I don’t know about you, but when Michael Palin’s first travel TV series came out I scoffed a little. I mean, what qualifications (other than past fame) does Michael Palin have to make a travel show? It took half-watching a few series for me to realize the genius of it: it wasn’t that people followed him round the world doing silly walks and offering him dead parrots (although they did) but the fact that Michael Palin is truly, truly world-class at non-verbal communication. Whether it is in the background of Monty Python sketches or high on the Tibetan plateau non-talking to nomads in a yurt: he gurns, he gurgles, he falls over, he makes funny faces and he is absolutely hilarious. And, whether you are going around the world in 80 days or eight months, unless you are prepared to learn the language of every single country that you visit for a few days at a time, non-verbal communication is where it’s at.

Lucy and I are not complete Alan Whicker-style post-imperialists. Between the two of us we can muster English, conversational Spanish and French, enough German to get around (and, bizarrely, to negotiate with one particular Kyrgyz guest house owner) and enough Japanese to order food and train tickets. We can also handle hello and thank you and the names of common foods, railway stations etc. in just about every country we go to. However, we are currently in China, and we are completely stumped. It’s the tonality of the language, you see – even if you know the words it is damn near impossible to make somebody understand you when you say them. We have a piece of paper from a hotel with “railway station”, “airport” etc. written on them in kanji, but they are no help when the taxi drivers can’t read, and no help at all when the taxi drivers steadfastly refuse to believe you don’t speak the lingo and stop the cab in the middle of nowhere to demand that you renegotiate the fare, in Mandarin. So I regularly find myself asking, when faced with a blankly uncomprehending hotel owner, a taxi driver, a waitress: what would Michael Palin do in this situation?

I have smiled until my face almost fell off; I have mimed buying train tickets; we have pointed at food others are eating; we have taken iphone photos of things and shown them to people; we have drawn diagrams of double and single beds (a Lucy inspiration – it looks less like a toilet sign and more like a double bed when you draw the pillows as well). I once found myself actually mooing loudly at a cabbie to get him to take us to the animal market. I carry a pencil and paper to write place names, draw clocks and write down dates. It doesn’t help that Chinese sign language is actually different too – two crossed fingers meaning ten, anybody? (Also, if you are miming eating, you have to mime using chopsticks, not the traditional knife and fork sawing and chewing – simple once you know how).

As a pop quiz, think how you would mime the following requests, drawn from our day to day interactions:

• Do you have Wifi?
• What is the wifi password? (and the IP address, while you are at it)
• Where is the ticket office?
• I would like a long enough length of your plastic sewage pipe to pack this Tibetan Thangka painting back to the UK, please (actually quite easy)
• What time does this office open after lunch? (Also actually quite easy, but try to catch the mimed answer: “No, it’s the Uzbek National Teachers Day bank holiday”)
• Please would you impersonate a CNN foreign correspondent for my friends’ wedding video?

Michael, if you are reading, you are more than welcome on our next trip, and we promise not to mention the parrot incident.