‘Not a Nice Man at All’

LAHORE

The Lahore Literary Festival proved to be a mega event with a highly significant level of attendance by art buffs, book lovers and the general public despite terrorism threats.

Michael Palin, who is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter, and one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and later made a number of travel documentaries, spoke at the inaugural session, titled ‘Not a Nice Man at All’. 

Monty Python is one of the most famous comedy troupes who made mark with their sketch comedy series, Monty Python’s Flying Circus in 1969. Later, the group produced classic comedy features including Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) and Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982) among others.

Michael threw  light on Palin’s life and youth. He also shared his fascination with films and comedy from an early age. Love for Jerry Lewis, Elvis and radio comedy and how the absurd sort of things fascinated him in a post-war Britain. 

 From here the conversation moves on to Monty Python and the term Python-esque. Carried from the previous point Palin discusseed his love for things “not having a point.”

Then the conversation moved to the ridiculousness of human behaviour and that Python became so popular globally because it did not try to impose anything on anyone.

Donald Trump featured in the talk, and how satire was a medium even more relevant today than ever before due to the fact that it was a universal coping method for people. Palin was generally very engaging with the crowd, retelling personal tid-bits from Python as well as his experiences as a novelist. Very entertaining for the crowd as he regularly joked around talking about Terry Jones and Spike Milligan.