The Women's Institute committee and dance rooms have been rented by Python the following day as changing quarters. It's full of old men coughing and struggling into mediaeval pantyhose and a sour make-up girl who keeps slipping me dirty looks.
The national press are due today and so are hordes of kids who've bunked off school to watch Python filming in Doune Castle.
The Dancing Knights scene - the day's main action - is more obsessive lunacy in which seven fancy men from London cavort on table tops, kicking bowls of vegetables and sheep-bones the length of the banquetting area.
As the dance, ducks and chickens are tossed into the maelstrom, while we pages are supposed to be retrieving the flattened vegetables in a disgruntled kind of way. But the dancing knights keep knocking us to the ground with mad leaps and pirouettes.
Ducks are screaming, chickens are getting caught up in the lights, and one poor canard gets so scared and wounded it starts shivering, and tears roll down its beak.
Terry Jones finally disqualifies the animal from further hardship after the dancers have gathered round to coo and ahhh and tickle its throat. A restless chicken, meanwhile, is being hypnotised by a crewmember with some deft strokes between the wings.
The scene, says Gilliam, will end with a Busby Berkley shield arrangement, out of the centre of which Neil Innes pops up and sings "I have to push my pramalot" (to rhyme with Camelot).
It's one of those days where everything's a Python. Cleese and Idle, in shrink-proof chain-mail, are kicking a ball around the yard, chased by national press photographers. Elsewhere kids are wandering loose, laughing at the funny men in their silly clothes.
"Let's be serious," says Palin. "No jokes."
OK Michael. No jokes. How do you like filming?
"I enjoy it, thank you. When you get into the meaty bits, that is. But you're invariably walking around with helmets on your head which don't quite come high enough so you're not looking through the eye holes you're looking through the mouth holes, tramping across rather sharp granite terrain which isn't very pleasant.
"But if it looks good it doesn't really matter, and we were all encouraged by the first rushes. I mean it would be terrible if the film looked bad as well as being uncomfortable to do."
What have you been doing since the last series?
"Well, we've been working on the film quite a lot and in the last three or four months most of our time has gone into the stage shows in Canada and Drury Lane. It was difficult to write during that period, but Terry and I have got together a kind of Christmas book for kids."
A gentle thing, is it?
"No, very violent. Very, very violent. Dreadful. For very young kiddies. Really violent ones."
I see.
I'm interested by those ever so sharp parodies, like the one you dow on '19' magazine in the new book, for instance. How much involvement with subject matter does that demand?
"Oh yes. Eric reads them every week: '19', 'Country Life', 'Health and Efficiency'. You name it, he takes it. I don't know much about that. It was Eric's piece."
Whose was the Peckinpah Film night sketch? The one with those deadly rackets and balls.
"John's and Graham's. You're talking to the wrong bloke, aren't you?"
How about the cross-country cyclist with the Politburo cabaret and the guy who wakes up in the Russian cell and finds it wasn't a dream after all?
"Yes. It wasn't written for Python originally. It was written by Terry and I just as a half-hour to do sometime. Then we were short of a show and people read the script and it formed the basis. I think the first 15 minutes or so were ours, and then it got re-written and people put in ideas."
The central character was quite brilliant, I thought.
"What? That silly man? I thought it was a bit over the top, actually. I was a bit sick of it the second time. It was rather painful to do because I had a saddle that was too high and we were unable, for some reason, to get a spanner in Jersey. So we couldn't adjust it. So I couldn't put both feet on the ground when we were resting."
Those crash-scenes looked fairly diabolical.
"Can you imagine? A camera at the other end of the field about 100 yards away. 'Off you go...fall off!!!' You crash through the verge, dislocate your shoulder, break a few ribs, and he says 'No, no, no, you've got to fall off earlier than that, silly.'"
You were damaged, were you?
"Mentally...mentally, I've damaged myself so much, damn you Python. Err, no. We do all our stunts. I think all of us at one time have jumped into a marsh or thrown ourselves into a river.
"I think one of the things I was most apprehensive about was when we did the fish-slapping dance. Which is a silly bit where I dance and hit John with a couple of small herrings. At the end of the dance he picks up a huge pike and knocks me into the river.
"We did it at Teddington Lock which was a ten-foot drop. But by that time it was all set up and you've just got to carry on. It looked much better actually, because it was such a big fall. And you get a free brandy when you're done."
Michael reads New Musical Express and he finds it "...interesting."
"The mentality of your readers is about the same as ours, I would say. Yes. I do read it quite a lot now. There seem to be many more articles of a general nature which I quite enjoy."
Most people think you're mad. Does this worry you or do you feel safe inside the Python set-up?
"Yes. Basically, there are five or six of us putting it together, all tending to share the same ideas. The collective thing helps to give us more of a sense of security and gives the show more strength."
Is it difficult selling the BBC your warped visions or did the script-writing background make it easy?
"Even with the BBC background I found it difficult to sell it to them. They were reluctant. They didn't quite know about the show...they like to know what things are about."
"They like to know what you're going to be doing and when you're going to have a music break. How many sketches you're going to do and do you want a guest artist. So we say we don't know. No, we don't want a guest artist... 'Well do you want some music somewhere? ... No... 'Well, what are you going to do? Just sketches?'... Well, we've got these ideas, you see..."
Python, minus Cleese, bombards the screen again in November. That might be tough going. Do you have any ideas yet? (This isn't the BBC speaking, is it?)
"I don't know." (Grin.) "All suggestions gratefully accepted, sent to Michael Palin, c/o NME."