Sir Michael Palin has said he is still coming to terms with life alone following the death of his wife, Helen Gibbins, in 2023. The heartbreaking news came just a month after the couple celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary. In a statement at the time, the 82-year-old said: "My dearest wife Helen died peacefully in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

"She had been suffering with chronic pain for several years, which was compounded a few years ago by a diagnosis of kidney failure."

He continued: "Her death is an indescribable loss for myself, our three children and four grandchildren. Helen was the bedrock of my life. Her quietly wise judgement informed all my decisions and her humour and practical good sense were at the heart of our life together."

Michael's spouse had endured years of chronic pain following a knee replacement, which left her with nerve damage and limited mobility.

Later, she was diagnosed with kidney failure and pneumonia. For several years she was kept alive through dialysis, before the family and doctors collectively made the difficult decision to stop treatment.

Reflecting on her death more than two years on, Sir Michael admitted he still struggles with the shift from "we" to "I".

Speaking on the Marie Curie Couch podcast, he said: "I still say, 'We’ve got [this] in our garden', 'We have four grandchildren'. I still use 'We'. I find it impossible to say 'I'."

In an earlier interview with The Sunday Times, the Monty Python star spoke movingly about Helen's final days at a Marie Curie hospice.

He said he had "never seen her happier in a way" during the last 10 days of her life.

"She’d accepted it, we’d accepted it, she was in a wonderful hospice," he said. "The children and grandchildren had all come to see her, so her death was a great deliverance for her."

Sir Michael first met Helen as a teenager while on holiday in Suffolk in 1959.

The couple married in April 1966 and went on to have three children, Rachel, Thomas and William, as well as four grandchildren.

He has said that throwing himself back into work and spending time with family has helped him cope with the "emptiness" he felt after her death.

That has included returning to acting in the BBC sitcom Small Prophets, playing Brian Sleep - his first on-screen role in seven years.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4, he said he was drawn to the show’s "humour and magic".

"This is not a story where you’ll have car chases and people wanting to kill each other," he explained. "There’s a warmth in the way [Mackenzie Crook] writes about people.

"Every single character in this series gets their moment, however small it might be - it might be two lines or one line - and that line is thought out, careful, and is given to the actor as something special."