Errol Phipps, Failed student of Houdini

"Escape from Stalag Luft 112B" is one of my favourite episodes in the series ~ if only for the absurdist nature of it (right up there with "Across the Andes by Frog"). Its obviously a parody of the heroic war escape sub-genre film (Stalag 17, The Great Escape, ad nauseum). Major Phipps is a POW with an OCD mania for escaping. He's inside Camp 112B all of two minutes & he mounts a preposterous attempt to "leg it" over the fence in full view of everybody. In all he makes 107 attempts, all pathetically ineptly unsuccessful, to escape the camp, leaving a criss-cross pattern of tunnels which end nowhere! After he dies in the prison, & is buried, he is finally successful in escaping ... we are left with the final scene of a mound which indicates a tunnel leading from Phipps' grave to outside the prison fence. Posthumous freedom at last!