King Henry VIII Grammar School

His son Nick Edwards was in our class. He played bass guitar in a rock band called Score for a number of years. They used to do the Pilot at Radford every Friday night. I believe he intended to train as an architect.

Froggy Irwin taught French for several years. He knew his subject thoroughly, but every lesson was he same: dull voice, chalk and talk... He cracked one joke in all those years: he entered the classroom, put his bag down on the desk, and before saying "asseyez-vous", he looked at the boys (who were fuzzers) and said "2B or not 2B?"

Mr Irwin did have a sense of humour, as evidenced when we played a practical joke one day. I had played Sherlock Holmes in a school play (the Mazarin Stone), and a papier-mache replica of me (made in the art department) was part of the plot. The scene: Room 13, just before the arrival of Mr Irwin for our French lesson, we dressed the replica in my blazer and sat it in my seat. Mr Irwin duly appeared, and, seemingly without pause, crossed the room to the dummy, seized it by the shoulders and 'sent me outside' for the remainder of the lesson (not an unusual occurrence, it's fair to say). Whatever I thought of French lessons at the time, Mr Irwin taught me all the French I know!

Agreed, Mr Irwin was a very good teacher, who treated you fairly and with respect, and had no time for bullying and the snide put-down insults that some teachers loved. We had Jeff Vent one year, and I seem to remember him seeing the funny side of everything. One of his quips was "are you boasting or complaining?". He was still using that line a month before he died. I hadn't seen him since schooldays, then bumped into him at a garden party; I remember thinking he didn't look well. When introduced to him by name, he thought for a second and said "you were in White's". It seems he remembered every schoolboy he'd ever encountered not by name, but by the house they were in.

There were two PE teachers, Gerry Barrel and Thunderguts McGawley, who also taught us geography. I loathed geography and PE, but these two teachers were ok if you kept your nose clean. Gerry Barrel was renowned for saying things like "come here boy, give you a slap boy, teach you a lesson boy...", i.e. not remembering anyone's name. One day, Thunderguts left the gym for a few minutes to take a phone call. Some of the big roughie-toughie no-neck rugger players started mucking about, culminating in the pulling down of the shorts of one of their pals, just as Thunderguts came back in. He was not amused and ordered the four of them to report to him after school at the pavilion. He whacked them over the hands with a cricket stump, nearly breaking their fingers, we were told the following day. I can't imagine a teacher doing that today, or at least getting away with it.

Then there was Beeb (Bebop Barnes), whose job was to teach us music. At least, that was the theory. Being an all boys school, the ethos was that only girls and sissies did music. One was supposed to be built like the proverbial brick outhouse, putting the boot in or kicking the crap out of someone on the rugger pitch. About three of the lads in our class were lucky inasmuch as they came from a musical family, and had been playing classical violin or similar from an early age, so the basics of music theory were second nature to them. Pitched against such adversity, I suspect Beeb had given up all hope of teaching us music many years before I was there. He used to whiz through stuff on the blackboard at lightning speed, shouting equally as fast things like "scale of F major not minor, all Bs flat, use the flat sign, treble clef, SHUT UP SMITH DETENTION, dotted hemisemidemiquaver, write it down in your books now!" One boy was marking someone's test paper and asked Beeb if the capital B was acceptable when the specimen answer indicated a lower case b. He was not messing about; Beeb went mad and yelled nincompoop when it turned out that the answer was the flat sign, not the letter B! Some of us left school not knowing what middle C was or meant. I have always felt sorry for Beeb; he must have spent many years in a job he had grown to hate.

He did have a building all to himself, though

Hi all I was a naughty boy, just once. I stuck a drawing pin to one of the hammers in the upright piano. It provided quite a ting' to the morning hymn assembly.

Great for the sort of piano I play (honky tonk).

Upstairs, opposite the physics lab P4...? I seem to remember that P4 was permanently unoccupied. We would go straight into the music room at the start of a lesson. Beeb was never there, but always came a few minutes later (I guess he wasn't that keen), from the main building, walking across the large playground. So there would always be someone on lookout, ready to give the warning "Beeb's here!" Except for the time that Beeb must have been hiding in P4! We all thought he was particularly late on this occasion. Boredom quickly set in, and one boy, despite knowing it was out of bounds, went into one of the unlocked storage rooms at the back of the music room, and was merrily bashing hell out of the drums and cymbals, when the main door flew open and in stormed Beeb, his face red with anger. There was no opportunity to warn the poor lad. Beeb stormed in, we heard a crash of metalwork, the drumming stopped, and Beeb yanked the poor lad out literally by his ear, then laid into him with both hands in full view of the whole class. The good old days.

