CHRISTOPHER STEVENS on Michael Palin in Venezuela: With his boyish enthusiasm, Palin's like an octogenarian Just William!
Michael Palin in Venezuela (Ch5)
Drenched to the skin, standing in a cave behind a waterfall on the edge of the Amazon forest, Michael Palin is having the time of his life.
'I'm 81, I shouldn't be here,' he bellows, as millions of tons of water crash down just a few yards in front of him. 'I should be in bed.'
The man who once tried to sell John Cleese a dead parrot, in a timeless Monty Python sketch, is now Britain's best-loved traveller.
It's more than 35 years since he embarked on a journey Around The World In 80 Days for the Beeb, and far from showing any signs of settling down, his taste for adventure seems to be wilder than ever.
Last year he was in Lagos, Africa's most densely populated city, where the crime rate is off the scale: 'Not for the fainthearted,' he declared. 'It's like having 3,000 volts put through you.'
Michael Palin In Venezuela sees him in Caracas: 'The most deadly city in the world... there's an undercurrent of threat which is quite sinister,' he said, venturing into the Petare barrios or slums piled precariously up the suburban mountainsides.
Drenched to the skin, standing in a cave behind a waterfall on the edge of the Amazon forest, Michael Palin (above) is having the time of his life
The man who once tried to sell John Cleese a dead parrot, in a timeless Monty Python sketch, is now Britain's best-loved traveller
Michael Palin In Venezuela sees him in Caracas, where he says there is 'an undercurrent of threat which is quite sinister'
He needn't have worried. Wherever he goes, he is protected by the Palin charm. Stopping off at one of the brick-built, one-room houses, he met a woman caring for her three-year-old nephew.
The little boy's mother fled the country when Venezuela's economic collapse led to widespread starvation, and she now lives as an illegal immigrant in Florida.
Within five minutes, Michael had befriended the shy child, brought his auntie to blushes with compliments, and was chatting away via videophone to the absent mother.
What makes his travelogues so wonderfully watchable is his complete lack of cant. There's no handwringing over poverty, or guilt about his Western privileges. He takes the world exactly as it is, marvelling at its injustices and enjoying its delights
A comic-book celebrating Venezuela's narcissistic dictator Nicolas Maduro particularly tickled him. Its title was SuperBigote... which translates as 'Super Moustache'.
The people he meets respond to his shameless curiosity. 'Are Venezuelans good lovers?' he asked a woman called Valentina, before admitting he wouldn't put such a question to a stranger in England.
'Here, I'm a dummy foreigner, and they can say anything they want.'
It helps too that he's remarkably athletic, not just for a chap in his 80s but for practically any age. Visiting that cave at the Salto El Sapo falls, he bounded up stone steps that made my own knees creak just at the sight of them.
Then a helicopter took him right to the base of the Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall, where he splashed about in the shallows like a boy looking for minnows.
He's a sort of octogenarian Just William.
'Now I've seen it all,' he crowed happily. But that won't stop him wanting to see more.
