The elderly British employees of the Permanent
Assurance Company, a staid
London firm which has recently been taken over by the Very Big Corporation of America (VBCA), rebel against their much younger corporate masters when one of them is wrongfully
sacked. Having locked the surviving supervisors in the safe as hostages, and forced their boss to walk a makeshift plank out a window, they commandeer their
Edwardian office building, which suddenly weighs anchor, uses its scaffolding and tarpaulins as sails, and is turned into a
pirate ship. The stone office building starts to move as if it were a ship. Leaving the
City of London, they sail to another financial center and then proceed to attack the VBCA's skyscraper, using - among other things - wooden
filing cabinets which have been transformed into
carronades and swords fashioned from the blades of a ceiling fan. On ropes, they swing into the board room and engage the executives of VBCA in hand-to-hand combat, eventually vanquishing them after a long and drawn out battle. After their hard-earned victory, the clerks celebrate while singing a heroic
sea shanty as they once more "sail the wide accountan-sea" in search of further adventures. However, they unceremoniously end up falling off the
edge of the world; due to their belief about the shape of the world being "disastrously wrong". Typically of how the Pythons would
weave previously "terminated" plot lines into later scenes in their projects (such as "
The Spanish Inquisition" in
Flying Circus, or the repeated references to
swallows in
Holy Grail),
The Crimson Permanent Assurance suddenly re-emerges in the middle of
The Meaning of Life. After the donor scene, the film shifts to a modern boardroom in the VBCA headquarters, where the executives debate about the meaning of life (and whether or not people are wearing enough hats). The debate is halted when one executive asks "Has anyone noticed that building there before?", which turns out to be the office building/pirate ship of the Crimson Permanent Assurance. As the beginning of the battle between the clerks and the VBCA is repeated, the raid is suddenly halted by a falling skyscraper crushing the Permanent Assurance Company building, accompanied by a voice-over apologizing for the "unwarranted attack by the supporting feature". ==Cast==