"When "Around the World in 80 Days" Was first mentioned to me," "It was put to me in glowing terms that I was the only person who could do this," "That the BBC felt it was Going to be a very tough job," "Very hard, special qualifications Were needed - stamina, grit, wit, all this." "I was quite flattered about all that," "So I said I'd think about it." "I promised I'd ring the guy back In four days." "I thought about it for two minutes And rang back and said, "OK, i'll do it."" "I'd just done about eight films Back-to-back from 1980-1988" "And had just finished "A Fish Called Wanda"." "There was nothing of that standard And quality around," "So I thought, "Yeah, let's go and see The world", because I'd always wanted to." "Anyway, I said yes." "It was about halfway round, in Madras, With these great tankers not going anywhere," "When the director actually let on that I wasn't the first person they'd asked." "I was the fourth person on the list of people They'd wanted to present it." "There was Alan Whicker first And Miles Kington second" "And..." "Er..." "Noel Edmonds third." "So, there we are." "There were no rules to the game really" "When we planned "Around the World in 80 Days"," "Because nothing like that Had been done before." "A lot of it would have to be spontaneous," "In that the camera would follow me everywhere" "And I would be just seen doing the things That normal people do when they travel." "Making mistakes would be part of it." "There was no question Of editing out mistakes." "If I couldn't speak enough Arabic To get a ticket at a station in Cairo," "Then that was no good." "If I missed my footing on a ladder Getting on board ship, that was all in!" "There were no rules apart from "Follow me"," "But, obviously, we had to make contacts In the places we were going" "To see, for instance, Whether there could be a boat connection here," "Or if the railways ran across India still, What the timetables might be." "So we had to put the basic framework Or skeleton of the thing together" "Before I set off, so we wouldn't be Absolutely stuck." "But it all fell apart very quickly." "The first thing was the Orient Express Ended in Austria." "It was supposed to go to Venice, but a strike Meant we couldn't go through the Alps." "We had to immediately Improvise some solution." "At Jeddah, we found the boat We were going in had already sailed." "There was no other boat, no other way Of getting across Saudi Arabia and film it." "So, again, improvisation happened." "So, although we had the basics, They had to be revised as we went along," "Which kept a sense of thrill, excitement And nervous tension through most of it." "At the start of the journey, I was..." "Quite frankly, terrified." "Because..." "As I say, there was no..." "Er..." "Precedent for a journey like this." "All of us, in a sense, Were jumping off a cliff," "Hoping we'd make it work." "I'd never done a documentary Where I'd been followed by cameras." "I'd always had a script, or we'd improvised When doing "Monty Python"," "But basically, I knew what would be Happening each moment." "And..." "I was worried about How I'd survive the long journeys." "About stamina and all that sort of thing." "I felt I was quite old then." "I'm very old now." "I was 45 when I started and it was The first real long journey I'd done." "So, I thought, "How am I going to survive this?" ""Will anything I say be of the slightest Interest to anybody?" ""What will we see?" "How will it work?"" "The doubts always took over, As they do at the beginning." "Every journey I do, I still begin With all the doubts mounting up." "Then, somehow, once you start And once it's going," "And you're away from the context of home And comparing it with other programmes," "You're just off doing the journey And doing it your way," "Then it becomes easier." "You're so busy day-to-day filming That you don't worry." "The doubts slip away." "Phileas Fogg would have thought My Passepartout hopelessly inadequate." "For a start, I think there were five of them." "And none of them did my laundry Or made my food." "That's what Phileas Fogg Expected of Passepartout." "He'd have his shirt laid out on the bed In the morning," "With his cufflinks in and all that," "He'd have his glass of whisky at 6.00 And he'd have the food prepared for him." "He'd find girls for him And that sort of thing." "My Passepartout failed at this!" "All they did was work on the filming." "They did cameras and sound And I had to work on my own wardrobe." "It wasn't a real Passepartout, But as travelling companions - pretty good." "There were many moments when I thought, "This isn't going to work."" "They started very early on." "As i've said, the delays, Particularly the delay in Jeddah," "And the problem Of getting across Saudi Arabia," "That did seem, at one time, really insoluble," "Because the Saudis would not..." "Were adamant" "That we could not film in their country." "The boat had gone already." "Another boat had burnt out, So there seemed no way" "In which, in the next five days, We could get round Saudi Arabia." "We just had to work very hard on the