Michael Palin marked a first in his career this year after refusing to eat a dish while travelling in the Philippines – the only time he has done so in four decades of presenting TV travel programmes. The 83-year-old Monty Python star confessed one meal was a “bridge too far” for him to try.
A seasoned traveller, Michael is used to tucking into plenty of local cuisines, and over the years has sampled everything from Peruvian palm wine fermented in human saliva to a cobra that was skinned alive in China. But one chicken dish was simply too much to contemplate trying.
In his new series for Channel 5, Michael Palin in the Philippines, he had the opportunity to try Pagpag – “recycled” chicken, which is taken from bins after someone has already eaten part of it.
He said on the show: “I’ve never seen anything that illustrates poverty quite as clearly as half-eaten fried chicken, which has been taken from the bins of fast food restaurants and then re-cooked. So this is ultimate food recycling. Food that’s already been on someone’s plate has been left behind, and this nice lady goes and collects it.
“Seeing this, I’m starting to understand why so many people are angry about the inequalities here.”
The chicken is taken from bins (Image: Channel 5)
He told The Mirror: “It was a bridge too far for me, certainly. Yeah. But it was interesting. The lady who was selling it again, she wasn’t conning anybody.
“She wasn’t a gangster or something like that, showing off. She was a middle-aged woman. She was obviously a pillar of the community. People trusted her, and she’d been recycling this food for years and years, and no one seems to have died.”
He added: “I’ve eaten everything on my journeys, but I couldn’t eat recycled food, I’m afraid, at that time of the day.”