[anon]

They were pretty well neck-and-neck in the coolness stakes, until the day in Year 9 that Simms saw Torbay getting ready for a shower after gym, and noticed that instead of grabbing his t-shirt by the collar and dragging it off across his head, Torbay crossed his arms, delicately grabbed the hem of the shirt and lifted it gently up & over in a rolling motion, like a fucking girl.

Once this got around, Simms' #1 Coolest Guy status was undisputed. Not only was Torbay revealed to be a girly undresser, but the deeper implication was that Simms could draw the comparison because he himself had witnessed a girl getting her gear off.

Game set and match, Tor-GAY.

Simon M

Smacks range from the full cock-punch, to the more advanced and surprisingly debilitating bell flick.

[anon]

From then on, anyone seen enjoying the said drink was subjected to the Capri Sun Challenge.

[anon]

When I was a child these five girls used to love kissing me all at the same time! When they had finished I would proceed to punch this guy named Edward in the stomach!

Were YOU a bigger child stud than Murray Pirret? Perhaps you were snorting coke off a prozzies’ tits at nine years old. We NEED to know.

Murray P

This contravenes the pre-specified exam conditions rules, as I was reminded whilst my testpaper was torn to pieces in front of my very eyes.

Tom C

Woggy

‘Mummy’s dying, Baby crying

Concentration!

Concentration!

Feel the knife (punch) in your back, feel the blood dripping down (mimicked with fingers)

Concentration!

Concentration!’

This could carry on for up to about half an hour with varying additional verses. By the end your back would be numb and covered in bruises, but more significantly, your soul would be damaged beyond repair.

Mary W

There was an additional twist: After four or five verses, when you sense your subjects mental defences have been suitably weakened, suddenly switch to:

“You’re on top of a tall building… AND YOU FALL OFF!!”

This line was accompanied by a violent forward shove. If, as was hoped, the victim’s imagination had momentarily gotten the better of them, this sudden image would induce, at least a two-second show of shrieking and thrashing about on the ground, and, at best, a lifelong struggle with depression and psychosis.

Trip F

Every autumn, we would bombard the local horse-chestnut trees with missiles in order to amass huge collections of the shiny brown nuts. These would then be stored in shoeboxes or biscuit tins until they all grew stinky black mould and our mums threw them out. Conkers would never, ever be played.

I can only assume that conkers were collected because of vaguely-remembered stories from Grandfathers of playground games of yore. In those days, they would sometimes pickle or bake their conkers to harden them.

On the one occasion Conkers was actually played, the vinegar-sodden little fuckers would disintegrate after about three blows.

[anon]

Connor Hugh,
Connor Hugh,
He loves to put his cock in poo.

Peter L

Not to be confused with a more sinister nob, drawn further back on the seat. If you sat on it this meant that you thought it was a real nob, and you had leapt onto it in the hope that you would get bummed by classroom furniture.

Stephen N

This is basically the game http://www.pagat.com/passing/oldmaid.html. The “scabby” element comes from the punishment for losing, which is a number of scrapes to the knuckles with the whole deck. The number and violence of the scrapes is determined by cutting the cards (red = soft taps, black = full-blooded whacks, value of card = number of hits).

Convincing a gullible child that any card they draw is worth 20 and concealing a credit card in the deck prior to administering the scrapes will ensure maximum bleeding. If you're a schoolkid with a credit card, that is.

Scrapes

A 2-player game that saves all that fucking around with Scabby Queen rules. Player One cuts. Player Two gives Player One the appropriate number of scrapes as hard as they fucking well can. Player Two cuts. Repeat until either player can�t take any more.

There are arguably no real winners in this game. However, if the player administering the scrapes drops the deck of cards, the other player is entitled to give them fifty-two scrapes. I only saw this happen once, but it resulted in a hand that looked like it had got stuck in a bacon slicer.

Matt F

Cue a voice from the back of the class providing us with one that was much easier to remember: “Can Tony Lick Susan’s Cunt?”

henry t

The reactivity series of metals (potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, aluminium, zinc, iron, lead, hydrogen, copper, silver, gold) may be rendered mnenomically as ‘Pauline’s Smelly Cunt Made Andrew’s Zoo In Leeds’ Hippopotamus Catch Syphilis and Gangrene.

Effective? The co-author (my mate Colin) is now a professional metallurgist with a fucking doctorate and everything. True.

[anon]

The 5 layers of the atmosphere are: Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, Thermosphere and Exosphere.

I remember those because of a great mnemonic: The Straight Man's Testicles Exploded.

jamie : Are we having fun yet?

[anon]

Ah, the power of mnemonics. Two I remember are:

A Penis Standing Tall Requires Deep Penetration

and

Angela Lansbury’s Cunt Requires Fertile Men’s Pumping Spunk.

Obviously I can’t remember what they were mnemonics for. Probably something dull about chemistry.

rob s

The phrase poofs like bum love all afternoon allows school-children - or, if I'm being honest, army medics - to remember the parts of the left side of the heart. It also reminds you to be extra-diligent at lunchtime, when gay men are like Gremlins in a swimming pool.

Tony G

Tiny electrical resistors are colour-coded so that you can tell each one’s, er, resistance. They’re too small to write numbers on, you see.

Our teacher, a right twat, had the nmemonic ‘Billy Brown Relaxes On Your Gym But Values Good Whisky’ for the black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, grey and white stripes.

We came up with the infinitely more memorable (and substantially more racist) ‘Black Bastards Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly’.

Actual number of engineers produced from that class: zero.

Dale T

A “CAST” diagram consists of Cosine, All, Sine and Tangent arranged in a little box with “SA” on the top and “TC” on the bottom. I’ve forgetten what this is actually for, but our Maths teacher, Shabaz Ahmed, taught us the mnemonic All Students Try Cannabis (reading anti-clockwise from A).

Despite this, I’ll always remember it as Ahmed Snatches Tiny Children .

Dunc C

Our tech teacher taught us the colour coding of electrical resistors using the mnemonic ‘Bye-bye Roger, off you go, Birmingham via Great Western’. A poignant farewell, hinting at a moving background story - “Brokeback Mountain” set in the West Country. Or perhaps the Ohm Counties. I didn’t feel it was my place to ask.

Ollie W

Although this board condones no form of animal cruelty, cats are the excepton. They SO reckon they’re IT.

Kit K

A favourite of mine was getting the cat to provide us with a show of breakdancing. This is easily achieved by simply putting a piece of Sellotape on each paw. A sock on the head will give it that “Catz in the Hood” gangsta rapper look.

Eager D

Every music lesson was sheer hell for the poor lad; the top three classes of the junior school used to share a weekly music lesson, which involved the deputy head thumping the piano whilst we all sat in rows mumbling to various ‘classic’ singalongs. The exception to this was “Let’s All Go Down The Strand” , in which the “HAVE A BANANA” refrain was sung as rousingly as possible with all eyes falling on Richard.

Last time I saw him he was working in a ‘budget-conscious’ shoe shop.

Yak S

Given that the venue for our cross-country runs was the infamous ‘cottaging’ area of Hampstead Heath, London, the story of a 13 year old boy jogging up and down in a pair of Knight Rider Y-fronts might well have ended more messily than it did.

Derek M

Our bitchwhore of a first year junior teacher, Miss Shaw, made a young lad of pikey extraction do PE in a lovely pleated green PE skirt from the lost kit mong begbox when he forgot his shorts once. If I saw her today, I’d kick her in the cunt for that.

Drew S

The Boy T

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester,

In a shower of cack.

The dozy twat forgot his hat,

And it all ran down his back.

At least on this journey he was spared the indignity of stepping into a puddle of shit that went right up to his middle; although this must have been before that occasion, considering his oath never to return to Gloucester at the conclusion of that episode.

In fact, considering his adverse reaction to just getting his legs wet in the classic rhyme, you’d imagine a faecal downpour running over his head and face, before trickling its moist brown path along his spine would have caused a much earlier embargo on Gloucester-going, that might have spared him the unfortunate puddle incident.

I bet he liked it, the Hippocratic scatwizard.

[anon]

At my school we had a supply freak called Mr Simmonds who looked like Chief Wiggum if he’s opted for a Terry Nutkins haircut. He wasnt qualified to teach so instead he’d pick on the class punchbag and direct a tirade of abuse at him until old man simmonds face went red and he started spitting like a retard achieving his first masturbatory orgasm in a broken lift in the sahara. once the spitting had occured it was a signal for the whole class to erupt like a versuvius of snot in laughter at the victim who would generaly end up crying at the spectacle before him. We are still at a loss as to why he did this and why he called it cheese on toast but it generally happened at christmas after screening a video of him doing the laughing policeman at another school he wished he’d never left.

