In those scarcely believable times, Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, Dubai’s skyscrapers were unbuilt, Hong Kong was British, the cold war was not quite over, TV adventurers accessorised long socks with shorts, and there was this little thing called a Walkman, into which you put tapes.
Palin pushed the play button and, unheard by us, Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Shuffle kicked into the man’s brain with surprising results. Can you do a Middle Eastern hand jive to the Boss while rising and falling on a tiny craft in the Persian Gulf? Me neither, but this guy could.