I remember the music system - it was literally a Tannoy. In the sixth form music lessons consisted of Beeb putting a record on, followed by a class discussion of its merits. It was always some sort of classical music. One cheeky lad infuriated Beeb; when asked for opinions of the music, the lad said "well, I mean... it don't stick in yer 'ead like good music, does it?" Of course, that was before the phrase "innit?" had been invented. I think they wised up to kids skiving off to the library. In our MPR sets, attendance was taken. So we had to go to music and RE. I've already described the wagging PE scam. I considered MPR subjects all a total waste of time. And geography, history, general studies, literature... well, any sort of fiction come to think of it. Plus biology (I was squeamish). And of course - games. Boring; no useful end product. No mental stimulation. What a waste of a Wednesday afternoon. We never had any type of sex education. Now if the school had been doing its job properly, instead of wasting time on stupid games, they should have been preparing us for the real world. On the said afternoon, we 15 year olds and older boys should have been issued with condoms, and taken by coach to Hillfields by prior arrangement to a local bordello, and given practical sex lessons. At least then we would have known what it was all about.

Interesting to read about Mr Barnes, although my experience of 'beeb' was somewhat different. Remember, I was at KHVIII some years after most of the previous posters, and therefore it is conceivable that some mellowing had taken place, but I cannot recall him ever raising his voice at us. My ability to learn music theory was limited, but I do not think there was any shortcoming in the teaching, just my natural stupidity. We were even permitted to bring our own records and play them to the class for critical appraisal. Our quest to find a pub within walking distance of the school at lunchtime without the risk of teachers being present led us on at least one ocassion to the 'Penny Black', where after being served (no ID worries in those days!), we noticed beeb in the corner with a guinness, hiding behind a newspaper; by mutual unspoken agreement, this was never revealed to anyone else! In my day, P4 was not permanently empty; we had triple physics in there on Friday? afternoons with Dave Barclay, which I remember enjoying. Nice place to learn in, and pleasant views out of the large windows across the playing fields with the tree-lined Spencer Road to the left.

Personally, I had nothing bad to say about Beeb; as I have said before, I kept my nose clean, and he never bothered me. However, he did frighten me (unwittingly), on one occasion, then unintentionally did me a huge favour. During one third year lesson, whilst we were singing, accompanied by Beeb on the piano, a classmate behind me tapped my shoulder, so I turned round, then muttered something funny which caused us both to snigger. At the end of the song, Beeb got up, waving his finger which came to rest in the direction first of me then some other kid at the back. He said "You two see me at the end of the lesson!". I thought we had been rumbled and that I was going to receive my first DT. Instead, he slagged off the rest of the class, accusing them of being tone deaf and not able to sing in tune to save their lives (not his exact words), but had picked out two boys with good voices; the school choir was desperately short of boys who could sing, and were we interested/would we please turn up to choir practice? I was so relieved at not being in trouble I readily accepted. It was a good move. It required no effort on my part, as my memory of words and tunes was good (I excelled at languages without putting any effort in - I admit I was lazy), I enjoyed it, it meant I was in a nice warm building at lunchtimes instead of a freezing cold playground, it very rarely impinged on my own time after school.... but the best was that for several years being in the school choir meant I was doing my bit, and it got me out of having to do all sorts of other drudge chores when asked (co-opted/coerced?) to do so by Pop Cork, our house master. Great... until eventually my voice started to break, when I had to give up anyway as studying for external exams was becoming very demanding timewise.

Having descended to becoming one of the 'dregs' of the school, Bebop was, at one time, my music and maths teacher as well as being my form master. I recognise many of the descriptions that earlier correspondents have used about him - disillusionment, impatience and the like. Years later, I was working in Birmingham and I was talking to one of my staff who belonged to an obscure religious group. She asked me if I knew him and was surprised with the report that I gave her. Apparently he was a lifetime member of the group and had a reputation throughout the Midlands as a choirmaster. Amongst them he was highly honoured as well as being noted for his gentleness and sense of humour!

Droob was another teacher not encountered as such during all my years, but he had a reputation throughout the school. I think many other teachers went in fear of him. In some lessons, he could be heard shouting at his class several doors down the corridor! On one occasion, just before the 2 o'clock bell, Droob was carrying a pile of textbooks precariously on one arm, his other arm carrying his case, when a boy who was being chased in the playground, seeking refuge in the building, ran up the steps, through the doors and collided head on with Droob. The whole pile of books was sent crashing to the ground, and the unfortunate lad immediately dropped to his knees and started picking up the books. After a few seconds he did not know what had hit him. Droob laid into his head with one almighty smack, bawling "you haven't even apologised yet... DETENTION!"