Charlotte A

Needless to say, Clim hated the shoes with a passion, but they proved to be absolutely indestructible. He left them out in the garden for 2 weeks whilst away on holiday; they went mouldy, but still would not die.

Clim ended up as the victim of a strange man under a bridge in Leicester who looked on whilst Clim was forced to strip, and then put on an enormous pair of white Y-fronts. I’m not sure what part his home-made shoes played in this sordid episode.

Rik M

Gays being fundamentally unreliable, he was late for one lesson, presumably having been distracted by the new handbag shop in town. Five minutes into the lesson he burts through the door, huffing and especially puffing, and pants " Sorry, lads. Cock up my end. "

Ben C

“But I SUCK at oral!” complained Alexandra Cooper, the day before the oral portion of our German test. Mr. Keenan decided to commiserate with her while using her own slang to make her feel more at ease. Or something.

“Yes, I’ve always, uh, ‘sucked’ at oral too, but…”

The rest of his sentence was drowned out as the inevitable hilarity ensued.

Alice S

After a lengthy motivational cum bollocking lecture, our American maths teacher told us, in all earnesty, “Yeah, I know I ride you guys pretty hard sometimes.”

[anon]

A couple of the Set 1 GCSE Maths class popped over to our Set 2 class one day, in order to tell us that our teacher, an awkward, sartorially challenged man, was “a bender”.

They did this with black marker pen in capitals on every one of a stack of about forty textbooks, and then legged it and left us to suffer. Cue the head of maths, possibly from the Middle East somewhere, shouting in his Borat-esque accent that “That man has had more women than all of you have had hot dinners!” I didn’t know where to put my face.

Struff B

The best possible scenario is getting a teacher to read out this Dungeon Masteresque riddle - " once you have connected the wire, the cunt should be significantly higher “.

Bionic S

Josh B

Alana

Ten to ten to ten-ten-ten
Ten to ten to ten-ten-ten
Ten to ten to ten-ten-ten
Tennn to ten ten ten

With enough people aware of Cowboy Time, the first lesson of the morning can be turned into a rousing Wild West chorus.

* non-Philistines will of course recognise this as Rossini’s William Tell Overture .

Phil G

The game was short-lived, and effectively ruined in its early rounds, when a competitor managed to somehow empty his mouth in three seconds. There seemed little point in choking ourselves to beat such an admirable and physically impossible record, so we went back to whatever we did before Creme Egg Speed Eating.

[anon]

The warmed and stinking cupped hand would be clenched into a fist to contain the smells. Then opened up over the mouth and nose of any unsuspecting smaller kid along with the shout of Cup-a-Poop! Cup-a-Poop! Cup-a-Poooooooooop! You would rub your hand quite hard in their face, to make sure every last drop went up their nose.

Occasionally you would ask your victim first; ’ What is your favourite flavour Cup-a-Poop? ’ Whatever they answered would be challenged with ‘Well I think it’s beef’ before the Cup-a-Poop was served.

Stuart M

In a move that still shocks me to this day, I decided that the only way I could end this torture was to ‘become gay’, thereby somehow negating any further comments. Why call someone gay if everyone knows they are?

I announced my new found sexuality to Sonny by kissing my best mate David on the cheek. David ran away, but Sonny remained. I then ‘came on’ to him, by approaching him and making ‘kissy’ noises with my mouth. This was all too much for Sonny. He ran away and cried - and never came near me again.

Interestingly enough, David, my then unwilling partner in gayness is just about to graduate as a fashion designer. Sonny’s sexuality remains unknown.

matronboy n

Edward N

The Chocolate Cock (paraphrased)

from “The Talking Teapot and Other Tales” by Enid Blyton

Once there was a piece of chocolate in the shape of a cock. The chocolate cock stood right in the very middle of a sweet-shop window, and all the children came to look at him. He was very proud of himself indeed - as would you be, if you were a huge delicious brown cock.

“I am the Chocolate Cock!” he crowed. “I am the Chocolate Cock! I am the handsomest bird in the world, for I am the Chocolate Cock!”

He was marked a shilling, and none of the children that came to look at the cock could afford to buy him. They just stood and looked at him, to drink in the staggering beauty of the massive over-priced chocolate cock they all wanted so badly to stick in their mouths and drag across their bodies, stencilling the edge of their bot-bots.

Sometimes the feelings in their tummies, a hunger that could not be sated by any other food, led the children to experiment with each other in front of the cock, while it looked at them with its imperious, milky eye. But one day the wife of the Duke of Edinburgh visited the shop, and said she didn't like all the little boys fucking each other outside his shop, so he got a farmer to kill them.

Jaded F

One of his many claims was that Crack Cocaine got its name from Duran Duran when they had wild parties and took the drug from naked ladies’ front bottoms. This earned him a severe kicking, not because it was a complete lie, but for liking Duran Duran.

Shamim C

Young John claimed to have tried “slap”.

Though this may not have been true before, it most certainly was after.

The Boy T

Paul Equinox C

This was demonstrated to me aged 8, when I had never seen a cunt, didn’t know what the word meant, and had no idea whether a bald cunt was funnier than a hairy one. It was on the guy’s cheek though, so I laughed anyway.

The Boy T

“How old’s ya Mom?”

“48”

“Hahaha, Coffin-Mom”

Dave P

Sadly, Smiths Tubes are no longer with us, but I’m confident that this will definitely work with Golden Wonder Wheat Crunchies .

The Long Wotsit - Take some Wotsits and nibble a small piece off each end. Using enough saliva, the Wotsits can be pressed together to make a single freakishly long cheesy stick. This will invariably lead to somebody declaring, “that’s no Wotsit”, in an Alec Guinness voice and then a dinner lady will gasp and faint.

Uncle S

Wheat Crunchies also make excellent smoking receptacles. You look like a true spiv.

Dan

[anon]

Naturally, you would expect some gritty dialogue and scenes of a violent nature. Instead, we were met by a gang who looked like the extras who had been rejected from Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’ video for not being ‘Bad’ enough - Coupled with memorable lines such as, “I hear you like Rap . Well two thousand years ago, this cat called Jesus used to rap - About God.”

Note to teachers: Hear me up, jive-turkeys. Any attempt to be ‘cool’ is destined to fail. If you had any concept of coolness, your choice of profession would have been different. You dig?

Justin C

Phil H

As the game was more urgent, you didn’t have time to shout “wasp in the classroom”. You’d just shoud " Wasp! “, and the entire class would jump to their feet, waving rulers around without any real aim, stand on their desks, throw books at the wasps, and ignore the weak child who would squeal that we were " making it angry “. Girls would pull at their hair, convinced that it was in there, or hide under their desks to avoid the books and flailing rulers.

It resembled the Muppets’ green room, crossed with Airplane’s “Don’t Panic - PANIC” scene. Only three things could return calm;<ol> - By an extreme fluke, the wasp is killed.

• The wasp flies out of the classroom.
• The teacher sighs and leaves the room.
  </ol>

[anon]

Teachers should note, do not bring a can of wasp spray to school for these eventualities. Someone will play hero, the wasp will drown in a concentrated blast of spray before it can even consider being poisoned, somebody will be blinded, the class asthmatic will choke and some girls will cry over the corpse.

Clockwork C

Tom MacPhearson was suspended a few days later for finding an exhaust pipe on the school field and asking the Bursar if it was Mr Farquarson’s.

[anon]

What in fact happened was an immediate orgy of bribery, blackmail and violence in an attempt to get full marks. Ahh… organised crime .

Gareth T

That the noises might be caused by kids in the classroom on the other side of the wall playing Granny’s Garden on a computer and kicking the wall out of sheer boredom, would not occur to you. At least, not if you are David Malone.

This led to David asking Reverend Quine (in one of his weekly religious education visits) if he could exorcise the cupboard. Assemblies about offending visiting guests followed, and David wasn’t asked to go in the cupboard for wool again.

[anon]

I thought of this as run-of-the-mill schoolboy horsefoolery, until my mate from another class furnished me with a more objective viewpoint. He had one of those teachers who would keep students back on any flimsy pretext, so his class often got to see our fun. He provided me with this description.

• The bell would ring. There would then be a gap of some 30 seconds, during which his entire class would stare out of the window. - Like a panicked Gazelle, Palfrey would spring out from the buildings and beat a breakneck path across the playing fields. - There would be a further gap of about 5 seconds, as an underfoot thunder gathered force. - The doors burst open, and a screaming mess of boyhood (containing a significant number of the rugby team) throttled towards the fleeing Palfrey. - Palfrey would be engulfed. His bag, ejected from the melee, would follow a graceful parabola before showering the ground with his books. - The cloud would then disperse, cheerfully discussing the whimsical dusting-down that had just been meted out. - A broken Palfrey forlornly picked up his books, put them back in his bag, and waited until he could get back to the comparative safety of the classroom.

