Tomkinsons Schooldays
England 1912. Tomkinson (Michael Palin) is a new boy at Graybridge school. He tells of the horrors of the school life: beating the headmaster (also Palin), the fight with the grizzly bear (Jones), being nailed to the wall on St. Tadgers day, having to ask permission to breathe after 10 p.m. and Grayson (Ian Ogilvy), the school bully, who gets everything he wants: alcohol, cigarettes and company of unmarried Filipino women. One day, Tomkinson is shot during French translations. His mother (Gwen Watford) visits him in hospital, he begs her to take him home, she refuses and tells him that his father, a polar explorer, has returned to the Antarctic, because hes got a woman there. Tomkinson decides to escape. During a rugby match he simply runs for it, but is caught by the school leopard. Then he tries to get out disguised as a woman and is caught by the Spanish master (Jones), trying to rape him. In model boat club, Tomkinson builds a full scale model icebreaker, but is told to melt it down by Mr. Ellis (Terry Jones). When a polar explorer comes to the school to do a speech, Tomkinson hides in his trunk, but has to discover, that the polar explorer was only Mr. Ellis. After three weeks detention in the school maggot pit, Tomkinson is remarked by the school bully. He tells him, that he and the chaplain controlled all the way out of the school, but would let Tomkinson test the chaplains new tunnels. An hour later, Tomkinson finds himself behind the headmasters writing desk, completely drunk, with 200 cigarettes and accompanied by Suki (Chai Lee), the half-naked, unmarried Filipino lady, as the tunnel finishes too early. He is sentenced to the most awful penalty: The 30-mile hop against St. Anthonys, a Buddhist public school. During the first half of the hop, all of the Graybridge students die of exhaustion and just as Tomkinson feels his end near, Grayson comes and gives him a sniff of some white powder. Tomkinson is the first Graybridge student to ever win the hop and he hops on to his home, where he finds his mother entangled with a half-naked man. He again tries to persuade her to let him stay, she again refuses. He is about to leave when another half-naked man joins them: his father (Terry Jones). Tomkinson returns to Graybridge, where he is appointed new school bully, Grayson having been offered a place at Eton. Tomkinson sees his chance in changing Graybridge, but decides hell have to do it in small steps and continues in just the same way as Grayson.
