Notes from a Perthshire film set: the grass is green and pointed. The clouds are wavy and grey. My armour doesn't fit very good. But here are the questions anyway.
How tall are you?
What's your favourite colour?
What is the most boring thing you've ever done?
Are you scared of rabbits?
Are you scared?
Do you like making films?
What do you think of echoes?
What do you think of echoes?
A hut has been constructed on a lull in the hillside. A sheep shit stew is brewing by an open fire. Int he dirt yard outside a chicken scrambles around, one leg pegged to the ground by a length of string. Terry Gilliam and Suko Forstater, whimsical oriental wife of producer Mark Forstater, stare hazily at the camera, rolling from foot to foot.
There's no apparent logic to these events, but they complete a day's shooting and the crew load up for the trek back to the Woodside.
The most brain-scarring Python story of all time involves not a droplet of excrement, not so much as one single sliver of animal remains. It concerns the usually moderate Tony Smith, promoter of Python's recent Canadian tour.
The tour, across the breadth of the country, had been the usual forlorn business of drab changing rooms, drab hotels and more than a comfortable amount of zig-zagging from town to town.
One night most of the crew were gathered blandly in a hotel room, examining each other's knuckles, when Tony Smith, in a moment of uncharacteristic frenzy, invited the boys to get themselves together and smash the room into tiny pieces.
"G'won," said Smith, "I'll pay the bill in the morning."
But the Pythons, probably unaware of the famous rock 'n' roll precedents for this kind of nonsense, were satisfied to peel off little bits of wallpaper while Smith went on a rampage hurling furniture across the room and breaking toothbrushes in half.
"That's how boring it could all get," says Idle.
Idle and Innes, companions since the days of "Do Not Adjust Your Set," a BBC innovation featuring the eccentric talents of Bonzo Dog, are hunched together on a bench outside The Woodside, guzzling beer and trying to remember chords to Beatle songs.
The two Terrys are making film-talk over dinner.
Palin and Cleese are out eating expensive fish and Graham Chapman is trying to locate the male dancers from London who, tomorrow, are lined up for a mental banquet hall routine.
Idle's the insufferable pub bore; the disgusting mind behind the Australian wine sketch; performer and co-writer with Cleese of that astonishing holiday sketch featuring bandy-legged wop waiters and a fat bloated tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for foreigners.
A brilliantly agile mind is Idle, whose sketches are tight as a fist and whose attitude to reporters is generally don't-touch-me-I'm-an-artist. A scrupulously moral individual who, according to producer Forstater "tries to be temperamental, but it's just a put-on."
Lone Idle has more of a cheroot-chomping rock 'n' roll mentality than his Python brethren. While the others arrange themselves in pairs (Chapman/Cleese, Jones/Palin), Idle chooses to write solo.
He can razzle you with wit and brotherly vibes -and just as quickly rip off your head with one mental chomp.
Tonight it's Eric The Affable, recounting strange Python stories and winding down and out on connected subjects. He'd probably want the whole thing forgotten, because it's just a moment in time, innit - and, besides, he's no Ellsberg with evidence of White House corruption or inside fax on breaches of political decorum up in the North Country.
But I'm no elk. And this is what I remember. Remember what you can, says Eric. Ok. This is what I remember.
I can't remember anything.
Oh yes. I remember. Eric Idle's dentist wrote "An Englishman Needs Time" (not really) and Joey Bishop, cringeing stand-in on Johnny Carson's "Tonight" show, wrote Python off completely after they'd been hired for a nation-wide spot.
"Here's an act from Britain," said Bishop. "I'm told they're funny. I don't really understand what they're supposed to be doing, but here they are anyway. See what you make of them."
Python came on, performed one of their more intolerable sketches, and were greeted by the kind of ego-smashing audience inactivity that performers will travel the world for.
"I've never seen so many jaws drop at once," says Idle.
Canada, she was altogether more harmonious, probably because Canadians had previously been softened up by the TV shows. Crowds came out to greet the team at airports and Idle remembers peering into the stalls one night and seeing an entire row dressed as a caterpillar.
But why, you might wonder, hadn't an aberrant nation like the United States picked up on the Pythons? There were some precedents, in a minor kind of way, in the shape of Firesign Theatre and the Early "Laugh In's", after all.
The answer is as basic as vomit, masturbation and all the other naughty phenomena American TV-programmers find unnerving.
Even a hardy subject like birth-control had to be expunged from a sketch the Pythons performed for "Midnight (the-show-that-knows-where-it's-at) Special". But then don't we remember the BBC slicing up a sketch involving a man whose hobbies were strangling dogs and masturbation?
Masturbation is right out, said the BBC. Strangling dogs is cool. But no wanking. And no wanking while you're strangling that dog.
Rip-off dept: Dean Martin lifted an entire segment from the Python's How To Be Invisible sketch, stitched it into the opening of one of his shows, and never said so much as a thank you, kiss my State Of The Union Address. Lampoon also ripped off a Python sketch to close their Broadway Show and, when pressed by slim British lawyers, coughed up £ 70 by way of compensation.
Idle on the subject of America, and especially its handsome, mixed-up Nazi president, is a treat:
"I am not lying. I have never lied. That last lie I told is not a lie. I have no knowledge of Watergate. I have no knowledge of my lovely wife Pat or my lovely daughter Tricia or of John Erlichman or Bob Haldeman. I have no knowledge of the White House. I have no knowlege of Richard Nixon.
"Richard Nixon. This Is Your Life. Do you remember this telephone conversation with John Erlichman? BEEEEEEEEEEEZ. And this one with John Dean? WHIIIIIIIAAARRRRP."
Idle's acting a complete fool, falling from his chair and rolling dangerously close to the fire. Innes and the rest of us are soiling ourselves.
"Put that tape recorder away," says Idle. "It's just going to ruin things." Screw you, Idle.
He probably dreads the thought of being boring in print; of not having control over the outcome.
Python humour, he says, is an organic evolution of six minds apprenticed in University revue (with Gilliam providing moving pictures of the spirit of America), through BBC shows like the Frost Report, Marty Feldman, Do Not Adjust Your Set and At Last The 1948 Show.
Offstage, they can be eminently worried and straight-talking people. Eminently worried by talk of Python being Last Year's Thing and how they don't stand a chance without Cleese, who plans to lope off after filming's through to make industrial movies on methods of dealing with angry customers and how you can have a real nice time of it in your tedious 9-to-5 job rivetted to the hat-bands counter.
By way of revelation, Idle says he had a bit of a scare before the first Python series went out when he saw Spike Milligan's "Q.5". "It was more or less what we already had in mind for ourselves," he says.
Gilliam shows up and, in a painfully tactful way, tries to convince Idle he'd best get his hair cut and fall into line with the others.
Idle not only refuses outright, he carves Gilliam up into tiny particles that blow across the hotel lounge and return moments later in a more relaxed, off-duty format - just as Palin and Cleese return from their fish supper.