Bitching P

Jimbo B

[anon]

He told me that he enjoyed wanking wearing a condom, as it was ‘practice for the real thing’. But you had to be careful, as johnnies didn’t always flush away down the loo.

His dad once found one of Dewy’s spunk filled rubbers floating in the bog, and to spare his son’s blushes, he fished it and put it in the bin.

Unfortunately, Dewy’s mum then found it and demanded of her husband an explanation. To save his own skin, Dewy’s dad grassed him up and Dewy had to face his parents, and explain that he wasn’t having sex, but just poshing it around the house at every possible opportunity.

But it doesn’t end there. It should, but it doesn’t. Dewy went on to say that we couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t left floating johnnies in his grandmother’s house.

I don’t know what’s more disturbing;

• an old woman poking at a floating, spunky sheath

• the fact that Dewy, on hearing that he was going to visit his grandmother, had grabbed a condom and said " this calls for a wank! "

[anon]

It was funny for exactly one and a half days, by which time we’d run out of comedy poses.

[anon]

We never considered setting the victim on fire, though. Other than that, it was exactly like The Wicker Man.

Miss M

Used pejoratively as a self-regulating disciplinary mechanism amongst groups of teenage boys:

“Eugh! Smiffy’s getting his cheapies”

[anon]

Colin’s jim-jams were paisley, had flared sleeves and pointed collars. Colin looked away, biting his brave bottom lip as his mother stuck a sharp needle into his arm.

As if this wasn’t heart-breaking enough, Colin’s chirpy closing speech to the camera distilled into fifteen words what dialysis means to so many; " I love being on my dialysis machine, because then I can eat crisps and pop. "

The Boy T

I like to imagine myself, grown up and knowlegeable, retrospectively putting him in his place with an arsenal of words like respiratory, non-communicable, and retrospectively.

As it was, I just apologised for giving him asthma.

The Boy T

Nic P

Add powdered flint from your cheap lighter.

Light cigarette.

Voila - crap cigarette sparkler.

Nic P

Double up the bags, and make holes in them for the cat’s legs and head. When you have forced the doubtlessly reluctant cat into the bag, and wrestled it’s little paws into the holes, quickly grab the handles of the bag and swing the cat around.

The cat will be held in place using the same magic that keeps water in swung buckets.

Some notes on cat in a bag ;

<ol> - As with all such games, scream the name of the game while you do it. Just as a bundy isn’t a bundy without screaming bundy, cat in a bag requires a manic child to be screaming CAT IN A BAAAAG! as he runs through the playground. - Doubling up the bags will go some way to preventing a ripped bag, which will cause the cat to fly into your friend’s mouth, and he’ll go boss-eyed and make a comical “gulp” sound with a tail hanging out of his mouth. - You MUST swing the cat. Otherwise it will escape, and probably land on your face, and do a sick on you. To ensure absolute safety from re-purr-cussions, you might like to end the game by simply letting go of the bag.</ol>

Mark H

She will then give her son cheese sandwiches until he finishes his GCSEs. The son will at first eat them, because - after all - he likes cheese sandwiches. Soon, they will be left, rotting, in long-forgotten bag pockets and hedges on the way to school. After five years, the boy might even have to find new ways to walk to school, to avoid over-saturating certain roads with cheese fucking sandwiches.

I did bring this up with my mother in adult life, and she asked me why I didn’t say anything at the time. But… you can’t, can you?

NOTE : Use this effect to your advantage with less-visited and possibly housebound relatives, who will fill their home with your favourite thing, and you can go around there whenever you feel like it .

chris m

• Let’s distract everyone from the surname. Let’s give him forenames so preposterously poncey that by the time people have got around to saying the surname, they’ll already be punching him.

• Fuck it, we’re Gays. We were born to be bullied, bring it the fuck on.

Matthew H

After a few weeks of this entertaining but artistically somewhat naïve practice, postmodernism set in when someone stood on a table to carefully attach a slice of cucumber onto the most recent crop of cake-based ceiling adornment.

The next day, the cucumber was still there. Days turned into weeks turned into months, and still it remained, clinging defiantly to the ceiling.

To our surprise and joy, it was still there when we started our second year the following September.

We made a pilgrimage to this spot after our last AS level exam, and lo and behold, there it was; brown, shrivelled, twisted, shrunken, but still recognisable as our very own slice of cucumber.

Our last AS exam was in May 2002. If anyone reading this is currently at Poynton High School, could you see if it’s still there? If you enter the canteen from the main entrance, it’s slightly away from the far right corner, the one with the heater thing on one wall and the windows/fire exit on the other.

[anon]

The one time a teacher walked in, and asked the inevitable question - “What are you doing in here?” - we surprised each other by answering “fixing the toilet, sir” at the same time.

This togetherness must have lent the crap excuse some credibility, as the teacher seemed happy enough. Perhaps he just didn’t give a shit.

Ben W

One teacher’s loathing for school whipping boy Richard Fenwick was confirmed on the day she caught us stealing from his blazer, which was hung in the cloakroom.

“Why are you rifling through Richard’s pockets, Emily?” she asked.

“i’m checking for grenades, Miss,” I replied.

“Oh, okay then. But don’t be late for your next class, the bell has gone twice.”

[anon]

“Cambo” wasn't used to insult the thin kids. The pot-belly of malnutrition made it look like those poor, poor children had been walking like Pac-Men, greedily scoffing air.

A Cambo was therefore a child so desperate for food that they will eat air or sand in addition to their already huge rations of chips and Aztec bars.

[anon]

john w

During his lessons we would occasionally hear a long hissing noise, as he slowly but surely pissed himself.

He wore a catheter bag, which might explain why his pissing hissed, to be honest I never put my hand up and asked " sir, why does it make a hissing sound when you stand in front of class and piss yourself? "

Occasionally… this bag would develop a leak. And because he wore the same trousers everyday, a succession of dry salty tidemarks would develop around the crotch.

It is with a sense of shame - the man was incredibly nice - that I remember the whole class roaring with laughter. Cedric thinking it was due to his excellent depiction of Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Us, because the more we laughed, the more it encouraged him to prance about and the bigger his wet patch would grow.

( I have checked this entry out with the author, and he swears blind that it is all true. And that’s good enough for me. - Log)

Slab G

The blackjack or baccarat of the playground casino, these contests were risky games of skill which had to be held away from the eyes of staff, which is where the illicit smokers would also gather.

This, combined with the fact that it was usually only fairly hard kids who played, meant the whole sleazy scene had the tough, edgy tension of a Scorcese picture.

moogle m

[anon]

Best met with the reply “yes, they are”. Because, after all, they fucking are.

[anon]

You should also mention in your letters that you now appreciate that the word ‘git’ is not appropriate for such a forum, even if it was used to describe Mussolini.

Nathaniel T

“My mum’s Chinese” (pull both fingers up)

“My dad’s Japanese” (pull both fingers down)

“Look what happened to me!” (pull one finger up and one finger down).

If this visual gag wasn’t hilarious enough, imagine a pubescant girl singing " Chinese, Japanese, Mummy please, what are these? " whilst gesturing to her new, pert bahongas!

Boys can gesture to their dirty knees instead, but that’s not as funny as TITS.

Jon B

A demonstration that anything can be turned into violence, if you just put your mind to it.

<ol> - Bully puts fingers to eyes.

• “Chinese!” *fingers up*
• “Japanese!” *fingers down*
  </ol>

So far, so normal. However, in this case, this was a signal for everyone in the room to remain absolutely silent. Anyone making a sound would cue for the bully to scream “PROBLEM!!” and kick the victim in the balls as many times as possible.

When taken further, a whole class can do this to a substitute teacher, minus the ball-kicking. The visual aspect of an entire class spring-loading their eyes like a bear trap, coupled with the audio payoff off screaming “PROBLEM!!!” every time s/he tries to speak, is brilliant .

bucket m

Say:

1. “Chinese” (put your fingers up)

2. “Japanese” (fingers down)

3. “Dirty knees” (touch your knees)

4. “What are these?” (point to your chest)

No one ever replied “tits” or “boobs”. They just laughed. Probably because I was about 8 at the time. I suppose they should have said “fried eggs” or “two raisins on an ironing board”. But they didn’t say that either.

tracie f

[anon]

• Gasp one of the sweets between your teeth. - Hook thumbs under the elastic and pull forward making it taut. - Bite.<lo>Half for you - yum yum - and the other half goes flying at respectable speed into your target’s head. For extra targetting, go boss-eyed and use your nose as a crosshair.

princess seraphina f

This went on until the strips were full, usually dictated by the thick kid with the huge writing, and the hilarious stories that you’d created were unfolded and read aloud. Most of the time, sadly, they were not the dada-ist flights of whimsy one would expect. They were either total bollocks that either made no sense, or contained endless variations on the same sentence from kids with fuck all imagination, like “went to shag a prostitute!!!” or “had a big shit on the toilet!!!”

