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Washington Bureau Chief
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.
When announcing Gibbins’ passing, Palin said: “Her death is an indescribable loss... she was the bedrock of my life. Her quietly wise judgement informed all my decisions and her humour and practical good sense was at the heart of our life together.”
The couple had three children and four grandchildren, and celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary just two-and-a-half weeks before her death.
Palin has released a new book, There and Back, in which he revisits memories from his own written diaries. In it, he said documenting events in his diaries helped him cope with dealing with the emotional toll of his wife’s health issues.
He said: “Helen was ill for a couple of years, so it wasn’t a sudden death, and I was helping her and caring for her through a lot of pain. Writing this down helped me to deal with it. I needed to remember all that.”
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