Stop all the clocks

With controls in place I wouldn't have been able to do my silly press-ups

My colleague Simon Calder, himself a notable travel broadcaster, today praises Michael Palin for being the best in the business

'I played a piano while Arthur Mullard smashed it up'

You won't find hordes of walkers swarming over the Queyras Alps, even in August, says Jeremy Laurance. The air is clear and the slopes deserted. It is France as it used to be...

For his latest book, Michael Palin undertook a hair-raising journey into the Himalayas. He tells Sue Gaisford about the physical - and emotional - peaks he had to scale

Monty Python's comical composer Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson always felt the sheds got in the way of the art. But yesterday at the Victoria and Albert Museum the humble garden structure became the art.

Sir: Over the coming weeks, the Government will decide its response to the Davies Report on the funding of the BBC. It is a critical moment not just for the BBC, but for the future of broadcasting in this country.

`This book is not a new one; it previously appeared as `Play the Mandolin like Benito Mussolini!''

THE DEPICTION of a small community slipping loose from its moral moorings in times of war is not new, be it the sinister self-righteousness of Max Frish's Andorra or Michael Palin's pig pandemonium in A Private Function. Christopher William Hill's new play places this moral dilapidation against the backdrop of the tiny Cornish village of St Melor in the back- against-the-wall days of 1941.

David Aaronovitch on the glaring omissions from the autumn TV schedules as the BBC braces itself for the digital onslaught

Dark Knights and Holy Fools: The Art and Films of Terry Gilliam by Bob McCabe Orion pounds 20

On 17 August 1979, Monty Python's Life of Brian was released in the US. The satirical film told the story of a man (Graham Chapman), born in the stable next door to Jesus, who lives 33 unremarkable years before being mistaken for a messiah and sentenced to "cwucifixion" by the Roman governor (Michael Palin). John Cleese played a pedantic Roman centurion and a pedantic Judean terrorist leader; director Terry Jones was Brian's screeching mother; Eric Idle leapt around saying "only joking" a lot.