William Burroughs did not write <I>Naked Lunch* after a game of Consequences.

Leigh L

Or, more specifically, her name, his name, where they met, what he said, what she said, and what happened - the ‘consequences’.

Here are two example games which pay homage to the hilarious differences between boys and girls. Like a proper stand-up comedian!

<table width=“95%” border=“0” cellpadding=“0” bordercolor="#000000" bgcolor="#000000" bordercolorlight="#000000" bordercolordark="#000000"><tr bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><td width=“30%” height=“2”></td><td width=“37%” height=“2”><b>girl’s game</td><td width=“40%” height=“2”><b>boy’s game</td></tr><tr bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><td width=“30%” height=“10”><b>his name</td><td width=“37%” height=“10”>brad</td><td width=“40%” height=“10”>hitler</td></tr><tr bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><td width=“30%” height=“10”><b>her name</td><td width=“37%” height=“10”>katie</td><td width=“40%” height=“10”>mrs. hitler</td></tr><tr bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><td width=“30%” height=“10”><b>where they met</td><td width=“37%” height=“10”>in a meadow</td><td width=“40%” height=“10”>up your bum</td></tr><tr bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><td width=“30%” height=“10”><b>what he said</></td><td width=“37%” height=“10”>"i think you’re special"</td><td width=“40%” height=“10”>"give us a biscuit"</td></tr><tr bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><td width=“30%” height=“10”><b>what she said</td><td width=“37%” height=“10”>"i am riding a pony"</td><td width=“40%” height=“10”>"who farted?"</td></tr><tr bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><td width=“30%” height=“10”><b>consequences</td><td width=“37%” height=“10”>"they giggled behind their palms and secretly promised never to leave each other"</td><td width=“40%” height=“10”>"they turned into zombies and bit each other’s faces off and went to a fancy dress party as each other"</td></tr></table>

Jon B

Another story-generating game involves getting someone to try to tie a strand of her own hair in a knot with just one hand. While they try, you write down their exclamations of triumph, frustration or intense concentration: “It’s so HARD!” “Why am I doing this again?” “I almost got it!” “Arrrrgh.” and the like. These are then read back aloud as “what she said last night while having sex”.

[anon]

For example…BiTcH (bismuth, technetium and hydrogen), GaY, FUCK, PoO and especially SnOTi.

[anon]

Zoe was nicknamed ‘Casio’. She believed it was because she had a brilliant mathematical mind - like a pocket calculator. In fact, as you may remember from lessons about iron smelting, CaSiO₃ is the chemical formula for slag.

Jasmine S

Ahem…

Argon Selenium = ArSe

Barium Rutherfordium = BaRf

Bismuth Scandium Uranium Iodine Terbium Arsenic Hydrogen Erbium = BiScUITbAsHEr

Boron Oxygen Nitrogen Erbium = BONEr

Boron Oxygen Oxygen Boron Sulphur = BOOBS

Boron Uranium Mercury Germanium Radium = BUHgGeRa

Calcium Nitrogen Sodium bismuth Sulphur = CaNNaBiS

Cobalt Carbon Potassium = CoCK

Cobalt Carbon Potassium Lutetium Vanadium Erbium = CoCKLuVEr

Cobalt Carbon Potassium Sulphur Uranium Carbon Potassium Erbium = CoCKSUCKEr

Copper Nitrogen Titanium = CuNTi

Fluorine Argon Titanium = FArTi

Fluorine Oxygen Radon Iodine Calcium Tellurium = FORnICaTe

Fluorine Uranium Carbon Potassium Erbium = FUCKEr

Gallium Sulphur Hydrogen = GaSH

Gallium Sulphur sulphur Yttrium = GaSSY

Holmium Molybdenum = HoMo

Holmium Thulium Oxygen Thorium Erbium = HoTmOThEr

Lanthanium Bismuth Arsenic = LaBiAs

Molybdenum Uranium Selenium Cobalt Carbon Potassium = MoUSeCoCK

Molybdenum Thorium Erbium Fluorine Uranium Carbon Potassium Erbium = MoThErFUCKEr

Oxygen Ruthenium Fluorine Iodine Cerium = ORuFICe

Oxygen Vanadium Argon Iodine Einsteinium = OVArIEs

Phosphorus Iodine Nitrogen Potassium Sulphur Gold Sulphur Silver Einsteinium = PINK SAuSAgEs

Phosphorus Iodine Sulphur Sulphur = PISS

Plutonium Beryllium Tellurium Arsenic Erbium = PuBeTeAsEr

Polonium Oxygen Fluorine = PoOF

Polonium Radon Oxygen = PoRnO

Praseodymium Iodine Carbon Potassium = PrICK

Plutonium Sodium Nickel = PuNaNi

Plutonium Sodium Nickel Lithium Carbon Potassium Erbium = PuNaNiLiCKEr

Scandium Tungsten Iodine Nitrogen Germanium = ScWINGe

Sulphur Hydrogen Iodine Tellurium = SHITe

Sulphur Hydrogen Iodine Tellurium Yttrium Cobalt Carbon Potassium = SHITeY CoCK

Sulphur Iodine Carbon Potassium = SICK

Sulphur Phosphorus Uranium Nitrogen Potassium = SPUNK

Titanium Titanium Einsteinium = TiTiEs

Vanadium Silver Iodine Sodium = VAgINa

Tungsten Sodium Potassium Erbium = WNaKEr

Yttrium Oxygen Uranium Rhenium Gallium Yttrium = YOURe GaY

Useful prefixes:

Carbon Helium Einsteinium Yttrium = CHeEsY

Sulphur Titanium Nitrogen Potassium Yttrium = STiNKY

(Editor’s Note : Anna Williams either suffers from autism and Tourettes, or has looked this up on the “internet”. In any event, thank you Anna.)

(Anna replies : Sadly, neither is true, Editor. I spent far too much time finding out which rude words are possible with the periodic table and which aren’t. I’m still rather disgruntled that one cannot fashion ‘your dad blows goats’ with the abbreviations.)

[anon]

damien r

I recently started doing this again after a break of around twenty years and am at a loss to understand why I ever stopped.

Pete S

The pinnacle of this practice was:

SANDWICH: Ham & mustard on white bread.

WITH: Beef Monster Munch (sadly no longer with us).

DUNKED INTO: Chicken & Mushroom Pot Noodle.

Lloyd Grossman eats these. He told me.

-Imagine how Lloyd pronounces the word “monster”. Brrr, horrible.

Andy M

As well as adding crisps to the regular filling, try removing the regular filling and replacing that with a Mars Bar.

Not neccesarily the basis of a balanced diet, and not really that nice, either.

Noders

Five Doritos fit perfectly into half a medium sliced sandwich. Primary school maths taught me this is known as a ’tesselation’, a word I have never needed to use until this moment.

[anon]

The Champion’s crisp sandwich is, however, a complex beast. Each layer of the sandwich requires a different flavour of crisp and a different sauce. My personal best was seven layers, presumably not long after my mum had returned from shopping.

Rich M

griff

Even when you have left school and are working in a bakery, ‘doughnuts’ becomes ‘dog nuts’ with an alarmingly small amount of effort.

[anon]

Ginger S

I never knew the answer.

Leigh H

Strangely, any camp commandant had left by the time I joined, but house head ‘Uncle’ Beresford seemed quite willing to fill the role. Canteen food was perhaps the most obvious remnant of this hushed period of the school’s history…

Toy R

Hurray! We’ve snuck British Bulldog in, under the wire. Phil will be FURIOUS!-The other Eds.

Ginger S

If you pick the piece of paper with the lips on, then someone’s going to kiss you. If you get the envelope, someone’s going to write you a love letter. If you get the bin, you’re going to get dumped, which doesn’t really work if you were single, but such is the scrambled logic of the hormonal pre-teen.

Alistair G

Anthony B

Did you go to school with Neil Buchanan?

Steve

Nath D

Sage advice, and sadly not heeded by one J.C. Royston in his efforts to skive the once-yearly school run. His effort consisted of ducking under a bridge approx 200m from the start/finish line, and treating himself to a crafty kip.

