Sir Michael Palin has revealed his regrets about leaving his late wife Helen Gibbins at home while she was unwell to make his travel documentaries. The 81-year-old Monty Python star and travel documentarian announced in May 2023 that his wife of 57 years had died of kidney failure. Gibbons, mother to their three children – Thomas, William and Rachel – had been suffering from chronic pain for several years before developing kidney failure.
Speaking about his regrets, Palin reflected: “I don’t have regrets really. Perhaps towards the end, when I was doing the later travel journeys like North Korea.” “Helen was then less well, less good at looking after herself, unfortunately, and that was a slightly difficult time.
” “I don’t think she particularly wanted me to go away then, but she knew that my interest in travel and other people was very deep-seated, it wasn’t because I wanted to get away from home – it wasn’t that at all.” At the time, Palin was making travel documentaries about North Korea and Iraq for Channel 5 after he left the BBC in 2012. Palin has also travelled to Brazil, the Sahara, Nigeria, and other destinations, for his travel documentaries.
The presenter and Gibbins had met on a beach in Suffolk when they were teenagers . She had variously worked as a teacher, a therapist and a bereavement counsellor throughout her life. Palin later fictionalised their first encounter in a 1987 TV drama for the BBC titled East of Ipswich.
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