Still brimful of boyish energy at 83, Sir Michael isn't ready to play it safe: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Michael Palin In The Philippines

Michael Palin In The Philippines (Channel 5) 

Rating:

Michael Palin has tasted some stomach-churning delicacies on his travels. 

In Guangzhou, China, filming Around The World In 80 Days in 1988, he tucked into shredded cobra, and drank a liqueur made from its gall bladder.

He's eaten fried spiders in Mexico, giant land snails in Nigeria and camel liver in Algeria. 

But he drew the line, on Michael Palin In The Philippines, at pagpag.

Sold from street stalls, pagpag is 'recycled' chicken, scavenged from bins behind fast food restaurants. 

It's anything the patrons left on their plates, newly scraped off the bone and reheated. 

Sir Michael bought two bags, but didn't pretend to sample it.

Now 83, he's as brimful of boyish energy and wry enjoyment as ever. Watching children leaping off a sea wall into the docks, he was itching to join in. 

'Oh, if only I were young again,' he yearned. 'Eighty-one would do.'

His travelogues were once impromptu affairs. He took adventures where he found them, chatting to strangers and wandering at whim.

Famously, one entire episode of Around The World came about after he missed his luxury liner to India. Instead, he cadged a lift on a traditional wooden dhow to Mumbai.

That spontaneity has largely been shelved. His itinerary is carefully choreographed, and he is content to go where his producers send him. 

But that doesn't mean he's playing safe: recent forays have taken him to Nigeria and Venezuela, and in the Philippine capital of Manila he was immediately plunged into a chaotic political demonstration.

'They're protesting against everything,' he bellowed over the din of whistles, klaxons and chants. 'Everyone's got a cause and they're all out today. It's a good time to be here.'

He spent a night in a beach hut at a resort for super-rich hippies, on a remote bay where the water was luminescent with moonlight. 

And after hitching a ride on a military cargo plane, he joined the coastguard on a boat trip intended to bait and provoke the flotilla of Chinese warships patrolling off the Philippine coast.

Venturing into the Manila slums, he visited a woman whose 15-year-old son was killed by a police death squad, for nothing more criminal than watching a basketball match. 

The previous president of the islands, Rodrigo Duterte, who is now facing charges of crimes against humanity, ordered the mass murder of teenagers in a psychotic attempt to control drugs gangs.

The current president is an urbane Anglophile, educated in England, though he's also the son of the Philippines' most notorious rulers — Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos.

His name is Bongbong Marcos, and he injected a dose of spontaneity back into proceedings by summoning Michael unexpectedly to his palace, all chandeliers and carpets by the acre.

Turns out the president is a Monty Python fan. With a name like that, it's hardly surprising. Nudge nudge, wink wink, bong bong, know what I mean?