I’ve found a couple of gems of birthdays this week and felt I had to share with you.

Michael Palin is the 5th May. He’s well known for a few big things, he was one of the team on Monty Python’s Flying Circus as well as doing a number of excellent travel documentaries. I recall Monty Python from my childhood, it was totally madcap with some really brilliant comic sketches much of which I didn’t understand as I was far too young. I think I watched it all in black and white as it was before we got our lovely colour TV! Did you know Palin had a brief appearance in Home and Away? I didn’t either, he played an English surfer afraid of sharks.

Gaston Leroux would have been 144 today, it’s a good innings and would have made him the oldest person in the world except that he died in 1927…never spoil a good story with facts. Leroux wrote the original story of Phantom of the Opera, something that is often put on stage.

Peter Carey celebrates his birthday tomorrow or today, my research gives two different dates, I’m going to speculate it has something to do with the international dateline but I’m probably just making this up. He wrote Oscar and Lucinda and also worked for a time with my cousin, Morris Lurie. Who is Morris Lurie I hear you ask? Very good question, he wrote such illuminating books as the Twenty-Seventh Annual African Hippopotamus Race and had the distinction of working in advertising with Carey…somehow I think I’ve gone full circle there.