 In the title, "ripping" is a chiefly British slang colloquialism for "exciting" or "thrilling", with "yarn" used in the sense of a story.In 1975, the BBC commissioned a pilot episode from Palin and Jones, envisaged to be a light entertainment comedy piece.The result was "Tomkinson's Schooldays" (a title loosely inspired by "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and suggested by BBC director Terry Hughes).