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IT is 40 years since the Monty Python team headed to Scotland to shoot their first full-length film.

The directors had never shot a movie before and were making it up as they went along. The script was based on rejected ideas from their TV series. And yet Monty Python and the Holy Grail is still funny four decades on.

To mark the anniversary, Scottish film distributors Park Circus have produced a new singalong version, so everyone can join in.

It’s a one-off, to be shown on Wednesday at 500 cinemas in the UK, with a special introduction by Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin, Eric Idle and John Cleese.

It was the 70s and the Pythons had already made three series of surreal comedy for the BBC. But Monty Python and the Holy Grail was no generously funded vanity project. Instead, their extremely loose take on the legend of King Arthur was a chewing gum and string production.

Michael Palin, who played Sir Galahad, recalled: “I have many ­memories of the film, largely governed by the lack of money.

“The army was almost entirely students from ­Stirling University. We just sort of back-lit it and gave them some rags.

“We stopped people in cars going up through the village of Doune and asked, ‘Excuse me, would you like to be in the army for a day? We’ll give you your own rags and a spear and you can be in a Monty Python film?’

“Most of them put their foot down and shot off up to the ­Highlands.”

Many of the interiors and exteriors were filmed at Doune Castle, ­Perthshire. ­

Glaswegian actress Sally Kinghorn spent a day there, playing the part of a foxy medieval doctor.

“I was so excited,” she remembered. “When I heard I’d got the part, I skipped all the way down Hyndland Road.

“Monty Python was the hottest comedy show going. It was new, ­interesting, ground-breaking.

“Everybody watched it. The surreal stuff spoke to young people in a way I don’t think comedy had before.”

It was a star-struck Sally who arrived at the hotel on a freezing cold June night, ready to deliver her five lines in the morning.

She said: “There I was in the castle with John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Neil Innes. Oh my ­goodness, it really was them.

“Michael Palin, who everybody fancied, was in my scene. I was on the bed with Michael Palin.”

Sally played Winston, one of two doctors. It’s a mark of how chaotic the shoot was that, in the final credits, the names are mixed up and she is listed as the other doctor, Piglet.

Her costume was, she suspects, designed to be risqué.

She said: “We had very diaphanous medieval gowns, all covering but pretty well sheer.

“There was nothing ­underneath apart from a little pink triangle. But something wrong with the lighting and the effect was not what they hoped.”

Alasdair Allward turned up to let the crew into another location, and ended up as an extra in the final scene.

His father, a solicitor in Surrey, owned Castle Stalker, on a tiny island 25 miles north of Oban. The phone rang one Wednesday morning. It was Python Monty Pictures Ltd, looking to use the castle as a ­location. On Saturday.

“I was 20 years old,” Alasdair said.”My father hated Monty Python. I loved it and he couldn’t stand it. But he didn’t realise that was who was on the phone. He didn’t make the ­connection.”

A £50 fee was agreed and Alasdair was dispatched up north with the key. And, as he let the Pythons in, they offered him a part.

He was togged up as a French soldier, given a tin hat and put on the castle roof with John Cleese, His job was to shout abuse and make obscene gestures.

He said: “It was shambolic, all done on the hoof. We all spent the whole day just laughing.”

By the time they were shooting at Castle Stalker, directors Jones and Gilliam had fallen out with the producers. So while the rest of the cast and crew were taken to the island by boat, they gave instructions that the producers were not to land. They spent the day bobbing around on the Atlantic while the directors did 15 takes with Chapman and a stinking dead sheep.

“Chapman’s rubber sword kept wobbling,” Alasdair recalled.

“And while we were filming at the castle, some of the crew were left on the shore. They had brought up an an old blue Rover to be a police car at the end, when we all get arrested.

“It was parked in the farmer’s field with a stick-on blue flashing light plugged into the cigarette lighter.

“The techies got bored and spent the day driving this car round and round the field, playing cops and robbers. Around 8pm, we went across to do the last scene on the shore.

“The car wouldn’t start. They had flattened the battery. They ended up having to push it into the shot.”

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The two Terrys did not much impress Sally Kinghorn. “They didn’t have much experience of film directing,” she recalled.

“They relied on the sound guy and cameraman to do the technical stuff.”

But despite the angry producers and the rookie directors, the film got finished, edited and released. ­Alasdair still has his invitation to the world premiere.

He said: “They called it a world premiere but there weren’t any ­celebrities. It was in a dingy little cinema in Soho, London. The Pythons came and invited all the extras.”

His father remained less than ­enamoured with the Pythons.

“He was not very happy. He had trouble getting paid. In the end he had to sue them to get his £50.”

The secret of the film’s longevity, says to Sally, is its “immense charm.

She added: “People just love to quote the lines to me. That bizarre, youthful, surreal comedy translates into any language. Everyone remembers it as silly and hilarious.”

● Visit www.parkcircus.com for screening details.

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