Boasting

Have you ever seen the film, "Monty Python and The Holy Grail"? Well I was in it! I guess the Monty Python team invaded Scotland in the summer of 1974 when I was an undergraduate at Stirling University. A couple of posters had gone up around the students' union advertising for film extras though we had no idea what the film would be or anything. All I knew is that I would get paid over the weekend and enjoy some free nosh. It was a lovely warm summery weekend up on the moors above Stirling.

Wikipedia says -"In the closing battle scene, shots facing "Castle Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh" were filmed at Castle Stalker but the shots looking the other way towards the huge army were filmed later on Sheriffmuir near Stirling once they had managed to get enough people - one of them being author Iain Banks, then a student, as he recounts in his non-fiction work Raw Spirit."

We were up on Sheriffmuir throughout Saturday and most of Sunday in our medieval costumes. I was a French soldier and I came over the hill with the rest of the French army. I was also very briefly filmed sharpening a spear - but you only see my hands. And I recall meeting John Cleese down by the catering caravan. He seemed rather off-hand - perhaps he was knackered - or maybe he simply didn't realise he was talking to the great Yorkshire Pudding.

After this film debut, I waited by my phone for years - expecting Hollywood to ring - though they never did. I saw my name in lights - "Yorkshire Pudding and The Temple of Doom", "Confessions of a Yorkshire Pudding", "Carry On Yorkshire Pudding" - in which I would chase Barbara Windsor into a lush shubbery from where her cheeky laughter would emerge - "Ooo! Mr Pudding you are naughty!"

By the way, the later-to-become-author Iain Banks was a rather dull cerebral young fellow. He was in a couple of my seminar groups and occasionally I would stuff him intellectually - though with hindsight I perhaps should have got more pally with the little wimp - I could have been his literary chauffeur!