That's Ripping, You Know (Off the Wish List)

The Complete Ripping Yarns (2 DVD Set)

Quite by surprise (today being Labor Day) I looked up to find that my order of Ripping Yarns (1976-1979; DVD release 2005) had already arrived. This short series (9 episodes) starred Michael Palin and in the pilot episode Terry Jones; both Pythons wrote the show.

To quote Wikipedia (always good for a potted explanation), “Each episode had a different setting and characters, each looking at a different aspect of British culture and parodying pre-World War II literature aimed at schoolboys. In the title, "ripping" is a chiefly British slang colloquialism for "exciting" or "thrilling", with "yarn" used in the sense of a story.”

Ripping Yarns was part of our Sunday evenings back in the day, and certain phrases entered our common jargon. “Thank you, School Bully;” “I think it was G. K. Chesterton who once said …;” and “The Claw!” were among them. Though I have had a book of the complete scripts for a long time and episodes can be found on YouTube, I really wanted to have my own copy. And now I do.