On waking, he peeked out, troll-like, from under the bridge, and saw the finish line was absolutely deserted of everyone bar the timekeepers. Coming to the natural conclusion that everybody else must have finished, he came out from his hiding place and put in an impressive sprint finish.

On crossing the line, however, he was informed by a (curiously unimpressed) teacher that he had just knocked 28 minutes off the previous school record of 44 minutes.

J.C. Royston was not promoted to the school team on the basis of this superhuman feat; he was put into detention, where he presumably had to write out " I must not run at twenty five miles per hour " a thousand times.

Rik B

However, make sure you finish the logo, and don’t have a break half-way through the word, otherwise someone may write a crude “NT” after your lovingly crafted “CU”. Well, they did to me, anyway.

Andy M

My “Public Image Limited” logo became “pillock” thanks to someone’s black biro, but it was such a shit insult, I didn’t bother to scribble it out. Get me!

Nick H

My mate got his mum to embroider the full Marillion logo on his bag in wool, proving astonishing dedication in the public advertisement of a shit taste in music. Sacks came from army surplus stores in yellow, blue or black, though the last of these was less good as it allowed less opportunity for decoration.

The truly hard could place theirs in the bus queue and saunter off to the shops, knowing that the personalized sacks, recognized by all like a medieval baron’s livery, would hold their place for them. Hopeless geeks like me, pathetic enough to draw the African National Congress flag on mine in a spasm of late 1980s adolescent political consciousness, could not.

[anon]

There was a special way of writing ’the cure’ that involved one of the letters (quite possibly the U) being higher (or lower?) than the others. What I didn’t realise, until too late, was that if you got it wrong it meant that you were gay and fancied Mr Bannerman.

David G

Mark Hobson was so shit at spelling, he once scrawled: “THE HUMAN LEG” on his pencil case in honour of the Sheffield based Art-Pop-Electro outfit.

[anon]

Any of Catriona’s diseases can be passed on by contact with one of these pads.

You were immune from these diseases as long as your contact with the pad was limited to wanging it at someone else.

Gary W

Object of the game is to get the victim to “see” the magic circle, made from your thumb and index finger (in the classic “OK” sign). The magic circle is only “active” when the victim looks directly at it when it is held below waist level.

The victim’s attention is drawn to the magic circle using diversion techniques such as pointing out untied shoelaces, dropping coins etc, anything where one must look below waist level. The magic circle can then be introduced into the victim’s field of vision. When the victim looks directly at the magic circle, you are permitted to punch them on the arm for their gullibility. A pain in the arse to explain, breathtakingly simple in practice.

[anon]

Also known as The Orifice . An additional rule is that if you managed to get your finger in and out of The Orifice before it closed, you could punch the other guy on the arm 3 times. However, you had to rub it better otherwise you got punched back.

The Orifice also works in photographs; I made one in our department’s annual photo, and am technically entitled to punch everyone in the building.

Mark R

If the intended victim can insert their finger into the circle without looking at it, the effects are reversed, allowing the victim to punch the aggressor.

Perfecting this technique will stand you in good stead come the end of term school disco, during a slow dance with Amanda Byrne or any other tart in a too-short skirt.

[anon]

If the victim inserts his finger into your circle in an attempt to reverse your win, you can close your fist and trap his finger, which grants you double reversies. Punch his arm twice as hard to let him know that you will not tolerate such insolence.

Craig H

( Rural readers! Have YOU ever tipped a cow? Did you chortle as the cow, its fate sealed, lay helplessly on the ground? Did her big, confused eyes look at you as though to say “this was a horrible accident, right?” Or do you just make it all up to impress gullible city folk? Answers in the usual way… )

Andy M

The game of Cak requires a cricket ball to be thrown into the top of a conker tree, under which the cak players wait keenly for it, risking a skull-splitting thunk on their head.

Conker trees magnify the noise of the ball smashing into the branches, you can even feel it through the ground. Plus they’re teasingly difficult to see through when in full leaf. Your ideal Cakking Tree will provide a throwing route up through the branches while also acting like pinball machine when the ball tumbles back down through the foliage.

This fearsome game was played regularly by about 10 of us for 4 years at school. And no-one died.

Martin K. got ‘bonsed’, as he was nonchalantly eating a sandwich. He failed to heed the cry of “cak”, and he paid with his forehead. This marked Martin?s retirement from the game. The game of Cak.

Another innovation was the ’no looking up? round. This meant a steely-eyed battle of wills and terror rush where the sounds from above make you taste the adrenaline like metal.

Teachers would not stop the game of Cak, because they didn?t want to believe what we were doing. When one teacher asked what we were up to, possibly thinking we were terrorising a squirrel, we simply explained that it was “festive”. He seemed happy enough with that.

[anon]

• Boy decides to have immersive wank, using headphones and closing his eyes. - Boy masturbates to stringy completion. - Upon opening his eyes, a steaming cup of tea is next to his bed. - Boy deduces that mother has watched him wank.

A worse case scenario would be if the child opened his eyes on the vinegar strokes, saw his mother standing there, and having passed the point of no return, ejaculated onto his knee while they both stared at each other. A grubby little punctuation mark, sliding onto the linen.

Jon B

CHI-yuld molestAH!
Code name: Eben-STEIN!
He is the UGliest!
Man you’ve ever SEEN!

People who have traditional child molesting faces should not become teachers . People who lack the self-awareness to look in the mirror and say " Christ, I don’t half look like a paedophile, what with my furtive, sad eyes, sneering lip and pattern baldness " should not be pitied for their treatment at the hands of children.

When the above rhyme fades, simply boybott lessons and sit in your squads, singing;

Gotta be, gotta be,
Domino’s… Buffalo Wings

[anon]

Not to be confused with the pinching of skin either side of the neck, which as everyone knows, is an Ethiopian eating a crisp.

Andy M

Even if I had been inclined to spontaneous public dickwanking, I wouldn’t have done it over a girl who looked like a fucking man.

Nicolas K

Be sure to write Clint in big capital letters, with the L and the I meeting at the bottom, though.

C LI NT

griff

1. 10 to 20 to all the blokes in the year (excepting all the poofy ones who had girls for mates) would stand in a large circle (clothed, naturally.)

2. The members of the circle would throw whatever small change or trinkets they could muster into the centre of the ring. The amount of money (or cool stuff) would slowly pile up.

3. After some time, an enterprising and daring member of the circle would decide the amount in the pile was enough to offset the risk; he would get on the floor and try and grab it all.

4. And everyone would jump on him.

For the next thirty seconds the situation would degenerate into a writhing, screaming free-for-all, a mosh pit without the music or the kindness. If you were quick, you might make a profit of 10 to 20p every game, and only get your hand crushed a couple of times.

Ugly M

Mike G

I’m quite grateful to him, because it is through him that I learnt how to deal with mentally handicapped people; generally, stare at the floor not saying anything and hoping they will go away, so you can stop feeling guilty. Oh, and empty gestures of friendship, like being forced by your mother to invite him to your birthday party.

When he left school, spastic jokes promptly became all the rage, even amongst the teachers.

chin t

[anon]

Whichever choice is made precipitates a violent assault, followed by gravely intoning “he chose poorly..” in the fashion of a 700 year old knight.

Julian B

Sodium - produces unimpressive fizzing display when dropped in a sink full of water unless you’ve got enough to simulate Krakatoa. Dunking a head in the fizz will cause extreme panic and some flailing.

Phosphorus - the heavyweight. Ignites on contact with the air! Imagine sticking it down someone’s collar!

Master these three and you may move on to caesium, if you can get the key to the special cupboard.

Conor F

Another battle tested chem-lab weapon was a DIY cattle-brand made by heating up a test tube holder until it was glowing hot and then pressing the prongs down on a classmates books, pencil case, tie, blazer etc, leaving a livid black imprint. Livid!

chemical h

Here’s one we learned from experience: copper sulphate, when flung into someone’s eye from across the room, causes a club sandwich triple of hilarity;

1. The victim’s agony is most immediately and most obviously hilarious.

2. The classroom will be left alone for forty minutes while the teacher runs around, hoping to bump into a paramedic. This allowed for simple unnattended paper-plane throwing hilarity.

3. The next day, the victim comes into school like a jazzy panda with an orange eye, which is of course funny in itself, but will be rendered hilarious when he kicks the crimson shit out of his tormentor.

When this happened in our class, hilarity just didn’t stop ensuing.

Blort S

Our science teacher once gave us a demonstration of what happens when you reverse the motor in a vacuum cleaner. We soon discovered that the best use for this device was to fire red-hot boiling tubes at unsuspecting students.

