Michael Palin’s recent travel documentaries for Channel 5 are some of the best work of his long career as a travel journalist and presenter. In 2018 he travelled across North Korea with two guides and a group of minders in tow, celebrating his 75^th birthday along the way. While in 2022 Palin travelled from Turkey, into and across Iraq. His new live show, From North Korea Into Iraq, which this writer saw at The Hexagon in Reading, is Palin’s live presentation of his recent adventures delivered with the aid of pictures, videos and a pointed stick.

First off, any thought that Palin might be passed his prime as performer worth seeing was quickly (perhaps self-consciously) dispelled as he gamely did a little gee-himself-up running dance as he entered the stage. At 79 Palin is spry and fit-looking, and with infectious enthusiasm he talked for just over two hours with some reference to notes, but no verbatim script, never loosing his place or his audience.

Although the presentation is essentially a two-hour lecture (Palin ended the show by saying “The geography lesson is over. You may go.”), Palin clearly realises that his delivery needs to be enlivened with jokes. After all, listening to someone talk at length is quite different from watching 60 minute episodes full of spectacular scenery. As such, there were plenty of light little gags along the way, for example, how a picture of the supreme North Korean leaders, both wearing glasses and resplendent smiles, looks like an advert for Spec Savers. There was also a pleasing, partial rendition of the classic Monty Python sketch, Cheese Shop. In fact, despite holding up a finger and saying “One career” at the beginning of the show, Palin quite happily digressed on another occasion and told the story of shooting the incredibly silly (and funny) Fish Slapping Dance. All of which would have appealed to those seeing Palin out of more than just a love of his many travel adventures.

Another facet of the presentation that makes it worth seeing as something beyond the Channel 5 shows, is the peek behind the scenes that Palin occasionally allows. Explaining his break with the BBC, he said that he knew they were losing interest in him when they reduced the number of episodes they wanted him to make, from 10, to 8, to 5, oh 3 will do, until finally he was being invited onto Strictly Come Dancing. He also told of his family’s understandable concern over him travelling to such unwelcoming places. Endearingly, he expressed his sadness at not being able to have any contact, or communication with his North Korean guides following his departure from their country, although he did leave one of them, a young North Korean woman with whom he developed a rapport, his panama hat to remember him by.

There are less jokes in the Iraq section. But, of course, humour is less easy to achieve when tragedy is so much nearer the surface. In one moving scene, shown both in the TV show and the presentation, Palin meets a group of smiling children who, years before, had been caught up in a pitch battle involving Isis which completely destroyed their town. Visibly shaken, Palin utters an expletive before gee-ing himself up and saying he must be more cheerful. This seems a perfect example of the Palin approach to life, but unfortunately somethings just aren’t cheerful. There are also several spectacular moments in the Iraq section of the talk, most notable perhaps is Palin walking up an ancient, and enormous minaret, which is pretty much a giant spiral staircase with a handrail on the inside and nothing but a sheer drop on the outside. (Did I mention that Palin is nearly 80). It is nerve chilling to watch, and complete proof that Palin is not too old for this sort of thing. Not yet, thankfully.

Hearing and seeing him talk with such energy for two hours is only further evidence of the man’s long and continuing youth.

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