“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.