Michael Palin

Palin was born in 1943, in Ranmoor, Sheffield, the second child and only son of Edward Moreton Palin and Mary Rachel Lockhart. His father was a Shrewsbury and Cambridge-educated engineer working for a steel firm. His maternal grandfather, Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Lockhart Ovey, DSO, was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1927.

Palin was educated at Birkdale School in Sheffield and later (like his father) at Shrewsbury School. His sister Angela was nine years his senior; despite the age gap, the two had a close relationship until her suicide in 1987. The Palin family has ancestral roots in Letterkenny, County Donegal. His great-grandmother fled to America from the Irish Famine and was adopted by a wealthy American family.

When he was five years old, Palin had his first acting experience at Birkdale, playing Martha Cratchit in a school performance of A Christmas Carol. At the age of 10, still interested in acting, he made a comedy monologue and read a Shakespeare play to his mother while playing all the parts.

After leaving Shrewsbury School in 1962, Palin went on to read modern history at Brasenose College, Oxford. With fellow student Robert Hewison he performed and wrote, for the first time, comedy material at a university Christmas party. Terry Jones, also a student at Oxford, saw that performance and began writing with Hewison and Palin. That year Palin joined the Brightside and Carbrook Co-operative Society Players and first gained fame when he won an acting award at a Co-op drama festival. He also performed and wrote in the Oxford Revue (called the Et ceteras) with Jones.

Early career

After finishing university in 1965, Palin became a presenter on a comedy pop show called Now! for the television contractor Television Wales and the West. At the same time, Palin was contacted by Jones, who had left university a year earlier, to help with writing a theatrical documentary about sex through the ages. Although this project was eventually abandoned, it brought Palin and Jones together as a writing duo and led them to write comedy for various BBC programmes, such as The Ken Dodd Show, The Billy Cotton Bandshow, and The Illustrated Weekly Hudd. They collaborated in writing lyrics for an album by Barry Booth called Diversions. They were also in the team of writers working for The Frost Report, whose other members included Frank Muir, Barry Cryer, Marty Feldman, Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett, Dick Vosburgh and future Monty Python members Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Eric Idle.

Although the members of Monty Python had already encountered each other over the years, The Frost Report was the first time all the British members of Monty Python (its sixth member, Terry Gilliam, was at that time an American citizen) worked together. During the run of The Frost Report the Palin/Jones team contributed material to two shows starring John Bird: The Late Show and A Series of Birds. For A Series of Birds the Palin/Jones team had their first experience of writing narrative instead of the short sketches they were accustomed to conceiving.

Following The Frost Report the Palin/Jones team worked both as actors and writers on the show Twice a Fortnight with Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Jonathan Lynn, and the successful children's comedy show Do Not Adjust Your Set with Idle and David Jason. The show also featured musical numbers by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, including future Monty Python musical collaborator Neil Innes. The animations for Do Not Adjust Your Set were made by Terry Gilliam. Eager to work with Palin sans Jones, Cleese later asked him to perform in How to Irritate People together with Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor. The Palin/Jones team were reunited for The Complete and Utter History of Britain.

In 1966, Palin married Helen Gibbins (born October 1942), whom he first met in 1959 on holiday in Southwold in Suffolk. This meeting was later fictionalised in Palin's teleplay for the 1987 BBC television drama East of Ipswich. Their marriage lasted for 57 years, until Helen's death from kidney failure on 2 May 2023.

Palin has three adult children: Thomas (born 1969), William (born 1970), and Rachel (born 1975); he also has four grandchildren. Rachel is a BBC TV director, whose work includes MasterChef: The Professionals. William is Director of Conservation at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, London, and oversaw the 2018–19 restoration of the Painted Hall. A photograph of William as a baby briefly appeared in Monty Python and the Holy Grail as "Sir Not-appearing-in-this-film". Theatre designer Jeremy Herbert is a nephew.

Palin describes his religious belief as "agnostic with doubts". He has lived in Gospel Oak, London, since the 1960s.

Palin is a supporter of both Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday, holding aloft a trophy whilst shouting the club's name while in Venice shooting Around the World in 80 Days. He has also followed the fortunes of Stenhousemuir F.C.

On turning 80, Palin said

Eighty is a weird land to be in. People say to you "you're a very young 70". No one ever says "you're a very young 80".

In October 2026, Palin fractured three ribs and his pelvis in a fall in his bathroom. He cancelled his promotional tour for the book of Michael Palin in the Philippines and any other planned events.

Palin assisted Campaign for Better Transport and others with campaigns on sustainable transport, particularly those relating to urban areas, and has been president of the campaign since 1986.

Palin has been a long-time supporter of the urban tree charity, Trees for Cities, and helped plant their one millionth tree outside St Thomas' Hospital in London. He also launched the charity's 'Edible Playground' at Carlton Primary School in 2015 after helping to raise funds for the project, which greens inner city school playgrounds and provides children with food growing opportunities.

On 2 January 2011, he became the first person to sign the UK-based Campaign for Better Transport's Fair Fares Now campaign. In July 2015, he signed an open letter and gave an interview to support "a strong BBC at the centre of British life" at a time when the government was reviewing the corporation's size and activities.

In July 2010, Palin sent a message of support for the Dongria Kondh tribe of India, who were resisting mining on their land by the company Vedanta Resources. Palin said, "I've been to the Nyamgiri Hills in Orissa and seen the forces of money and power that Vedanta Resources have arrayed against a people who have occupied their land for thousands of years, who husband the forest sustainably and make no great demands on the state or the government. The tribe I visited simply want to carry on living in the villages that they and their ancestors have always lived in."

Palin is a longstanding Vice President of the National Churches Trust.

Palin is a co-founder of The Michael Palin Centre for Stammering. When it opened in 1993 Palin became Vice President of Action for Stammering Children. Palin's awareness and understanding of stammering stemmed from his father’s experience as a person who stammers. Over the years Palin has provided support and connection to young people and families of people who stammer.