Saudis," "Who eventually gave permission For myself and the director" "To drive across Saudi Arabia to Dubai, Providing we did no filming at all." "The rest of the crew Were allowed to fly to Dubai." "I was the only one actually Supposed to do it all by land." "At least, if I travelled..." "If I didn't go into the air," "We could keep the sort of rules..." "Right." "So, that's how we did it in the end." "But that took days off us." "Then we were on a dhow from Dubai, Which was not the original plan." "We were booked on a dhow from Oman." "We'd got the right sort of dhow." "The dhow we got in Dubai Was quite by chance." "It had no radio, no radar." "It was just a ship Carrying bags of nuts across to Bombay." "There was no way of speeding it up." "It went at 4-5 knots for seven days." "We were thinking, "We've a schedule to keep!"" "And the days went on, the sun went down, Went up, went down, went up for seven days." "And I remember at one time, we were Lying out on the deck of the dhow," "And there was nowhere to sit on the dhow, Just lay on sacks," "And our sound man was very interested In..." "Flight schedules " "He knew where any plane Was going anywhere, any time " "And I remember him looking up one day, Day Five, or something," "And a plane flew over, travelling east." "He said, "That'll be the 7.43 Heathrow To Bombay." ""It'll be in Bombay In an hour and 20 minutes." ""We'll be in Bombay in three days!"" "That was the difference that suddenly Came home to me, and I felt miserable." "So, that went wrong, And the other real difficult area" "Was after we had caught up On the Pacific leg of the journey." "We took these big container ships which, Though they don't look very beautiful," "They are quite fast, Much faster than any steamships" "That would have been around In Phileas Fogg's time." "So we did that journey in 12 days, As opposed to about 14 or 15." "We'd caught up and we got self-confident." "We decided, as we took this wonderful Train journey across America," "The landscape looked sparkling And pristine and lovely," "We'd stop in the Rockies and I'd do A balloon sequence and dog sledding." "And that was fine, until suddenly we realised We'd used up a valuable extra day" "And we got to New York And found that, once again," "A boat we wanted to use Had sailed ahead of us." "We got on this boat in New York knowing That everything had to go absolutely right." "That boat had to get across the Atlantic To the UK without any problems." "A storm, any problem with the engines, Anything like that would ruin our chances." "So, the last ten days went by In a state of mild panic." "At the very end, it was only..." "The very last day, the 79th day..." "The seventh hour of the 79th day" "That we got home, so it was very tight." "Part of the problem with the journey because The speed of movement was the essence" "Was that you saw wonderful parts of the world And then were whisked off for the next train!" "There were certain places, particularly Singapore..." "I never even saw Singapore!" "Because we were running late on the freighter That had brought us across the Bay of Bengal," "We had to make a ship-to-ship transfer In the middle of the night." "I never saw Singapore." "Chicago, a lovely city I've got to know better since," "I just saw the station." "I just rushed from one platform to another." "New York, too." "As soon as we got into New York..." "Could have stayed a week, We were there a few hours." "We found a boat sailing across the Atlantic Later that night." "I just had to get a taxi From Grand Central Station to Newark Docks." "Not a fare they usually take in New York," "A great deal of confusion Caused to the driver," "But that was my four hours in New York." "So, yes, occasionally you had to give up The chance to see wonderful places," "In order to complete the journey on time." "A number of places we went to Have become places I now visit quite often." "Venice is a city I'm very fond of." "I've been back there many times And have filmed there." "Similarly, Cairo, we've been through On one of the other journeys." "It intersected our "Pole to Pole" journey." "The "Pole to Pole" intersected the "Around The World in 80 Days" journey at Cairo." "So I got to know Cairo well, met up With the same people who had helped us." "I've been back to Japan on "Full Circle"." "So I spent more time in Tokyo that I had just Glimpsed in "Around the World in 80 Days"." "Chicago is another place That I really got to know quite well." "I don't deliberately go back over the ground," "Although I'd love to meet Some of the people again." "I would love to meet The crew of Gujarati Indians" "Who took me, took us, indeed, Across the Persian Gulf," "The Indian Ocean to Bombay." "They were tremendous." "Because their boat Was very simple, very basic," "They didn't have much room for us." "They shared their food with us, they looked After us, made sure that we got there." "It's a tricky journey." "And a great relationship grew up Whilst we were all on the boat together," "In a way that doesn't happen in real life." "We come from different backgrounds, But there