Travelling Comedians

I've been luck enough to visit some of the places on Michael's trip in the last twenty years, but there are still many more places on my list that I'd love to visit. Various other travel programmes have come and gone since then, but none have quite lived up to this first journey that captured my imagination.

Following in Michael's footsteps were two more comedians that are currently taking us with us on their travels and I have to say that I had quite high hopes for these two.

Firstly Paul Merton travelled to India earlier this year. Now last year Channel Five took us with him as he explored China in the imaginatively titled Paul Merton In China. In that series Paul seemed very much a traveller out of his depth. In many places he seemed very nervous and hesitant to get involved in the world around him. On a second viewing he seemed a bit more relaxed, but even still I didn't think he'd be getting his passport out again in a hurry. I almost wondered if the whole series had been part of Channel Five's efforts to cash in on the Beijing Olympics and was therefore quite surprised to see posters at St Albans station advertising his latest series Paul Merton in India. I've always been fascinated by India as a country and want to visit, so was intrigued to tune in to the first edition.

Paul almost seemed like a completely different person to the one that had visited China. In India he seemed much more at ease with the world around him. The first programme showed him visiting a static aeroplane that allowed him to take a "flight" with some of the many Indians who have not flown in an aircraft before. Paul being a nervous flyer you wondered quite how he was going to cope with this experience, yet this seemed to be exactly his kind of thing. The emergency landing caused a few raised eyebrow, but Paul's tumble head over heals out of the aircraft was fantastically funny – a comedian back at his best.

The rest of the series has been equally fantastic and I'm just left wondering what a series like this is doing tucked away on Channel Five. A great shame in my eyes as it has definitely been one of the television highlights this autumn.

In contrast, Stephen Fry's trip around America has received a huge amount of press coverage and the BBC plugged the start of the series at every possible opportunity. Now I have to admit to being a bit fan of Fry's and love the QI
series that he chairs. I couldn't help that wonder though if he's taken off a bit of a large task though to try to visit all fifty states. Still, I looked forward to watching him drive around in his London cab. 

Unfortunately my fears were correct – covering an average of eight states in every one hour programme was just a bit too much. Although all of the content that was there was fascinating, some states were just rushed through with little more than a mention that he went there. I'm assuming that the DVD
released with the series probably only covers what was shown on screen, but I'm hoping that the accompanying book
will go into a bit more depth. I may have to seek it out this weekend it see if it is worth adding to my Christmas Wish List. In the meantime I might just concentrate on a nice letter to Mr Palin, asking if he'd be interested in packing his back and going on his travels once again!