[anon]

That pales into insignifigance next to the mini-ELO stage show that is opening all the gas taps around a square workstation and lighting them. With just a snaffled pack of Swan Vestas the entire classroom can look like a Bonnie Tyler video.

Drew S

Apparatus: Chlorine gas, a ‘Griffin Savers’ school bag and Richard Savage’s head.

Method: Combine.

Conclusion: With his head bagged, Richard is both dead and alive according to quantum law; in a superposition of states. It is only when Creedy removes the bag and sees that although Richard WANTED to die during the experiment, he is in fact alive - that the superposition is lost.

Tony G

Simon B

The first object that came to hand was a Chewit, and it was thrown a good 50 feet across the hall, hitting him square on the head and causing him to explode with shock, casting his pencils and drawing equipment into the air in a true comedy moment - it was probably the most accurate shot I’ve ever seen in my life.

I saw David Forsyth in a pub last year, and his girlfriend was better looking than mine, bastard.

Alistair G

[anon]

[anon]

Simon

Another classic Robocop quote - I’d buy that for a dollar .

To be used near a woman with exceptionally large breasts, preferably someone’s mum.

Arturo G

peter t

Birmingham also has the delightfully named places of Camp Hill, Lickey End, Acocks Green and Shaftmoor Lane. Hours of fun.

Town planners do it deliberately you know. Rude-sounding place names are what made this country the Great Britain that it is. Ah, I can almost hear the sound of a suggestively brassy trombone and Esther Ranzen chuckling her way through a link to a piece on cot death. Nostalgia!

Susan T

If you take a stroll up the Lickey Hills in Birmingham you will find Twatling Road. Legend had it that that Ron Atkinson lived there - though I’m not sure what the original name of the street was, before he moved in.

Ho ho! A footy punchline. That’s the last we’ll have of that, thank you very much; we wouldn’t want to be mistaken for /cgi-bin/browse.pl?sid=596’s mates.

Mr H

Leigh L

He was fucking bricking it after a while, and the look of confused terror on his squinty-eyed little face still makes me laugh.

I should really get a life and something more interesting to do, but only if David gets some decent eyes first.

Dan W

Phil G

At this juncture i should point out that my mother and father expected blood on my pages and had already crammed as much prehistoric knowledge into my still hardening skull as they could.

Anyway, this woman, probably called Mrs Fuller or something showed us slides of the very first musical instruments, up popped this image and she said, “this is the very first piano” I put up my grubby mitt and said, “actually the first keyboard instument was called a virginals”, to which she replied, “Aren’t we precocious”. I said, “no, merely correct.”

For my correctness i was made to sit in the ’entrance hall’ at play time for about three days.

[anon]

Jon B

Robert

[anon]

David H

Marc S

Darsy

Dominic S

Dan W

Duncan A

Jon B

SPACKERS SAY NO

Q : Did you watch Spackers Say No last night?

A : No…

Q : Spackers Say No!

Saying yes is a blatantly false claim to have watched a programme that obviously wasn’t on last night. Who are you trying to kid, spacker?

Neil O

AIDS Q : Have you got AIDS? A : No. Q : Are you positive….?

Neil O

“If a gay jumped on your back……………. would you let him stay or pull him off?”

Crazy D

Are you PT? No : You aren’t potty trained. Yes : You’re a pregnant teacher. Quite a young one, this.

Erik D

If you saw your dad and a prostitute drowning in a lake and you could only save one, which would you save? Rescue The Prostitute : “What, and leave your dad to drown?” Rescue Your Dad : “What, and leave your mum to drown?”

Rob

“Do you have HBO?” (American “premium” cable tv)

No: “You must be poor”

Yes: “Eww, you have Horrible Body Odor”

Kirk I

“If you were on a bus full of fags, would you get off?”

Memorable response:

“Yeah, I’d get off–the BUS!”

“Sounds like hard work.”

“Huh?”

[anon]

see also:

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“Urgh! GAYS say WHAT!”

Yes, the original comment was actually “gays say what”, said very quickly. However the irony of the first person also saying “what” in the original enquiry rendered this a doubly reversed catch-22, and therefore hideously flawed. Or something.

peter t

Are you a homo?

Surely the king (or queen?) of all playground catch 22s.

Reply yes : Err, you’re a homosexual.

Reply no : You’re not a homo sapien?

Not that insulting, unless you’re stupid enough to choose the first option.

David L

Q:Are you ace?

A:Yes

Q:Haha, ace is card, card is paper, paper is thick and so are you.

Thankfully, this was usually a brief phase. Could be countered with “Ace? Ahm fuckin’ brilliant, me”, or at least I wish I’d have thought of this one when I was 6.

Yak S

Q: Do your parents know you’re gay?

A: Oh? Ermm…Uh…

Q: Just answer the question!

If they don’t answer, that means that they’re not sure whether their parents know they’re gay, and should be punched in the arm.

[anon]

When adolescence is reached, and “effort” is the scariest thing you can demonstrate, all Catch-22s can be reversed by replying to the original question with “Do you care?” If they say yes, they lose their cool detachment from the world (and can be called gay), and if they say no, then there is no need to answer their question as they don’t care about the answer.

[anon]

Are you dumb or wise?

Wise.

I’m Morecambe! (slap victim’s cheeks a la Eric Morecambe)

Are you weak or strong?

Strong.

I thought that strong smell was coming from you.

Ironically, this joke is fucking weak.

What’s the worst thing you can buy from a second-hand shop?

What?

Second-hand bog paper. Do you get it?

Yes…

You get second-hand bog paper!

( See also The Gayly Mail, and Wanker’s Cramp )

Are you a gay or a farmer?

A farmer.

Here’s two acres for you… (punch victim in the balls)

( Probably rural, this one, as it implies that all non-farmers are gay, and that there is no horrific stigma attached to saying “I’m a farmer”, which is stretching the imagination a little far… )

Craig H

Another timeless classic:

Are you a lightbulb or a candle?

Lightbulb: So you get turned on by a knob?

Candle: So you get blown out by a puff?

Almost Swiftean in its ingenious subtlety.

[anon]

If Jack helped you off a horse, would you help jack off a horse?

Matt F

Would you feel like a dick if you walked into a gay bar?

Yes: Then you want some big gay cock.

No: Then you admit that you would feel right at home. And therefore want some big gay cock while you’re there.

[anon]

A: “What’s the most disgusting thing in the world?”

B: “Dunno.”

A: “Second hand toilet paper! Do you get it?”

B: “Ha ha! Yes!”

A: “What, you get second hand toilet paper? Is your family so poor you have to use other people’s used toilet paper?”

etc.

Chris

(As if telling a joke)

A: There was this bloke, right, who had a wank in the bath.

B: Yeah?

A: Well, you know what spunk looks like in the bath?

B: (not thinking) Yeah

A (and everyone else): Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! You bath-wanking pervert! Say goodbye to your social status and your friends, loser.

Joe B

A: Have you heard?

B: Heard what?

A: Have you heard?

B: What?

A: Have you heard the jokes that they don’t tell gays?

B: [hopefully] No.

A: That’s because they don’t tell gays!

Obviously, ‘gays’ can be amended to ‘dykes’, or whatever best suits the circumstances. It spoils it a bit if they say “yes”. And then say, “sorry, I can’t tell you them”.

Drab G

Ask someone what their favourite number is, out of 8, 10, or 11.

If they say “8”, make a circle with the thumb and index finger of both hands, and hold them one above the other to represent the figure 8. Then rapidly bonk the two circles together to represent lesbian sex. Numerologists agree that fans of the number 8 are dirty gay bummers.

If they say “11”, extend both your index fingers and hold them next to each other to look like the number 11. Then bang the fingertips together rapidly to represent man-on-man action. Another bummer exposed.

If they say “10”, extend the index finger of one hand and form a circle with the thumb and index finger of the other. Hold these up together so that it looks something like the number 10. Then put your finger through the hole to represent heterosexual intercourse. But keep your bum against the wall - the number 10 is the bummers’ smokescreen.

Osiris o

Jon B

Paul Bradfield was a Patrick Sears (see Patrick Sears). His life was a non stop carnival of misery and pain, and many long hours were spent chained to railings and crying. (The railing he was chained to was directly outside the staffroom window, and yet, no-one came…). Anyway - the highlight of Paul’s career was the day the rumour began that he’d been shagging his cat. The magic of rumours like this is that they don’t have to be true - his reaction made us want to believe it. The plush pussies followed. The stickers. The chalk pictures on every blackboard in the school. Every year, every pupil knew that Paul Bradfield shagged his cat. Eventually his parents complained, but you can’t exactly punish an entire school, can you?

