A classmate described her spanking

Yes very Monty Python and it immediately made me think of Rowan Atkinson's caning obsessed headmasters in both 'Fatal Beatings' and another one where the student flees the room and the headmaster contents himself with caning the world globe because it's roughly the same shape as a bottom. The last bit of it ends with him winding up and saying, 'You've had this coming for a long time Africa!'

Not sure I can picture Mr Bean as a headmaster. I think I would prefer my "Fatal Beating" to be administered by Pamela Stephenson. It would be a painful end doubtless but somehow fitting.

He said he actually based his headmaster and schoolmaster characters like the one in 'Fatal Beatings' and the schoolmaster in 'Roll Call' on actual teachers he had during his own schooldays, I think he attended an old fashioned British boarding school. Atkinson isn't just Mr Bean, he was also Blackadder and he played a plethora of characters in Not the Nine O'Clock News as well as his own stage shows. I must admit I really enjoyed him playing a British diplomat in Never Say Never Again, saying to Connery's Bond, 'I'm glad you're here Mr Bond, now we can get down to some really gratuitous sex and violence!' Speaking of Bond, I'm not sure if anyone saw the series Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond, which was a highly fictionalised account of Fleming's life from just before WW2 up to when the war finished, it had a couple of scenes of him spanking his girl friend (later wife) as part of their sexual play. Fleming himself was reported to have been fairly brutally beaten throughout his school days, before Eton and at Eton.

As was Orwell, Gavin Maxwell, A.N. Wilson, Somerset Maugham, Roald Dahl and almost any author you care to think of from an upper middle class background. Sensitive artistic types usually had a hard time at boarding school! Manly rugger-playing chaps like myself usually got off fairly lightly!!

No doubt Pamela Stephenson will bear that in mind when she catches up with you!

If you are looking for Rowan Atkinson's "fatal beating" sketch, you can find it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBeguUvuDzs , with the sketch's script being found at http://www.wepsite.de/Fatal%20Beatings%28sketch%29.htm

It begins:
Headmaster: Well now, Mr. Perkins. It was good of you to come in. I realise that you're a busy man, but I didn't think this matter could be discussed over the electric telephone.
Mr Perkins: No. No, absolutely, Headmaster, I mean, if Tommy is in some sort of trouble, then I'd like to nip it in the bud.
Headmaster: Well, quite frankly, Tommy is in trouble. Recently his behaviour has left a great deal to be desired.
Mr Perkins: Dear.
Headmaster: He seems to take no interest in school life whatsoever. He refuses to muck in at the sports field. And it's weeks since any master has received any written work from him.
Mr Perkins: Oh, dear me.
Headmaster: Quite frankly, Mr Perkins, if he wasn't dead, I'd have him expelled.

After that, it goes on as the father reacts to that news and the Headmaster carries on as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Wonderful deadpan humour.

I have always believed in humiliation to be part of corporal punishment. Be it a naughty school-girl, a secretary, a mature mother. That means at all times a female, should have her knickers taken down, and caned.

I completely agree with you. My mother was of the firm opinion that only when you keep the buttocks of your kids red they will become good citizens........Chandra

I can believe a teacher would do something like that because I had a math teacher that especially enjoyed humiliating girls. My dad was military so I went to the equivalent of 7th grade in an English school (early 1970s). Our school allowed teachers to give boys 2 strokes with the cane and girls 1 stroke. Anything more severe got you sent to the headmaster for a "proper" caning. This math teacher was basically an @sshole, threw chalk and/or erasers at students, belittled us for wrong answers, etc. (worst teacher I ever had and I blame him for me sucking in math when I came back to the States). It was like he went looking for conflict with us, because someone got caned almost every day (he had his special targets which luckily I wasn't one of). Boys he just made bend over and touch their toes and he'd give them 2 whacks with his cane over their trousers. But girls he would make come up to his desk, bend them over it, flip up their skirts so their panties were exposed and then cane them in front of everyone. So these were ~12 year old girls. Don't know why/if anyone ever tried to complain; it was like he singled them out and wasn't going to change his mind, so they just lay there and took it.

I'm surprised there weren't complaints as that would have been pretty controversial, even in the early 70's.