Sir Michael Palin stopped making travel shows for BBC due to health and safety frustrations

OHMYGOSSIP — Sir Michael Palin stopped making travel documentaries for the BBC as he became exasperated with the broadcaster’s obsession with health and safety.
The 81-year-old star made programmes for the channel from 1989 until 2012 but says the relationship was “exhausted” as red tape threatened to turn his travelogues into a “theme park”.
Michael said at the Cheltenham Literature Festival: “They want you to wear a helmet just to cross the road, or while riding an elephant. Unfortunately if you do that it looks as if you are in a theme park.
“There was the feeling that the BBC wanted to interfere a little more, they wanted to control it a little more.”
Michael recently explained that he was also irked by the way in which the BBC “presented” the programmes to viewers.
He said: “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 was going in a different direction, and presentation was going in a different direction.”
The ‘Monty Python’ star has since worked with Channel 5 for programmes in North Korea, Iraq and Nigeria but confessed last year that his body was getting “rusty”.
Palin told the ‘Headliners’ podcast: “Your body gets rusty like a piece of old machinery that’s done you quite well over the years but then a couple of screws fall off and a door falls off and that’s it.
“Fortunately, I don’t have any bits that have fallen off so far. I’m enjoying being 80, but at 80 you are old.
“When you get (to 80) you feel pleased you can still get out of a chair unaided.”

Source: VacationHunter.Online

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