Sir Michael Palin regrets leaving wife Helen Gibbins behind while travelling world for work

Monty Python star and travel show legend, Sir Michael Palin, has spoken of his sorrow and regret and having left wife, Helen Gibbins, behind while he travelled the world for his work. The pair were married for 57 years before Helen passed away in May last year after suffering kidney failure.

Now, 81-year-old Palin has revealed he "perhaps" regrets the later series of his legendary travel shows, which meant Helen - who suffered chronic pain for several years before developing kidney failure - was left alone.

“I don’t have regrets really. Perhaps towards the end, when I was doing the later travel journeys like North Korea,” he said. “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."

The pair had three children – Thomas, William and Rachel – and at the time, the comic legend was making documentaries about North Korea and Iraq for Channel 5, having left the BBC in 2012. He has also travelled to Brazil, the Sahara, Nigeria, and other destinations, for his acclaimed travel shows.

The couple spent more than five decades together having met on a Suffolk beach when they were teenagers. Helen had worked as a teacher, a therapist and a bereavement counsellor throughout her life, with Palin later fictionalising their first encounter in 1987 TV drama, East of Ipswich.

“Her death is an indescribable loss... she was the bedrock of my life," he said when she passed away. "Her quietly wise judgement informed all my decisions and her humour and practical good sense was at the heart of our life together."

As well as their children, the couple had four grandchildren, and celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary just two-and-a-half weeks before Helen died. Now, in new book, There and Back, Palin revisits memories from his own written diaries, which he says 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.”