All the fit birds from Holland Park Skool are turning 5-0 this year and the presence of the Male Trailing Spouse has been requested to attend a few bashes back home. Thankfully, I'm 4,200 miles away in the Deep South and thus unable to attend anything anywhere in the world coz of the old Miley Cyrus (coronavirus).
But what a sight that would be. All the bright young things from Holland Park Comp are now old bags and bitter shrews. Do I really want to catch up with these vile bodies? No. Hell no. From varied correspondence, I've gleaned this--not much has changed and some of these scrubbers are still stuck in the petty conflicts and rivalries of the past (SO SAD!)
I gather that one function, Millie's 50th down Shepherd's Bush (MILLIE? WHO THE FUCK IS MILLIE?) was a 1970s themed fancy dress party. Oh, dear. An old pal from "the Socialist Eton" (so dubbed coz rich liberals and celebs used to send their kids to the flagship state school instead of going private) asked for costume tips. He should have known better than to seek counsel. I suggested "Ted Bundy with a plaster cast" or "Travis Bickle in a mohawk and M65 field jacket". He might have got away unnoticed. Another old school bum chum, way back in time, got invited to a 1970s fancy dress party. He donned a sheepskin coat and Boss of the Plains Stetson hat to go as McCloud. Nobody recognized him or remembered the 1970s TV show (about a fish-out-of-water cop in the big city) but the hat won many compliments.
Bah! Bollocks to the Seventies! Glam Rock. Flares. Punk. Three day week. Winter of discontent. Mrs Thatcher and the Yorkshire Ripper. I remember the Seventies without the Kodachrome filter. Apart from Evel Knievel and the Six Million Dollar Man having a ruck with Bigfoot, it was a shite decade. Even the adults in the Seventies complained that it was nuttin' like the Sixties (DOUBLE PLUS SAD!) And, being an ex-pupil of Holland Park (and William Penn) Comp, an 1980s "casual party" would be the more appropriate theme of choice. Dress code: Fila, Farah and Diadora. And don't forget to invite the old bomboclaats, too. Guests of honour: Earl Maynard, Paul Grant and Mark Forester. Party game: "tax" and "drapes" old peers and fairweathers down to their white socks and Tesco Trainers. Hmm, perhaps not.
And Britain's leading state school was in the news, again. Case in point, a 35-year-old design and technology teacher, busted and banged up for grooming and raping a teenage girl in his care. Paul Danby, 35, got sent down for four and half years after repeatedly molesting a minor on the grounds of the campus. So much for in loco parentis. What a sordid case.
As for the perp, just look at that mug! The dirty little nonce! Sex case, sex case! Hang 'im, hang 'im, hang 'im! The court heard how the pervo teacher made his victim call him "Sir" and "Mr Danby" when he molested her. Robbed of her childhood over three years of abuse and emotionally scarred for life, so much for school being the best days of your life.
The nonce teacher of today's headlines got me thinking about the dodgy muthas of yesterday (when all our troubles seemed so far away?)
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CAUTION: Would you buy a used GSCE in Media Studies from this Man? |
Take the curious case of Freddy Krueger, a lifelong educator who taught at the "Eton of the state school system" right up to the infamous "Purge of 2002", when superhead Colin Hall got rid of the Trendy Trots on the faculty (INNIT SHAME!!) Alas, private school educated Freddy was one of 'em. An improbably glam mash up of Mick Jagger and Richard Gere in Armani leather jacket ("I took the label out" the fashion rebel often protested), offset by cheapo Levis orange tab jeans and cowboy boots, there were many wild yarns about Freddy knocking up hot teachers in sordid sex triangles and getting "creepy" and "weird" with the legal totty of the sixth-form. But that's all it was. Tittle tattle. Gossip. Hearsay and falsehood, M'Lud.
