Michael Palin is embroiled in some Monty Python related fanmail when we speak. “Someone wants to know the exact words I spoke up a Scottish mountain when filming The Holy Grail, for a T-shirt,” he tells me. “How am I supposed to remember that kind of detail?”

One would assume that being such a keen chronicler, writer and diarist, alongside his long list of other attributes: author, comedian, actor, traveller, explorer, documentary maker, historian, art critic and TV presenter, that he’d have that kind of detail written down somewhere. “I am a terrible scribbler and am currently editing my third volume of diaries,” he smiles, “but that was the 1970s. I probably couldn’t even remember what I said the next day,” Michael chuckles.

Besides he’s got more pressing things on his mind, namely his new book Brazil, a spin-off of the recent well-received BBC series, and the one remaining country Michael had not been to.

“That’s not why we made it though,” he smiles, “because while I hadn’t been there, Brazil has an increasingly high profile with the Olympics and World Cup coming, especially now that it has superceded us in terms of economy. “It’s very topical.”

And yet, the entire project was still a surprise: “I didn’t know if I was going to do any more long haul trips having done all the continents,” Michael says truthfully, “but I like to be impulsive and spontaneous so don’t have a long list of places to go, although fundamentally I’ve always been very curious about the world. I’m not the kind of person who sits around watching TV with the curtains drawn.”

Even so, Michael was not only surprised to be travelling again, but fell in love with Brazil. “I always expected to have a good time because it does have a certain reputation: sun, samba and relaxing attitude to life,” he laughs. “It’s still definitely a tropical paradise and it’s hard to avoid the pleasant side. “It’s not just the climate, abundant fruits and food, but the people themselves who live for today which is very refreshing for us northern Europeans who are consumed with guilt and self-doubt, and tend to look back rather than forwards. So I found that very inspiring, despite the many problems they have.”

Any of you who watched the series and saw Michael in full flow during the Gay Pride Carnival at Copacabana will know he attacked his role with gusto, dancing on a float along with the best of them.

“That was good fun even if I did look like a deckchair seller and I very much warmed to the transvestite Marjorie, so that didn’t phase me at all. I was more nervous interviewing the ex-president Cardoso, but he turned out to be a lovely guy with no pretensions.”

But that’s why Michael Palin gets commissioned again and again – he’s the David Attenborough of the travel world: “I’m just me being me, and if that means the subjects come out of their shell and give a personal view, all the better. So say what you have to say, and let the rest speak for itself,” he says. “The main thing is not to get in the way of the documentary – or the action.”

Predictably, the Brazilians succumbed to Michael’s eccentric British charm: “Well, one or two Brazilians knew who I was because Monty Python was huge there,” the 69-year-old admits. Is there anywhere Michael can go without being recognised? “Well it was worse in Brazil than Pakistan and Tibet or the 2 billion in China who had no idea who I was,” he chuckles. “But that suits me down to the ground because I prefer to be the observer than the observed.”

Even so, leaving Brazil’s sunshine and samba and returning to a cold wintry Britain must have been hard? “Not at all,” he says “I always want to come home and it’s really, important because as much as I love travelling, I also love the anticipation. Because I absorb myself in a new place and then have to scurry back to my burrow and record and document it. That’s my British side, putting the information together. I love the process of coming back and telling the story as much as doing it.”

Nowhere was this more evident than his time at Oxford University when the whole entertainer side of Michael was born. “I learned in my early years in Oxford to work the system, so while it was important to come up with the essays, which I did at night, that freed you up in the day to enjoy all the other opportunities out there, which got me started in cabaret and theatrical comedy. And then the Oxford Revue went to Edinburgh, which was a turning point. So Oxford totally directed my life,” he agrees.

“And yet, it is odd because although you’re in the best full-time education in the world, you’re are also changing at the same time and all sorts of things are going on, like making new friends, and it’s all a bit too much. Sometimes I think we should be educated later in life,” he says pensively.

In many ways, Michael has now come full circle, dedicating his time to research and writing rather than comedy. “Yes, it’s much more appropriate to my degree and I do rather academic things now, like art, painting, music, history and geography – there are so many things out there that interest me and I have a vivid imagination. But then I’ve never liked sitting around and doing nothing. I’d rather be sat in a pub, having a pint and talking to people anytime,” and then he stops and adds: “But I still know that what I do best is entertain people.”