If Michael Palin hadn’t got into Oxford, British television, and comedy as we know it, would have been a very different story.

“It was there that I realised there was something else I could do apart from look at books and go to lectures, and that I could be creative,” he says.

“Monty Python was the creation of six writer/actors who learned their craft at university and Oxford was definitely the turning point. It was a great time of opportunity and there was no one there saying ’you really ought to work harder at your modern history’,” the 66- year-old laughs.

Thankfully, Palin did gain a place at Brasenose College in 1962, got into acting, specialised in comedy, and knew, before he left, that he’d found his niche. It was here that he met Terry Jones, where he started doing comedy sketches, and where he began charging people to come and see him. “Yes, that was a step up, charging people to watch,” he laughs. “even if it was only £2 a night.”

A friend encouraged him to start writing and performing, and before he knew it he was performing cabaret at the university Conservative Club’s Christmas parties. “It was acting in a way I had never expected,” he remembers. “Because when I arrived at Oxford it was all rather dazzling and wonderful, and yet at the same time you couldn’t help being nervous about how you would get on because we weren’t in the dramatic establishment at Oxford University.

“As comic writers we were outsiders, and there was definitely a hierarchy. The in-crowd were intimidating and all had heavy-lidded eyes and drank coffee in the Kemp.”

It was when Palin was selected to be in the Oxford Revue group at the Edinburgh Festival that things got serious. “Well there was a glimmer of hope, because it wasn’t only fellow students but all sorts of people from all over the world paying to come and see us,” he says. “And they really seemed to love the show. That was when I thought ‘I could do well out of this’.”

So how responsible was he for the new approach to British comedy? “Well in the 60s Oxford and Cambridge graduates were appearing on mainstream TV rather than just going into the foreign office – look at Cook and Moore. It was all beginning to change and we were right there,” he says excitedly. “I was just incredibly lucky.

“That’s why Monty Python was really born at university because we all learned to be involved in something creative and we had bogus academic qualities to talk about, like Proust in the middle of a sketch.”

After the Oxford Revue came a slot doing sketches on a TV pop programme and from there came the Frost show That Was The Day That Was where he met the rest of the Pythons.The rest, as they say, is history.

Is this what Palin will be talking about when he comes to do his talk at the Oxford Playhouse on Monday then? “Yes, that and the progression of a Sheffield schoolboy to Oxford and beyond, as well as specific memories of my experiences of The Playhouse, which is a great venue,” he says.

And is the publishing of his second volume of diaries this week coincidental then? “Yes it is actually. And I think people quite like the small details of one’s life, and finding out more about someone. It broadens the vision of the reader. And I don’t mind including the more personal details, that’s what makes people fascinating.

“And people think they know me anyway. Viewers of my travel programmes have often said that they feel like they are travelling with a friend,” he smiles. And that of course is Palin’s best quality. He is a champion of the people.

Michael Palin is telling us about The First Forthy-Five Years at The Oxford Playhouse on Monday in aid of Oxford Playhouse’s 70th Anniversary Campaign to raise £1m to set the stage for the future.

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