Sir Michael Palin shares real reason he quit BBC

Palin was left ‘absolutely, desperately frustrated’ with the corporation

Monty Python star Sir Michael Palin has opened up about the real issues that led him to quit his long stint at the BBC.

The 81-year-old comedian and presenter also hosted a series of travel documentaries from 1989 to 2012, before quitting work with the broadcaster.

Since then he’s preferred to work with Channel 5, covering travel from Iraq to North Korea. His most recent work includes a three-part series where he travels through Nigeria.

Palin cited over-interference from the BBC as the reason he eventually left the corporation.

“There was the feeling that the BBC wanted to interfere a little more. They wanted to control it a little more,” he told Radio Times.

“They had this new way of presenting shows — which I would get absolutely, desperately frustrated with — where they would show, in the first five minutes, all the great moments of what was to come because this captured viewers.

“Otherwise, as soon as they see Michael Palin, they’ll switch off. The BBC were going in a different direction and presentation was going in a different direction.”

After Palin left the BBC in 2012, he said he “felt very let down” when the network’s editorial standards team upheld a viewer complaint that accused his New Europe series of oversimplifying the Balkan war.

Palin said the corporation were too involved in ways he did not appreciate (Getty)

Last year, the actor and writer shared the news that his wife of 57 years, Helen Gibbins, had died of kidney failure. However, he said he had “no great worries” about death, although he admitted he felt some guilt about travelling when she was ill.

The couple had met on a beach in Suffolk when they were teenagers, and Gibbins variously worked as a teacher, a therapist and a bereavement counsellor throughout her life.

Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain in June, Palin said: “It’s like you’re a unit, and suddenly you are not a unit any longer, and it’s a bit like losing a bit of a limb, you’re not quite sure where you are.”

He added: “I do hear her and she had a great sense of humour. Sometimes I will have done something and I’ll get back and tell her about it. Although she’s not there, I know her reply and it makes me smile.

The couple had three children and four grandchildren, and celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary just two-and-a-half weeks before her death.