In lieu of Elm Street, Freddy Krueger lived on Ladbroke Grove. As did Maxy the Marxist, a teenaged psycho from the year above. Arrogant. Enigmatic. Swaggering. Sexy. Quick witted and ultracool for an ancient thirtysomething dude. That was Freddy Krueger the school teacher man whom Maxy could not stand (he had reprimanded the teen commie on several occasions for bratty antics on campus.) But hatred turned to elation when Maxy discovered that Freddy was his neighbor down Grove. In the dead of night, buzzing on red leb hashish and Thunderbird wine, Maxy would sing in a West Indian accent, "One, two, Freddy come for you,"and lob all sorts of IEDs and pyrotechnics at the poor man's doorstep.
Maxy would then fold into the gothic shadows of St. Michael's Church to observe Freddy Krueger, exiting his red-bricked Edwardian property with a stern face and cricket bat, looking for the pesky little blighters wot dunnit. Little did Freddy suspect that it was Maxy the Marxist, the little psycho who lived down the lane...
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Last of the Bee Gees: Barry Gibb |
When it came to irregular education, Mr Bee Gees was said to be Top Dog. A deadringer for Barry Gibb, with a bouffant, blow dried, moussed up hairdo, leather jacket and hippy-dippy choker necklace, this humanities department fuck boy had a big eye for young and gifted legal birds, and anyone who came from a well connected family. However, before the emergence of concrete facts came to light, there were beaucoup tales about Mr Bee Gees being a Lolita chasing Humbert Humbert type. But, at the time, that's all it was, rumors, and there was nay shortage of them at Holland Park Comp.
Polticians in the UK are often partial to asking questions in the House of Commons for cash; Mr Bee Gees, it was alleged, would provide glowing academic references for dates and short-term bunk ups. Yeah, right. I paid no heed to these tales. Like Freddy Krueger, Mr Bee Gees was a stud teacher, and kids would often make shit up at school and get it circulated just to taint their characters and maybe cause some trouble with the authorities.
Notwithstanding, summer exam time at Holland Park could be a torrid affair. And it was often said, without any basis in fact whatsoever, that Mr Bee Gees was a groping hand to many a fair maiden of legal age in those long, hot and steamy months of revision, pass or fail. Nevertheless, I paid no heed to gossip. It was BS. Not proven.
However, a few years far and asunder from school, in the summer of 1992, I met up with some old Holland Park rassclaats at the Notting Hill Carnival. One of them, a posh bird from my year, was hand-in-hand with... MR BEE GEES. I was shocked. And so was EVERYBODY else. Mr Bee Gees was dating HER? How? Why? Then the sordid tale came out in a spliff fueled conversation at the home of film theorist, Peter Wollen (who's son attended Holland Park) on Ladbroke Grove. The lady in question needed a reference for university and went to her old tutor to obtain one. So, the rumors were true. Kind of. But that wasn't all. The posh bird had nuff muck to spread about old Barry Gibb in the autumn of 92.
And, slowly, out it came. The man had a temper. One that he could back up. On a night out down Grove, the couple got into a verbal altercation with a passing drunk who had said something sexist and untoward. The drunk soon regretted it. Mr Bee Gees, a dan-grade karate black belt, MULLERED the geezer so badly that his former pupil broke up with him on the spot. The beating was "savage", "furious", and "relentless", and Mr Bee Gees, red-eyed like an angry gorilla, even stuck in the boot as the geezer lay felled upon the concrete (Ed. Note: you get DQ'd in kumite for that.)
Flash forward, 28 years later, someone brought up the old stories about Mr Bee Gees being a dodgy mutha at Millie's 50th bash down Bush (MILLIE? WHO THE FUCK IS MILLIE?) "Is that the one who shagged everyone?" queried my pal. Unfortunately, the lady in question was also present. Now aged 50 and long since married, she winced with discomfort at the mention of Bearded Barry and his bonking rep. A few people in attendance knew about the romance but said nothing, waiting for the lady to volunteer something about the faculty fuck boy. But she remained silent. For old fossils are best left buried in the ground.
