Amusing and not so amusing gym teacher nicknames
Another first time poster after many years of reading....hello peeps!

My first secondary school was a Public one in Birkenhead (i.e. extremely Private, never really understood that). Think Tomkinson's Schooldays but without the fun of nailing the smaller boys to the school wall. The head was a dour Welshman, ex-rugby player for his country. He was big on God and small on humour. He had a mangled ear, presumably from the rugby, but it had earned him the amusing nickname of syph, as in syphilitic. He was a cunt.

The gym teacher was a Mr Liddell, grandson of Eric Liddell on whose life the film Chariots of Fire was partly based. He was mildly sadistic and also rather pious, but actually not too bad on reflection. His nickname was, rather unimaginatively, Eric...ho hum.

I got expelled from there after 4 years on the pretext of fighting. The truth was I just had too much attitude, was academically lazy and not particularly good at sport (if I had been, I would have got away with the laziness). This didn’t really fit in with the school ethos of getting the highest possible A Level results, oxbridge entries etc coupled with excessive bestiality on the ‘rugger’ pitch, so I ended up going to a former grammar school, but by then a comprehensive (this is the early 80’s) in rough and ready Rock Ferry (of the Duffy album fame).

I thought I might have a hard time there, ex-public boy school etc, but it was actually pretty cool, and I’m still friends with some people from there now, which is more than I can say for the other school. It was much more my kind of place.

One of the gym teachers there was a Mr Fielding. He was tall, lanky, slightly effeminate with a balding, flyaway comb-over hair job, and used to shoo us into the showers with a limp wristed wave of his hand and an enthusiastic cry of ‘come along boys!’. There were the usual allegations of gayness, probably unfounded, but he had one of the best teacher nicknames I’ve ever heard...

Mr Feel-Me-Ding!

He should have been a character in a Carry On film.
(jellyknees, Thu 26 Nov 2009, 10:40, 2 replies)

Almost
Dickensian.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Thu 26 Nov 2009, 12:01, closed)

The public school thing is easily explained.
All you have to do is to cast your mind back to when they were founded: there wouldn't have been much education outside that provided by either the church or private tutors. A public school was one that was open to the public - that is, as opposed to having a private tutor in the home.

Whether you could afford to go is a different matter. But the point is that the place was, in principle, open to all.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 26 Nov 2009, 12:13, closed)