Monty Python star Sir Michael Palin confessed while he didn’t have many regrets in his life, there was one exception.
Can reveal the legendary actor deserted his dying wife Helen to film a travel docuseries.
Palin, 81, reflected on the “difficult” time period when Helen, the mother of his three adult children, health took a downward turn while he jetted across the globe.
At the time, Helen had been suffering from a chronic illness for several years before developing kidney failure.
While she battled kidney failure, Palin traveled around the world filming a Channel 5 documentary series about North Korea and Iraq.
Helen later died at Marie Curie Hospice in north London on May 2, 2023.
Palin recalled: “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.
He continued: “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.”
The Life of Brian star recently admitted his late wife’s clothes were still hanging “in the cupboard” because they make him feel like she’s “still here”.
Palin added he enjoys seeing Helen’s belongings around their home because they remind him of the great times they shared together – and was a reason he would never move.
On the possibility of leaving the home they shared together, he added: “I don’t feel that way – at the moment, anyway. Everything around me has a story or something that reminds me of time we spent together, not in a maudlin way.
“Just they are the props of your life. Get rid of all those props and I’d be in a different play, playing a different character. And I don’t want to do that.
He continued: “I know it seems odd, but I carry on as though Helen is still here. Her clothes are still in the cupboards. I don’t want to change my life, because I feel she wouldn’t want that either. It’s still a nice house to come back to. I feel her presence here.”
Palin and Helen first met when they were 16-years-old. They later reunited at Oxford University and got hitched when they were 22-years-old.
While reflecting on their paths crossing again at university, Palin said: “You can see fate actually tightening the screws on us very hard at that time.”
The couple were married from 1966 until Helen’s death in 2023.