Hearing about this, on the other side of the pond, brought to mind the late Sir Chris Woodhead, the chief inspector for schools in the UK from 1994 to 2000. In 1999, it came to light that the Man from OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) had a relationship with a pupil whom he had taught at school. Nothing happened between the rookie teacher and the foxy sixth-former at the time, the couple often stated to members of the Press, but Woodhead "never fully explained the siuation". A controversial and unpopular figure, the news delighted teaching unions. Woodhead quit his post the following year and was knighted shortly after. Tut tut. Here's my spin (a) that's grooming and (b) conduct unbecoming a professional educator, let alone the obergruppenfuhrer of schools' inspections (ONLY IN ENGLAND!)
Gay men often complain about the stereotype of the predatory homosexual male, on a mission to "turn out" young men regardless of their sexual orientation. One dude who fit this vanilla profile was Bob Crackhouse a bald, mustached, English teacher who wore the latest Paul Smith garms and Dr. Martens boots. Like most of the faculty at Holland Park, he was approachable, cool to talk to, hip to fashion, music and risque literature (William S. Burroughs, quelle surprise). And he used to view the militant, strike-prone members of the National Union of Teachers with wry amusement.
One grey day in the autumn of 1984, I eyeballed him talking at the school gates about the psychedelic revival with Jeers Loser, an under achiever from the year above. There was a self satisfied grin on teacher's whiskered chops. Big red flags. Was Crackhouse sniffing around kids who may-or-may-not-be bi-curious and/or ripe for turning out? No. There was no innuendo. No signs of irregularity. Nothing inappropriate. They were just talking about old vinyl that no one remembered, nor cared about.
Suspicions returned in 1985 on a trip to the Museum of Mankind. Crackhouse and Mr Tefal (a much liked supply teacher with a spam-head) were taking two rowdy forms to the museum during the summer, when pupils went to camp, stayed indoors to study hard for exams or smoked ganja in the adjoining park to fail 'em (this is why Holland Park was routinely labeled "the school of failure" in the 1980s and 1990s.) Crackhouse's young boyfriend, aged about 18 or 19 thereabouts, showed up at Green Park where the kids were taking lunch. The toy boy blatantly built up a 3-paper and smoked it with Crackhouse and Tefal. Smoking nature with teachers. You heard about it all-the-time at Holland Park Comp. Lots and lots of stories. And then it happens and you suddenly become a character in one of them. It was surreal. Still, I wasn't going to snitch up Crackhouse and Tefal to the faculty for smoking grass on the blindside of the brats. I kept me gob shut. This was Holland Park Comp in the 1980s. Things were different here.
Not long after, in the early 1990s, an old school pal went to visit a cousin held on remand down at HMP Wormwood Scrubs. Lo and behold, in the prison visiting room, banged up alongside, and wearing a high-viz HMP issue vest, was Mr Crackhouse. My old bomboclaat was gobsmacked. Mr Crackhouse, the cool but fruity English teacher from Issac Newton and Holland Park, was doing bird down Scrubs? For what, exactly? Dodgy Mr Crackhouse pulled no punches. He had been caught smuggling heroin on a trip back from India. And not just a little bit. A lot. Like 2 kilos. Bang to rights. Where is Mr Crackhouse these days? Is he dead, alive or teaching? God bless him all the same!
Dodgy Teachers. Every school has 'em. I compared notes with an old boy from 1973 to 79. "Most teachers wanted to be friends with the students. I smoked joints with a few of them and my first girlfriend started dating one of the teachers after I split up with her. Lots of inappropriate stuff going on in those days".
Holland Park had its fair share of incompetent muthas, too. Like Mr Shukla who punched me in the mush during a rowdy Maths class in 1983, Mr McMurtry, the science teacher who blithely ignored the racist outbursts of white trash school kids (despite our school having an anti-racist policy), Mr MacDonald, another useless maths teacher, who got shunted aside by a trio of dudes who came into class with knives drawn after yours truly. Yep. School days. The best days of your life. That's what they said at the time, it's what they still say now. Best not to take comfort in old cliches. An education is much like a pregnancy. No two cases are ever alike.
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