Vandals rip door knockers off naked Terry Jones' sculpture

A statue commemorating actor and writer Terry Jones has been vandalised just weeks after being unveiled.

Sculptor Nick Elphick said he was left "in shock" while Jones' daughter, Sally, "seemed very upset" by the damage to the bronze statue at his birthplace in Colwyn Bay, Conwy county.

Jones' family backed a £120,000 fundraising campaign to have him immortalised as the nude organist, a recurring character he played in Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Elphick said the vandals had removed two door knockers from the statue which were a nod to the 1986 fantasy film Labyrinth which Jones had co-written.

"I felt really low. It is a shock that has happened so quickly," said Elphick.

He said Sally Jones had alerted him to the damage.

"I dropped everything and I drove straight down to see what happened," he said.

"I'm a little bit depressed. She seemed very upset."

Elphick said a night vision video camera had been put in place to protect the statue.

"I'm just warning people about that... that's the security we have."

Jones, best known for his part in the British comedy group Monty Python, died in 2020 aged 77 from a rare form of dementia.

Elphick thanked the people who had found the vandalised pieces and said they would require repair and rewelding, costing about £1,000 to fix on-site.

"The expense is in the making of the bronzes, that's why it costs a lot to have them done. Money value in the metal it is nothing," he said.

"My concern is that this was [an] incredibly tight budget to get this done.

"We've all really put our hearts and souls into this and I haven't made a profit off of this."

The Python on the Prom campaign, launched by Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam last summer, paid for the statue of their co-star.

It was unveiled during a special ceremony last month featuring a number of celebrities.