Monty Python star Michael Palin’s anguish at losing wife

He said losing his teenage sweetheart, who had been battling chronic pain and kidney failure, had left him shattered.

Michael, 80, said: “When someone’s gone, someone who has been so much part of your life for the past 60 years, you can’t believe they’re not there to enjoy a little joke, or an observation, or a b***h about somebody.

Palin and his late wife, Helen (Image: Getty)“A great sort of emptiness comes in.

Michael was living in Sheffield and Helen in Cambridgeshire, but they stayed in touch by writing letters.

Fate then brought them together again on Michael’s first day at Oxford University, when Helen visited a friend for the weekend.

Michael said of their marriage: “There’s something underneath that works – that you’re happy to be with somebody for an awful lot of the time.