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How Monty Python and the Holy Grail became a comedy legend

Fifty years after Monty Python and the Holy Grail redefined comedy, stars Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam look back on the freedoms – and limitations – that shaped the film.

Five of the six members – Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle and Michael Palin – had honed their craft in student comedy societies at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. They couldn't afford to have knights riding on horseback, for instance, so King Arthur (Chapman) and his men trot along on foot, with servants behind them tapping halved coconut shells together to make the clip-clop noise of horses' hooves. Even more remarkably, many of the film's phrases have entered the British lexicon, and some of its characters have become archetypes: failing politicians are regularly compared to the Black Knight, who is determined to keep fighting even when his limbs have been lopped off, while Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir-Lancelot is brought up when someone is seen to be especially cowardly.

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