Monty Python stars Michael Palin and Terry Jones were reunited yesterday at the Museum of Comedy in Holborn. They were the guests of comedy historian Robert Ross for a special recording of his podcast Robert Ross Requests The Pleasure.

Following a screening of their 1969 Python precursor The Complete and Utter History of Britain, Palin and Jones were on good form recalling their careers together from their early meeting at Oxford through to their reunion at the O2 Arena in London last year. 

Palin recalled that it was after The Complete and Utter History had aired that he received a call from John Cleese asking if he and Terry would like to collaborate with him on a project that was to become Python. To this day Palin still doesn’t recall why Cleese approached them. They all knew each other from working as writers on the Frost Report but, Palin suggested, Cleese could have just as easily asked Marty Feldman, Tim Brooke-Taylor or Barry Cryer.

The interview also contained a dig at the late David Frost. They praised the late satirist/interviewer for unearthing new talent, hoovering up Palin and co when they did a show in Edinburgh in 1964, but when they wrote for the Frost Report it was Frost’s name that dominated the credits, while the other writers’ names appeared so quickly you had to pay close attention to spot yourself.

It was all playful joshing though. Palin also recalled his feelings on meeting Terry Gilliam for the first time, seeing him looking cool, wearing a glamorous long coat with a glamorous girlfriend on his arm: “I hated him straight away.”

Yet somehow the different personalities of Python slotted together perfectly and made comedy history, even if it was all by accident. “You are looking for logic where there isn’t any,” said Palin, when Ross tried to work out how the disparate elements had come together. 

The podcast of Robert Ross Requests The Pleasure of Michael Palin and Terry Jones will be available in April.