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A cheering moment, then, and also a significant anniversary, marking 30 years since Palin set off on his very first travel odyssey for the BBC, Around the World in 80 Days. Since then, he has visited 98 countries. But North Korea, he says, was the most extraordinary of all. “Which sounds a bit hyperbolic, but is true.

“People were very worried about my going,” he says over lunch in his favourite north London restaurant, “because of the way it’s been branded — the Axis of Evil — but also because it’s a very unpredictable country where the normal rules don’t seem to apply.” He smiles. “But that’s why I wanted to go.”

The total identification of bright, intelligent people with these dead leaders was something I've never seen before, not even in Communist countries. The leadership is a religion

In fact, rather than being the grim, brutal place of popular imagination, he says, there are aspects that are quite pleasant. “It doesn’t feel grim, it doesn’t feel brutal — not an unhappy place.” Although this, as he acknowledges, may not be quite the complete picture.

Palin’s crew were given hitherto unparalleled access to film, albeit with strict conditions. “Part of the deal was they could, at any point, look through the camera and see what we were shooting, and view the material at the end of the day. What was surprising is that they rarely asked to cut anything.”

How much this allowed him to show “the real” North Korea is a moot point. But, as he allows, it’s a matter of compromise: you accept the limitations imposed, or you don’t film at all. “I think we did get a foot in the door — just ajar,” Palin says.

North Korea, he goes on, is “a bubble”, in which veneration of the two Great Leaders, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, is absolute. “The total identification of bright, intelligent people with these dead leaders was something I’ve never seen before, not even in Communist countries. The leadership is a religion.”