it worked." "I'd love to go back" "And see them again." "That would be terrific." "Maybe I will when I stop travelling." "I never knew what to expect From the series in the end." "The doubts I had at the beginning " "This hasn't been done before, I've never done anything like it before," "I'm not an expert on travel, politics, Economy, countryside, nature, whatever " "These doubts remained with me As we put it together." "I could see that certain sequences Worked quite well," "But it just tended to be me getting mad, "Oh, we're stuck here!" sort of thing." "And complaining because I had a stomach Ache and hadn't slept all night." "Who wants to hear this sort of stuff, really?" "But we put it together..." "As best we could." "We assembled what we thought Was a good shape for the material." "An interesting thing happened in the editing." "We had been commissioned by the BBC To make six 50-minute programmes." "We had two editors And a man called Dave Thomas" "Had the job of editing..." "I think the third programme," "Which was going to be Dubai through India To Madras and possibly even to Singapore." "Dave looked at it and said, "This bit on the dhow," ""I'm supposed to get this down To about ten minutes," ""but I just think there's too much there." "I think it should be longer."" "The director said, "How much longer?" So he said, "Give me a couple of days with it."" "Dave went away and edited it" "In the old-fashioned way where you actually Cut film and stuck it together." "And he came back with a finished version." ""How long is it, Dave?" He said, "It runs 45 minutes."" ""45 minutes!" "That's going to throw us completely!"" "Then we looked at it and realised" "That he had pinpointed What was good about that sequence." "It was that time passed very slowly." "If you cut it too tight, It looked like "Oh, off Michael goes!"" "You missed the developing relationship," "You missed the feeling that we just couldn't Go any faster than seven knots," "You missed the thing about catching Fish in the sea, about not feeling well," "All the days going by on a journey Which should have an urgency." "That's what made it good." "We said, "It's terrific, we'll go back to the BBC."" "We went back And asked for an extra 50 minutes." "It's extraordinary how a major broadcasting Company were not at all grateful." ""We said six in the contract, What do you mean giving us seven?"" ""Well, one sequence really does work well At the greater length."" "We won our battle and everyone Who has seen it says actually..." "Well, not everyone, but for most people, It's their favourite episode." "It's a triumph for Dave Thomas, our editor, Now retired and growing marrows in Bristol." "He sold that to us and that's how we got Seven instead of six episodes." "Did we expect the series To be as popular as it was?" "And it went From 7.8 million in the first episode" "To about 12... 12.5 million saw the last one." "Of course we didn't." "We didn't know How it would work at all." "There was no precedent, Nothing to compare it to." "Interestingly enough, I kind of realised Something rather special was happening" "After the third episode went out." "The reason was That I had been..." "Asked to do a book signing" "At Stanfords big map shop in London." "It was the first signing for The "Around the World in 80 Days" book." "The book was late getting into the shops, But anyway, I was due to go there at 12.30." "It was the morning After the dhow episode went out" "And the shop rang me and said, "Could you come earlier?"" "I said, "What do you mean?" They said, "At 9.30?" ""It's just that we've had so many orders, There's a queue already there" ""and we'd like you to start signing As soon as possible!"" "It was just an amazing day." "I realised that something had caught The popular imagination." "I was there by about 10.00 And there were indeed people queuing up." "The whole shop had come to a halt." "The manager was humping books on trolleys" "And looking ashen faced!" "We signed and then took a break at lunchtime And signed more in the afternoon." "I sort of realised That after that third episode," "People realised it was something Different from what they'd seen before." "The first one was more traditional And the critics were pooh-poohing about it." ""It's just another chance for someone To go on a luxury train ride", and all that." "Wonderful ones said, "It'll be last of These programmes Michael Palin will make!"" "Ooh, I love things like that!" "And maybe they were right, but anyway..." "By the third one, I think..." "And the second One, with the Saudi Arabia stuff, as well," "I think people realised this was something Unusual and different." "But, no, we never expected that." "Certainly never expected to repeat it With any programmes after it." "I thought once we'd done it, that was that." "But it developed a style of travelling You could apply to other parts of the world," "Even without the time constraint." "But for many people, It is the one they know best of all" "And it's the one where there Is an element of a competition, a race," "And..." "As a race, it was pretty exciting."