TERRY Jones is a busy man. He is on a tight schedule and the only time I am able to catch up with the Monty Python funnyman is on his mobile as he waits in the green room to go on to a live show of Today With Des and Mel.

And no wonder - he has a lot to talk about. Once a member of one of the most revolutionary comedy groups of the 70s and 80s, Terry has since turned his hand to a more serious profession - that of the historian.

A new eight-week television series Medieval Lives, written and hosted by Terry, is currently on BBC 1 with the aim of putting to bed what he sees as a misrepresented and misunderstood period in history.

"There are a lot of stories about medieval times that simply aren't true," explains Terry, immediately warming to his subject.

"They didn't burn witches in the Middle Ages and they didn't think the world was flat."

The interest in history came about when Terry was getting to know the works of Chaucer.

"I got into history through the back door. I became extremely interested in the boring bits of Chaucer. There are so many interesting and witty stories by Chaucer that I thought we must be approaching it all wrong, so I set out to find out the funny bits in them."

With his latest project, Terry was able to combine his love of history with the role-play he was so famed for in Monty Python. The TV series sees him getting dressed up as a monk, a knight and even a damsel.

"I enjoyed being the monk and I looked absolutely convincing," laughs Terry.

"Looking into the lives of monks was fascinating. St Benedict's rule meant that monks were not allowed to eat meat unless they were ill, so they took to eating in the infirmary instead of the refectory. Their lives of hardship were a bit of a joke too. Knights going around killing people would pay the monks lots of money to say prayers for them, so they got richer and richer. In the end they wouldn't be living a life of hardship - quite the opposite. It would take about 20 years to corrupt a monastery."

Terry has become a considerable authority on his subject, giving lectures around the world, but it was in Monty Python and the Holy Grail that he had his first brush with medieval life.

"Holy Grail was terrible a really awful experience. We had five weeks to shoot it in, no budget and everything went wrong," says Terry.

"We had to film the two scenes of the Knights of Nee, about ten minutes of footage, in one day which was an enormous amount. Mike Palin and I wrote it, and when we sat around the table reading it it was funny, but I don't think it worked so well when we filmed it. Mike had a big moustache and beard, then a heavy helmet that covered his face and then he was stuck up a ladder all day. The poor chap was acting his socks off up there but no one could really see him."

Despite their success, Terry admits that they had no idea how they were going to go down with the public.

"Looking back at it, what we did was successful, but it wasn't at the time. When we were making the films we were on a knife edge whether it would work, whether anybody would like us or laugh at these silly things. In fact, the first audience that came to the studio didn't laugh at all. It was all pensioners who thought they were coming to see a circus act and they didn't get what we were on about. If you watch the first show you can hear that the laughter is very sparse. It was only after the fourth or fifth show that people started thinking it was good, and we started getting good reviews.

"When we were doing the Holy Grail, people said it was not as good as the TV series, and when we did the Life of Brian they said it wasn't as good as the Holy Grail. We were doing these things with no confidence, but it seemed to work out okay in the end."

Terry Jones' Medieval Lives is on BBC2 at 8pm on Monday. Terry will be giving a talk on the accompanying book to the series at Wycombe Swan Oak Room on February 18 at 7.30pm. Tickets: Ottakars 01494 443133 or Wycombe Swan 01494 512000.