Nobody expected the Spanish Inquistion. Or Michael Palin playing a surfer in Home And Away…
The fictional world of Home And Away isn’t a place normally associated with legendary comedian, actor and globetrotter Michael Palin. Unlike its older rival Neighbours, the Australian soap hasn’t ceased to be, shuffled off this mortal coil or joined the choir invisible. In its 35-year history, it hasn’t revealed the meaning of life and none of its characters have ever thrown a slice of spam on the barbie. They appear to be poles apart. You would need to go around the world in a daze to expect their paths to cross and your chief reaction would be surprise. Yet there’s a ripper yarn to be told about the time the Monty Python star did something completely different and played a surfer in Summer Bay. (Graham Chapman’s Colonel: ‘Stop doing that, it’s getting silly.’)
OK. Palin ventured forth from London in 1995 to film his TV travel show Full Circle. The trip took 245 days and covered more than 50,000 miles. When the resulting series was broadcast in 1997, the sixth episode focused on his experiences in Australia and New Zealand. His final stop in Australia was Sydney, where he visited a Home And Away shoot on the Pacific Coast to investigate what made the country’s then booming soap opera industry so successful.
‘I found them short of an actor,’ Palin said in Full Circle, so he stepped in to play a wetsuitted English surfer. There was an insight into the production-line nature of the soap when he revealed that rehearsals for his scene lasted all of 15 seconds. Filming commenced and regular characters Marilyn and Donald were seen walking along the beach as Surfer – that’s how he’s credited – strode past on his way to the water and enquired about the presence of sharks. ‘I modelled the voice on Hugh Grant, the walk on John Cleese,’ said Palin.
Episode 1917 of Home And Away, featuring the cameo, was broadcast in May 1996 in Australia and shown later in the UK. Of course, it’s perfectly plausible that an actor had actually been taken ill or was unavailable on the day of filming. But if you were a producer on Home And Away you’d probably be happy to do anything – including feeding one of the cast to a passing Great White – in order to create a role for an international treasure like Michael Palin.
