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Rushes of the knights playing hide and seek are very funny. Terry, as usual now, seems more inclined to bemoan than praise what’s going on. The processes of dealing with the people involved in keeping the film going, with all their different egos and personal ambitions, Terry cannot deal with; people get him down daily

But all this doesn’t matter too much, because Terry’s greatest contribution – his visual sense – is working well. He still niggles a little at the praise that Simon and Terry B get for shots – which praise, he says, is as much for Hazel’s costumes, Maggie’s make-up, Milly’s designs and hell! says Terry, I choose the shot.

Saturday, September 11th, Pembroke

More familiar British weather is returning. Though it dawned blue and cloudless, stormy wind and rain spread throughout the day, buffeting the castle yet again. Tents blew down, the crowd huddled into any available Norman-arched doorway in the castle walls between shots. With cameras wrapped in polythene bags and in between vicious cold squalls of rain that turned umbrellas inside out, the joust scene gradually progressed.

It was 7.30 in the evening when Bill Weston’s last and most spectacular stunt ended the miserable day and ended our filming in Pembrokeshire. He was pulled backwards off his horse by Derek Bottell – the ‘jerk-off’ specialist!

The crowd, who had stoically defied the weather – and were really in a state of high excitement which had carried them through it all – swarmed off through the Barbican gateway and across the road to the pub. Here Terry Gilliam bought them drinks for two hours – and later that evening he appeared at the Old King’s Arms, shaven for the first time in a week, and rosy-cheeked, his eyes tired, but glazed, in a very happy, silly mood.

In the bar until late. I think Max has finally tired of the attentions of his chief acolyte – he muttered something uncharacteristically uncharitable about her being the sort of person who might turn him homosexual!

Sunday, September 12th, Chepstow

Wake at nine, surprisingly clear-headed. It’s a grey day. Winter’s in the air suddenly. Buy papers, breakfast, pay fond farewells to the Old King’s Arms, Pembroke. A nice town, a marvellous hotel. Up at the castle the last windswept remains of the pavilion and lists are being packed.

Go for a three-hour walk by the sea, along Stackpole Quay to Freshwater Bay East Coast Path. A few hours of solitariness, a rather vital release from the gregariousness of filming. A quick look at Castle Carew – a splendid Gothic ruin, full of different architectural styles, deserted great halls and ivy-covered walls, with crows nesting.

Depressing arrival at the Two Rivers Hotel, Chepstow. It almost certainly had to be an anti-climax after the Old King’s Arms, but I did not expect the belligerent sullenness of the receptionist, nor the total tackiness of all the decoration. A ‘Fresh-Aire’ machine in the corridor near my room gurgles dyspeptically and discharges a foul and sickly sweet-smelling gas up the passage.

The evening cheers up with the arrival of Neil I. At the Two Fingers Hotel (as we’ve decided to re-christen it), we end up round a table in the restaurant with Max, Joan Lee, Johnny Cole the props man and wife, making up limericks.

Thursday, September 16th, Chepstow Castle

A moment of quite stimulating liberation when I am required to drop my trousers in a shot and reveal my un-knickered bum to all and sundry. As we’re outside the main gates to the castle, quite a little crowd has gathered to watch the filming – about fifty or sixty in addition to the fifty extras in the scene.

Realise I feel less embarrassed than they do, and really quite enjoy the experience of flashing a naughty part of the body in a public place – and getting paid, rather than arrested for it. Can see the exhilaration of’streaking’ – a sort of heady feeling of freedom comes over me as I point my bum for the third time at a twin-set and pearl-bedecked lady standing not ten yards away!

Saturday, September 18th, Chepstow