While the star admits there were some 'gleaming moments' it wasn't all comedy gold
Monty Python's Flying Circus might be considered an institution of British comedy but one of its founding members has confessed that he thinks much of the show was "crap".
70-year-old Michael Palin says that while the show had iconic highlights such as the dead parrot sketch, he admits that a lot of other material was "not really that good".
"People forgive you the things that don't work. A lot of Python was crap, it really was," he told The Daily Telegraph. "We put stuff in there that was not really that good, but fortunately there were a couple of gleaming things that everyone remembers while they've forgotten the dross."
The comedian and writer is due to embark on a solo tour in September and October called Travelling to Work which will look back over his 50-year career. And while Palin says he will talk about his successes he will also focus on the "lowlights and cock-ups" in case it looked "rather as if you are gloating".
Michael Palin has admitted that not all of Monty Python's work was comedy gold (WENN)
"I'm very proud of the things I've done. There are a lot of things looking back which you would say were brilliant," he said, "but it's also about what's behind it and feeling of how you recover from things that didn't work so well."
As well as his solo tour, Palin will join his Monty Python co-stars for a sell out series of dates next year at London's O2, more than 30 years after their last major show together back in 1982.
Hinting that the group won't do another show for a while, Michael Palin told BBC Radio One's Greg James last week: "It'll probably be the last time we go on stage together again... until the next one. When we did our first tour we called it the First Farewell Tour, so you can't believe us at all. But seriously, there are no plans to do any more, we've all got other stuff to do. It'll be the last one for a very long time – probably 2050.
"It'll be quite a test of us old geezers, but we'll have medical attention, doctors and nurses will be there."
Looking forward to the shows, Palin continued: "It'll be fun... We've selected the material we're going to use. A lot of the rest of the thing is going to be production: we've got dancers, we've got songs, things that have to take place while we're all off doing our changes. We're all playing about ten different characters, and it takes time to change when you're 73."
