Two Ps & a tripod

For different, though ultimately convergent, reasons, September 25, 1988, was a significant date in the lives of both Michael Palin and Basil Pao Ho-yun.

On that day, Palin, already famous as a member of British comedy team Monty Python and as a writer and actor in his own right, set off with a BBC camera crew from the Reform Club in London, to follow the Around the World in 80 Days route taken by Jules Verne’s fictitious Phileas Fogg.

In Hong Kong, that same day, designer-turned-photographer Pao’s daughter, Sonia, was born.

Palin and Pao had become friends while working together on Montypythonscrapbook (sic), which was published in 1979 and which Pao designed. Hong Kong was the halfway point in the Around the World itinerary and, in Palin’s words, he and the crew “doorstepped” Pao at his home on Cheung Chau, meeting the baby girl.

Pao, who had already been commissioned to shoot photographs of Palin during his Hong Kong sojourn, accepted an invitation to carry on in that capacity with the crew through China. Their reunion marked the beginning of a creative association that has now lasted through 12 travel books, based on eight television series.

Four of those books have a foreword by Palin but are otherwise composed entirely of Pao’s work: spectacular landscape photography and more intimate images of towns, villages and people encountered along the way.

Sonia is now 25, and although there have doubtless been other reminders, both men say this is the reason they know 2013 marks a quarter of a century of them travelling together.