Paddy

Daniel Kelly wore wellies ALL DAY. His dad was a monkey with a trophy wife who had failed miserably to produce non-mong progeny. Daniel it was discovered, had a special relationship with his cat. However, his simian cock must have been too much for the poor pussy, as, lo, we found the wretched thing wandering folornly outside his house mewing softly and trying unsuccessfuly to withdraw the biro that was protruding from its arse. mi-OW!

greg i

Roger W

Is it just me, or did latin references just not happen in Comps? And we never got up to mischevious capers, we just got bollocked.

Jon B

Fools! Cave is pronounced ‘car-way’, Latin not having the Anglo Saxon ‘v’ sound.

I suspect “Roger West” is really a compo boy - his real name is probably Todger Vest.

gavin b

Michele

Visage

Jon B

Jon B

Jon B

Jon B

Simon O

Helena A

MR MILHAM AKA CHARLIE CHALK.

Double Ammunition for the pupils at our school. Milham was in the papers in 1982 for allegedly supplying cocaine. The case was dismissed and he got his job back. He used to scratch his bollocks and leave a chalky white residue around the area, hence the double entendre ‘Charlie Chalk’. Ingenious work for a bunch of 12-year-olds, you must agree.

[anon]

Chalky balls: The victim is held down by two assailants, while a third assailant uses a piece of chalk to draw a set of male genitalia on the victim’s black school trousers, right over the crotch area. The victim now has three choices. One, spend the next twenty minutes openly rubbing his crotch to remove the artwork. Two, run to the toilets to wash it off, making him look like he’s pissed himself. Three, leave the offending artwork for all to see. Playground catch 22-ing at its finest.

Paul W

John L

Dean

Robsa W

[anon]

Jon B

No T

Andy H

What Andy left out was the reason Chicken George (or the local equivalent) gave up all his money to roam the streets, shitting himself. Why he left his wife and three children to bark at strangers. The reasons I have heard are (1) that he had a mental breakdown and forgot who he was (2) he had had the rapture, and was now barking for God, and (3) possessions hadn’t brought him happiness. The last one, I think, was spread about by parents who didn’t want to buy you things.

Jon B

Muttering John walked up and down the street sipping coffee and talking to himself because he was a famous 1980s Wall Street tycoon who had overdosed on cocaine, leading to a mental breakdown and a life on the streets. If got close enough to hear what he was saying, you’d discover his brilliant stock tips that could turn you, too, into a millionaire.

[anon]

In my area the local tramp was this guy with a bad leg. There was this one bench he slept on and in the end the police taped it off. It had something on it-blood or shit, one of the two-and the poor kids played on it. But one day me and my mates were walking back through town and this nurse told us to buy some milk for him. Before we had a chance to say no, she gave us £2 to buy it. We bought him the crappy milk, and then we ran away. Before he was there, it was a guy named ‘‘Dunken Danny’’. He used to stand in the corner of the shopping centre and get pissed. He got hit on the head with a frying pan and died.

Luke T

There was a guy where I grew up called the Chicken Man, but this was because he actually had a chicken. He’d cycle around town with a cage above his rear wheel, containing a live chicken. We always assumed it was the same well-loved chicken that he was taking for a ride, although in retrospect he could have been ferrying a neverending procession of chickens to his special chicken murdering spot.

[anon]

Pros

Andy H

The competitive form of this game is known as 99s, where two people alternately scratch each others’ hands in rounds of ten scratches.

Michael J

At our school (after I left, fortunately for me), this was apparently done with paperclips, and it was so widespread that letters were sent to all parents to warn of the menace.

Jeff S

This got taken a stage further when some psychotics found that if you pulled a long piece of stiff wire hard and fast in a to and fro motion against a desk leg, friction would make the wire very hot. Very hot.

The fun was then to apply this home made branding iron to someone elses’ flesh while it was still at max heat. The victim would have to show ultra-bottle by not flinching, screaming, or retching at the crematorium smells emerging from his cauterised arm.

There was interplay on the basis of how hot the victim thought the torturer could get the wire, how brutal he could be, and finally that it would then be time to reverse roles. So at first it could be quite experimental and gentle, no more than red marks or the odd blister. But then it got vicious.

It went wrong when the manky infected wounds were noticed, and a general inspection of the boys’ limbs was held. The fact we all looked like deflated Michelin Men was noted, and we were all roundly bollocked.

Bob S

Sandpaper covers a wider area - perfect for the facial area. After repeated “sandpaperings” you’d look like you’d had a chemical peel.

Initially conceived as a method to pick on the lame and weak, this quickly became a badge of honour, so that after a week 95% of the male school children resembled burn victims.

sane m

The process by which one girl (it was done mostly by girls at my school) would be repeatedly scratched by another girl on the forearm. This continued until blood flowed or the scratchie chickened out, due to a growing sense of pain, nausea and medical shock.

Devonshire girls… you gotta love ’em. Or they’ll smash your fucking face in .

[anon]

Jon B

hinny beef : Once a victim has been taunted to the point where they start lashing out, sulking, or (at best) crying it was then the aggressor may move in, and say “Chinny Beef”. This was usually accompanied with a raking of the chin with the fingers of one hand and a simultaneous action on the victim’s chin with the other. Ultimately though, no taunting was complete until the victim had “a chinny on”.

Kevin D

chinny reckon, chin wag : when a colleague makes a wildly wrong statement, such as “I saw Jaws 5 when I was on holiday in America”, then the chinny reckon informs them that they are wrong.

PantsBoy

jimmy hill, tutankhamun, etcetera : evolved forms of the chinny reckon. Whereas chinny reckon involves scratching your chin, these remixes can involve scratching thin air where your chin would be, if it was the size of Jimmy Hill’s. Even better, Tutankhamun’s death mask.

Rob N

ayatollah, ayatollah! : after winning an agument, you have “sussed” your opponent, and may run around combing your imaginary ayatollah’s beard. Should a friend be at hand, they may grab at your chin, then run off, extending your invisible beard to unimaginable lengths before somebody cuts it off.

Matt K

chin nuggets : recipe for Chin Nuggets. Seize your victim in the classic “nuggy” position, with their head clamped underneath your arm. Then rub your chin all over their head whilst allowing yourself to dribble freely. Whilst doing this, make gleeful gurgling noises. This special attack is good for humiliation only, as it doesn’t really hurt.

Jon B

Imagine: a young chinese boy walking into a strange new English school with the name Chin. I was asking for it really, wasn’t I? My mum tells me that in my first year I pleaded with her to change my name. Apparently she found it highly amusing too.

chin t

The Chin Violin : As above but, you’d sing an instantly made up god awful tune really loud in the face of the liar, whilst playing the chin with an imaginary bow.

Tom A

Pol S

Bob S

A fun variant is the Chinese Bullshit .

The rules were as follows - the initial ‘rumour’ or sentance is passed from one contestant to the other, as in regular Chinese Whispers. Instead of words being simply mis-heard, participants are encouraged to add another line of ‘bullshit’. So, if you start the game with “Gav has a wooden leg”, the next person should probably say “Gav had to have a leg removed ‘cause when he was shagging Mrs Ormsbeys husband up the arse, Mrs Ormsbey got jealous and hacked Gav’s leg off with a chainsaw. Gav’s new leg is that of an ant”. You see? The story gets more sick and twisted the longer you play it - my advice - play all day.

Anthony W

Our fun-hating teachers had a method of defeating the “Mr Gardiner smells of piss” trick. They would make each kid write down the phrase they had received from the previous kid, without conferring, which could be inspected if necessary to reveal who changed the line. Assholes.

Dupli C

Chris S

Ching Chong Chinaman went to milk a cow

Ching Chong Chinaman didn’t know how

Ching Chong Chinaman pulled the wrong tit

Ching Chong Chinaman covered in shit.

In retrospect it’s hard to imagine what ’the wrong tit’ could possibly mean, although I suppose it could be the cow’s tail.

Kevin D

In a mood of slightly charming pre-dairy-produce-understanding i offer;

Ching Chong Chinaman tried to milk a cow,

Ching Chong Chinaman didn’t know how,

Ching Chong Chinaman pulled the wrong udder,

Ching Chong Chinaman got covered in butter.

Lorrimer t

Following his unsuccessful foray in farming, CCC moved into retail management.

Ching chong chinaman bought a little shop,

and all he sold was peppermint rock.

He pissed in a bottle and he called it pop,

Ching chong chinaman bought a little shop.

