The fluid delicacy of Cleese The Footballer, is a sight to see.
Like a spring-loaded rhubarb, he ghosts through castle courtyards leaving the opposition in tangled knots, crossing low balls for one of The Doune Boys to hammer shots between a pair of shields.
Palin serves as a wild mid-field sweeper, rushing around a lot and getting very red. Neil Innes is Python's unharried goalie and Idle a vigorous full-back who sometimes cut into the attack.
But it's Cleese who earns the crowds pleasure. And their jeers.
He has this habit, you see, of folding to the ground when he's got just the goalie to beat. It's an involved, hypnotising event as Cleese comes down. Kind of like the time-lapse footage they show on 'Film Night'. But the man has no shame and he's soon back on his feet to make a shambles of the opposition with his superhuman swagger.
The game over, we fall into a sweaty, fermenting heap by a castle wall. Michael Palin idles through The Sunday Times. Eric Idle palins through John Cleese, though Graham Chapman isn't here because he's not wanted for shooting today.
A pretty little girl with no teeth shuffles over to Palin and asks shyly for his autograph. She's followed by a couple of firm-breasted schoolgirls who can't make out Palin's signature.
"Whatsit say?" they ask each other.
"Michael Idle," says Palin.
The girls make the rounds with pencil and pad, and wind up with names like Alf Ramsey, Bill Shankly and Johnny Mathis.
"We took a day off from school specially," says one of the girls.
Their accents are as dense as a Highland pony, yet, strangely enough, one's from Berlin - daughter of an RSM - and the other from Plymouth.
"What do you think of Scotland?" they ask.
"It will be very nice when it's finished," says Idle.
Over there is Mark Forstater, Python's producer in the realm of feature films.
"I was personally not very pleased with the first film and they weren't very pleased themselves. When they began preparing this one they asked my help in getting it together to help raise some money. They all have lots of potential, you see, but not much direction."
The script, says Forstater, is as brilliant as anything they've done.
"John Horton, the Special Effects man at the BBC, read it and said it was the best thing he'd seen in five years."
Forstater on the Pythons one at a time:
"John is basically a lazy person and that's the reason he's leaving the show. John enjoys his leisure, he'll tell you that. But when John works he works fantasically hard. He's always the first to learn his lines."
Eric we already know to be making hopeless attempts at being temperamental.
"Terry Jones can be temperamental but he soon forgets. Terry Gilliam gets annoyed by things, but he's so bubbly it's soon behind him. Graham and Michael are genuinely easy-going."
(Chapman is genuinely mad, says Palin. "I had a hotel room next to him on tour and he was up half the night screaming 'Betty Marsden. Betty Marsden.' And he talks to letter boxes.")
Forstater is quite small.
John Cleese, by contrast, is quite tall. Cleese, the People's Choice, is at least as tall as anyone on the set.
Cleese is the People's Choice not only because he's tall and funny, but because he's the ogre of headmasterdom. The prancing, screaming, budgie-beating head boy gone mad. So mad, he can hardly be a real worry anymore.
But is he basically a serious person?
"I think we all are, aren't we?"
Is it hard being serious?
"I find it much harder if they expect me to be funny. I find I'm often much more serious in my private life, because when you've spent eight hours trying to think of funny things it's often quite nice to give it a rest.
"There used to be a certain feeling of obligation. It doesn't happen so much now."
Eric was saying you write very precisely and methodically, rather than spilling out.
"Yes, I spill out at the 'idea' stage and sometimes stuff goes down very fast on paper. Usually when it's something you've been ploughing along with for two weeks."
"I wrote a half-hour with my wife quite recently and, when we got to the final parts, they were going down on paper almost as fast as we could think of them. We'd been thinking about them so long, you see. But it's quite right. I use a much more measured and slow style than the others."
A lot of Python humour seems to hark back to your University days. What were they like?
"Central to it all was The Footlights Club, which I found to be the easiest and most enjoyable company in Cambridge. Three or four times a term at these smoke conterts, as we used to call them, you got up on the stage and had the chance to try things and, of course, it didn't matter if you died. And this is why I think so much comedy is coming out of the universities these days".
Who were your contemporary loonies at Cambridge?
"Well, of this lot, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle and Tim Brook-Taylor and Graeme Garden. It was always more difficult at Oxford, because they didn't have a clubroom, they had to create their own atmosphere and find places to meet. But they produced an interesting lot, going back to Bennett and Miller from about 15 years ago and, virtually contemporaneous with our lot, they had a very good selection of whom Mike and Terry, I suppose, are the best known."
You're probably the best-known Python of all. Do you know why?
"This is very simple to explain. It's just that I'd done two years of Frosts and 'The 1948 Show' beforehand.
"I also refuse to wear moustaches and beards and that's a great help. Somebody like Michael is turning in marvellous performances the whole time. He's a superb performer, but is very frequently unrecognised because he's done four brillant performances in four different disguises and no one realises it's the same person.
"Michael was the assistant in the pet shop sketch. He was the leading cardinal in the Spanish Inquisition thing. But we always have a joke with Mike that he can't act without a moustache. He doesn't know what to do. He's got this great desire to disguise himself and acquire facial hair, which I find most uncomfortable."
Are you sure you won't change your mind and stay?
"It's a rude thing to say, but the truth is I'm bored. I've been doing two-minute sketches on television for eight years and I'm lucky enough to be able to do different things. You've got more fluidity in this business than if I was working in a car factory and that's how I like to be.
"But I think the others are going to have a bit of a problem coming up with something new, because a lot of people thought the third series wasn't as good as the first two, and I think the answer is that it probably was as good, but people are now used to it. There isn't that initial impact and I fail to see how you can keep that impact sustaining."
So let that be a warning to you all.
Right about now we wind down the windows, apply the brakes and let it be known that the whole damn bus is cheering because Python and The Holy Grail is no rinky Carry On Gooning effort.
All over the set there are people with artistic wrists, thin hips and the kind of "that was lousy - do it again" mentality that should transform The Grail into the cheap mediaeval extravaganza Python have been straining for so earnestly over the past 18 months.
Neil Innes has already got together the bones of an elaborate film score, parts of it involving strange figure-eight modes and synthesised cellos. He played small bits of it in the Women's Institute changing room, and bracing it was too. But a make-up girl came along and told him to shut-up.
"I'm sorry, but I'm trying to work in there." Then she came back again and said how sorry she was and please carry on with your tunes.
Shut-up yourself, I say.
And you can shut-up too. (Is that the end? - Ed).
Hey, that's pretty heavy.