Sir Michael Palin has dedicated his National Television Award to his fellow Monty Python star Terry Jones following his death last week.
He was presented with a special recognition prize at the awards ceremony on Tuesday.
Accepting the award, Sir Michael told the audience: “I want to dedicate this award tonight to someone who taught me more about television than anyone else, my dear friend and erstwhile Python, Terry Jones.
“Anyone who knows or has worked with Terry will have been infected with his infectious and extraordinary enthusiasm.
“Terry always worked to get something right.
“He had a certain skill in being very ruthless but also charming at the same time.”
Sir Michael added that Jones wanted to say and do things “in a way that had never been done before”, something which is a “laudable aim for anyone in television or going into television”.
He also shared an anecdote about filming a scene from The Meaning Of Life with Jones where an overweight man explodes after eating an after-dinner mint.
Sir Michael said: “The idea was that it would be the biggest vomit sequence ever filmed anywhere.
“And Terry was never very happy about the amount of vomit – ‘no, we need more, we need more’.
“People were out getting all the minestrone soup in the area.
“I think we needed about 3,000 gallons.
“Eventually we got this huge eruption. I have never seen anything like it.
“Four huge pumps pumped vomit all over the place.
“At the end, the man who had the job of running the hall came up after to us and Terry said, ‘I am so terribly sorry. We made such a mess. Leave it to us. We will have it ready for you by Monday’.
“The man said, ‘we can’t do that – we have a wedding on here at 11’.”
Sir Michael added that “presumably there is some young couple in the country who got married in the place which only hours before was covered in false vomit”.
He added: “That’s Python, that’s Terry and that’s his determination.”