Nick H

Davern W

Rob A

Gilbo

Rocky Shore P

Sinbad T

Jon B

Clive (aka Olive, as capital C’s in his handwriting were marginally closer to an O than anyone else’s), the Jehovah kid in our class used to get more Christmas cards than anyone else, which was clearly hilarious. He never lived it down when he mistakenly told us he’d had beans on toast for Christmas dinner.

Breeze

Had two girls at my school (sisters) who were jehovahs. We thought they were really luckly cos they didn’t go to assembly and got to sit and draw or whatever while we learnt about god and stuff. Not so lucky now as the younger one died after being squashed against a wall by the school bus. She would have lived if she could have had a blood transfusion. Bastards.

becki m

Chris L

Jon B

I recently noticed that Oasis fruit juice bottles have ‘Chug It’ written on the top, followed by ‘open by hand’. Beat that.

Peter L

Jon B

Our RE teacher added, " I saw a circumcision once. It put me right off spaghetti hoops “.

Abby N

Mooey

Scott W

Jon B

Or a contraceptive.

Rube H

The Cling Film Bomb

<ol> - Eat whole pack of refreshers. - Retain in mouth. - Empty into cligfilm. - Twist tightly to form ‘bomb’. - Throw at someone’s head. - Fall around laughing. - Go home for tea.</ol>

Tom A

Apparently, you could put clingfilm over the toilet at a party, so that peoples’ poo and wee went everywhere. Personally, I can’t see that people wouldn’t notice.

I preferred the old ’empty a bottle of washing up liquid into the cistern’ trick, which was lush .

Andy M

A less hygenic version of the washing up liquid was Top Decking. Simply drop your bowels into the cistern and voila; the host will be flushing stinky brown water down their toilet for weeks, if not years to come.

Stuart L

the only sensible use for clingfilm is to stretch it over your mouth and breathe in sharply, thus creating a pop that sounds nothing like gunfire; but when accompied by your friend pretending to fire from his gunshaped hand, can be quite realistic. Maybe.

Nic P

When we commented on the sounds that Laura Burbela made in the toilets, she claimed that it was because she had dropped two pound coins in the bowl.

Now, none of us believed the pikey bint ever actually had 2 quid on her, but she kept up the act, even putting her hand down the loo, and trying to reach them. Of course, reaching into pissy water to touch her own shits was all we expected of her, so she didn’t lose too much status.

This is the girl who - when I asked her why she walked like she’d shat herself - claimed she had shat herself. Forwhy? It kept her bum succulent .

Anyway, everyone knows the standard procedure for shitting in public; if you’re going to shit with people listening, catch it on your toilet paper covered hand and lower it in to the loo carefully, so no one hears you. Remember to piss too, though, or they’ll think you went in there to put in a tampon, which is sick .

Laura is welcome to come back at me with some awful revelation, if she’s reading this. But she’d be lying. Because I was perfect. And dead popular.

Laura Burbela, the gloves are OFF - dish the shit on Kate S IMMEDIATELY - Log

Kate

Nick L

Christian F

Lamkin

Ben

Craig L

Jon B

Bradley K

Steven S

Paul Equinox C

Davern W

Jon B

Iain M

Peter G

“I’d like to build the world a home,

And furni- <font size=3>SH IT</font> with love…”

We only ever sang that one once.

The Boy T

Phil O

For a while in 1988-89 small bouncy rubber balls became the thing to have…it got to the point where 30 boys would be throwing bouncy balls up and down a corridor at the same time.

Also that year, Micro Machines became stupidly popular and finger boards, especially home made out of shatter-proof rulers.

(See also Dummies, which, despite ecstasy and acid house not trickling down to the crap West Country suburbs until, ooh, last Wednesday, were startlingly popular amongst the under tens during rave’s heyday. I had a small silver dummy on a small silver chain and was considered quite the trendsetter about town. –Susan)

graf1771

Sachets of tomato ketchup from the canteen made excellent ‘collectibles’ for a while. At five pence each, it was an inexpensive hobby, and admirably pure - we did not tolerate brown sauce or vinegar sachets. They simply don’t count, I mean, don’t even go there . At its peak, the hobby resulted in people giving up on meals so they could buy more sachets of tomato ketchup.

People with particularly large hoards (say, a locker full) would be accorded chin-stroking respect, except from those who didn’t collect five pence ketchup sachets, who would stare at us with well-fed, condescending eyes. But who cares what they thought, those non-tomato-ketchup-collecting losers .

Jimbob

Magic: The Gathering. No one would understand the rules for a couple of years, but the pictures were pretty and the ‘flavour text’ was often funny. Mostly, people would make their own cards up out of paper, usually something like Overlord Jeff that would destroy the other player instantly. Unless they had a piece of paper with Archdeacon Barney Rubble of the Yard written on it, which easily beat Overlord Jeff .

Jon B

Collecting ketchup packets became popular among some in my American high school one year. However, since they were free this considerably upped the ante for what made an impressive cache of the packets. Shortly after one zelous collector filled a trash bag with the packets, the school switched to pump bottles of ketchup. THESE then started disappearing until they were chained down to the counter.

[anon]

We had a craze for broken stubs of pencil lead, which we hoarded in those oblong metal pencil cases. One day, after inspecting our jealously guarded treasure troves, it finally dawned on us just how far we had descended to a sub-stamp-collecting level of rubbishness, and decided to just flick them at the girls.

Ross G

I was a foreign exchange student in Iowa in 1988 and can attest first hand to the craze of stealing ketchup sachets. However, the real beauty of this apparently mindless thievery was the skill involved in placing them strategically under the rubber stopper of the toilet seat, so that the next person who sat on it would set off a small red vinegary explosion.

[anon]

Knowing that smoking at school was frowned upon, we found that it was possible to purchase snuff from a local newsagents.

Cue the start of the great snuff craze, which led to entire lessons disrupted by bouts of sneezing and the frenzied groans of kids trying to hoover up lines of the stuff like proper druggies. Those who couldn’t afford snuff cleared local supermarket shelves of cinnamon, ginger and anything else in powdered form that could be shovelled up the nostrils.

The craze died on the Day of the Nosebleed, when the Reverend Ratings’ assembly sermon was disrupted when Andy Chapman sneezed a torrent of blood over the six rows in front of him. Just say no, kids. Tabs are much healthier.

Harry G

William S

(We had one teacher, who was especially slow to notice, and coupled with our sliding of the whiteboard just out of his reach, he would break down into tears. His name was Phylis.)

[anon]

Tuppence

“Dense Yense” copied someone’s work during a physics test. Right down to their name at the top of the page.

[anon]

Similarly lacking in mental agility was crime-ambitious Peter Wynne who decided to loot our local post office’s sweet counter.

Not entirely devoid of logical thought, Peter got there as early as possible, to minimise witnesses, donned his open faced balaclava and thieved as much as he could, before the post mistress had a thrombo.

Peter ran home, mission emphatically accomplished, the perfect crime, perfectly executed.

Until the police collared him at his house about 10 minutes later. Was it a trail of dropped Kola Kubes that grassed poor Peter up? Nothing so unmoronic… it was the perfect set of footprints in that morning’s fresh snowfall.

Peter’s was betrayed by his own Gola copies. Seriously, though. Gola copies. You might as well Xerox a cat turd.

petrocelli

My friend Vicky used to wait until you were filling your name in the box at the top of an exam paper, before leaning over and muttering the name of a male teacher in your ear. If you were concentrating on ponies and weren’t paying attention you might write HIS surname after YOUR OWN first name. Then, it might look as if you’d just made a Freudian slip expressing your desire to marry the hideous old ghet. Bleuchhhh!!!!

Het P

Four boys from my year stole £1500 worth of equipment from the music department, without noticing that there were closed-circuit TV cameras on permanent lookout.

In a further stroke of criminal mastermindness worthy of Moriarty himself, they then proceeded to try and sell it all on eBay. They used the school computer network to place the items online.

Amazingly, they were tracked down immediately and expelled.

leo h

Ruby

Stephen B

One variant of the croggy is the ‘Barrey’ in which the passenger sits on the crossbar. I can only imagine that this was inflicted as some sort of punishment, or perhaps to recruit for the school choir.

[anon]

Rob A

Boglin

Jason G

Ben H

Jeremy M

Ian H

Use “fatty” near to fat people for a softer version, as it’s not really offensive except to the fat person, and fat people can’t really punch you because their fingers are like cushions.

Moses

Anna

A ‘cuntstack’ could, of course, refer to the classic rear view of a pile of naked ladies that used to round off the ’local features’ shoot in Razzle.

Slab G

I had a similar experience. And I still maintain that 'asswife' is far superior to 'asswipe' as an insult.

An asswife, of course, is like a fishwife, only assier.

Salad M