WHAT does the man who has done everything do next?

Python, globe trotter, writer, actor, author, film star, nation’s most loved man.

Now Michael Palin is hitting the stage with a one man solo tour which comes to Manchester in September and Liverpool in October.

So why has he made the decision now?

“Over the years I’ve done a lot of one-man shows, usually just for one evening either to raise money at a charity event or at a book festival.

“I’ve really quite enjoyed doing them. It’s a nice format and I like talking to a live audience, and with the diaries [Travelling To Work: Diaries 1988-1998] coming out in September I thought ‘What can we do that’s a little bit different to anything we’ve done before?’ “ Book publicity is a cutthroat business these days, with everyone trying to get their publicity to out-do someone else’s and all that. I thought ‘The thing I really enjoy is doing a show so rather than a one-night stand here and there let’s do a whole tour’. We’ve put 21 shows together and I can go right round the country and hopefully entertain audiences about the 25 years since we did Around The World In 80 Days.”

Next year marks the 50th anniversary for Palin in showbusiness. And it has already seen him to take part in a sell-out reunion with the Monty Python gang at London’t O2.

But what is his fondest memory?

“It’ll be the 50th anniversary next year, yes, and honestly my fondest memory is of Edinburgh in August and September 1964. I appeared in an Oxford University Revue with Terry Jones and others.

“It was the first time I’d actually been on a stage night after night to perform comedy, some of which I’d written myself, and it was such a great thrill to do that. I realised I could make audiences laugh. These weren’t just friends from university, these were audiences that had come up for the international festival. What happened at the Edinburgh Festival with the Oxford Revue was for me quite life-changing because for the first time I thought ‘Hey, the acting and the humour and all the things I enjoy most in life could possibly make me a living’.”

Since then he hit stardom with Python. And this year’s reunion tour has brought it all back.

“The original spirit in which these sketches were written and the reaction we had to them when they were first written – which was that they were very funny – all comes back.

“We couldn’t have done these shows if we didn’t believe in the material and if we didn’t think we could make the material funny again.

“So I don’t feel as though I’ve changed much at all and that’s a bit of a problem because I’m 71 and you can’t quite do all the things you thought you could do.

“ The real change over the years is that we’ve become famous.

“When we started the shows in 1969 and in fact all through three and a half series right up to 1973 we were not that well-known individually.

“Certainly there was very little talk about ‘the legendary Pythons’, ‘pushing back the barriers of comedy’ and all that sort of thing.

“All that has come much later and it makes you feel a little self-conscious.

“I think we have to try to, if you like, disregard all that stuff about what it all means and the heavy-duty PR and just enjoy ourselves because that is what it will make it work and that’s what people are coming to see.

“I’ve got to get back to my original Python, my inner Python.”

And now 50 years has almost past, what is next?

Could retirement every be on the agenda?

“No, I don’t think so. I always think ‘Retire from what?’ “My life and work are sort of intricately interwoven. I work at home every day. It’s not a feeling like my father had when he was 65 of ‘Great, I don’t have to go to the office and to meetings any more’.

“I’ll work until I drop and possibly afterwards, you know? A travel series set in Heaven, perhaps!”

Michael Palin, Travelling to Work Tour 1988-1998, takes place at Manchester Opera House on September 29 and Liverpool Echo Arena Auditorium on October 11.