Hurrah for bun fights, stink bombs and catapults made from knicker elastic. The rebellious pupils of St Trinian's are to return to cinemas in a series of multi-million pound remakes.
Ealing studios, which spawned a golden age of eccentric British comedy in the 1940s and 1950s, is to update its classic boarding school capers as part of its 100th anniversary revival and £50m revamp.
Barnaby Thompson, Ealing's co-owner, has revealed he will remake the entire slapstick series, which featured boarders in black stockings gambling, chasing men round hockey fields and plotting to blow up the school.
The British actor Rupert Everett is tipped for the role of the harassed headmistress, Miss Fritton, originally performed to much acclaim by Alastair Sim.
Mr Thompson, whose credits include Spice World: The Movie, told ScreenDaily.com: "We are going to have a lot of fun with it. If Kylie Minogue wants a part as one of the girls, great.
"We won't have to change that much - it'll be a rundown boarding school only in 2002, so the essential set up is the same. The changes will be more in terms of the tone, giving it a more contemporary view of the world." Flash Harry, George Cole's turn as an archetypal postwar spiv, is as yet to be cast.
A spokeswoman for Ealing said St Trinian's formed part of a mission to produce films with a certain "Britishness".
Mr Thompson is finalising a deal with the French company Canal Plus for the remake rights to four films, The Belles of St Trinian's, Blue Murder at St Trinian's, The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery and The Pure Hell of St Trinian's - all made between 1953 and 1965 and regularly repeated on television.
Once described as "nostalgic hymns to a golden age of juvenile delinquency", the films were based on Ronald Searle's 1940s cartoon strip about gymslip rebellion.
Searle was inspired by the real-life St Trinnean's, an Edinburgh "school for young ladies" which closed in 1946. During one term, its somewhat progressive head mistress insisted the girls ate their meals backwards, starting with their pudding and ending with soup.
Dick Fiddy, a researcher at the British Film Institute, said the St Trinian's films had earned their place as classics of British film history. "Although they had none of the subtlety of the brilliant Ealing comedies, the films had a robust and broad humour hugely popular with the public."
But he warned that a 1980s reprise, Wildcats of St Trinian's, had had poor reviews and lean box office returns.
