Burnley Grammar School

Just as an antidote to all the recent bare chested running: last evening, just before 6 p.m. As you will know, if you live in London, it was a very warm day, and it remained warm in the evening. Near the Royal Mail sorting office there is the "Five Star Boxing Club" and a group of lads, aged between 11/12 and 16/17 (at a rough guess) were doing their exercises, including running, out of doors on the green beside their club. Every one of them wore shorts and yellow and white polo shirts. They all seemed committed and serious about their activities.

I suppose all that tells you is that their trainers are not P.E. teachers!

'PE and country dancing lessons were always mixed but we were only allowed to wear one item of clothing, thin cotton shorts for the boys' - Martin on 6th May 2024.


How I hated doing country dancing at middle school. Our class of boys did middle school PE by themselves while the girls went their separate ways with one of the ladies, leaving us with one of the male teachers. He made the boys strip to shorts and no more for PE lessons, which hardly raised an issue and quite rightly so.

But when we had to do country dancing this took place with our entire class as one, the boys with the girls and was taken by a female teacher who I almost thought of as elderly at the time but probably wasn't much past 40 in truth. She got all the boys in country dancing to do this without any shirts on too and that just didn't feel right to me, and what was worse was the only reason it happened was down to a stupid boy answering her question about how our boys PE teacher took us in PE with him and one over enthusiastic boy in our class piped up we didn't wear shirts and she thought it was a good idea then.

Shirtless is fine by me in normal PE situations and I think teachers are fully entitled to demand it without pushback in those normal circumstances and in mostly all male surroundings but when it starts to stray into other things and around other people I do think we as young males were entitled to feel less enthusiastic about it. I don't mind removing my top in certain situations and exposing my upper body but within reason.

I think if you are completely clammed up about showing your upper body as a male at any time at all, either as a boy in school or later on in adulthood then that's irrational and you should challenge yourself about that.

Comment by: Marcus on 7th May 2024 at 22:33
I was really only meaning my reaction to some of the fuss made on here about being shirtless. They were opinions I hadn’t really encountered before, even though I was a little bodily shy during most of my school years, which I managed to conceal. By the time I’d reached my 20s, I’d more or less sorted myself out in that regard, becoming more confident, but, had I realised some would feel really self-conscious to run in public that way, while others might interpret it as showing off, both those extremes might have been enough to put me off. I did choose to run along quieter areas, but also received the usual remarks from teenage girls etc. Another moment I remember was when I had to pause to negotiate a stile. Just at that moment an older friend turned up on the other side on his bike. We chatted briefly, then his leaving remark was that I was only running shirtless to attract girls, which was just a bit of fun I suppose, but different people do interpret your bare-skin running in different ways. My actual reasons were just to be cooler during the warmer weather; to absorb some vitamin D; and to maybe get a bit of colour on my usually pale skin.

I think I always looked okay, being naturally slim and well proportioned, though I was never ‘ripped’ or with a six-pack etc. The shorts were just the usual athletic track running shorts really, and as you’ll know, no one wore today’s USA import of shorts down to your knees back then, which would have been thought silly.

I hadn’t seen Craig’s link to the runner, so I’ve just watched that. It was interesting to hear this runner's comments, and I can imagine it being great running along with your dog. But what I often found was that when you run through quieter areas, they were often the routes chosen by dog walkers as well. Frequently I’d see them ahead with their dog off the lead. I think dogs interpret running towards them and their owners as a threat, so they'd often start barking, and sometime even a bit of snapping around your ankles, which you could really do without when you’ve already covered a few miles. That used to get on my nerves a bit in the quieter areas!

Comment by: Stephen on 7th May 2024 at 23:13 referencing, comment by: Allen Williams on 21st December 2022.
I just find it hard to believe that any young boy of primary school age would choose to jump around naked in a PE lesson with his mixed gendered classmates, while they were all wearing underwear. I just find it unlikely. Children like to be the same, they wouldn't choose to be humiliated.
With Martin’s 6th May 2024 at 22:31 comment, I’ve heard of this school’s swimming somewhere before. This doesn’t bother me really, as all the kids were treated equally, and as it seemed to start with single gendered naked swimming days for them both, if they were then offered this as a mixed session, I can imagine some probably taking it, just for the dare. I expect the numbers would then increase when they all chatted with one another. Also, with them already be used to it, with it then being offered with the opposite gender would have been thought even more permitted naughtiness, together with additional intrigue for all. I doubt I would have joined them at those ages though. I was a ‘pretty kid’ who was never really keen on the attention I sometimes got, and was never really a naturally extrovert type. So to then turn up naked at the first opportunity, and in front of all my boy and girl classmates, and teachers too; I doubt there'd be any chance of that...I always hated swimming anyway.

Samuel, how does it take three quarters of an hour to tell a group of boys how to wash their willy properly, goodness me. There's a case for a chat about general hygiene I suppose if you are new to the shower regime your new school has, fair enough to a point. That's the kind of thing you'd do in the shower or bath at home to yourself. The school showers are meant as a means to quickly rinse a bit of sweat off the general body and knock a bit of mud off that you might have collected outside. You wouldn't expect to see boys at school handling their tackle about too much would you. I could just imagine my own teacher right now telling us to stop playing with ourselves and hurry up. He didn't tell you to wash behind your ears, between your toes and use a nail brush too did he! I agree on the rogue teacher comment. Your parents are supposed to teach you how to wash properly and if you can't do that by the age of twelve then that's a bit poor.

Comment by: Samuel on 8th May 2024 at 05:33


That teacher sounds like an obvious perv - I wonder how he would have got his jollies had he worked in a Kosher school?, or if he had another strange fetish to occupy 45 minutes of his valuable time.

I can understand advice being given in passing, especially if there were lads from one parent families where the father was missing, but he really did take his fetish to the limit. I wonder not one boy went home and told their dad, if not their mum, about his bizarre "lesson".

Further to the comment posted by Marcus, and the response to it by Alan here, I was one of those teenage schoolboys of the late 70s and just into the 80s who our teachers took out on the school cross country 'stripped down to the waist', a favourite turn of phrase I recall hearing a lot from those days. I've never heard anyone other than my old PE teachers use that term about getting shirtless.

The older boys did this, the third to fifth forms. Generally once a fortnight but could be weekly sometimes. I think we did somewhere in the region of 12 to 15 runs like this each year. Not in the winter although if you chose to you could, roughly speaking this went on from March to October, but we had later days than that if it was exceptionally mild. I can remember one of my teachers dithering one time over what we should do and standing outside deciding if we were running shirts or skins that day, while wearing his own trackie top. He popped back in and gave his answer - 'stripped to the waist', we duly obliged and out we went. It was very late in the year well past October I know that. But like the previous comment said, did he go stripped to the waist, like hell did he. So you had the 'spectacle', good word that, of the PE teacher testing the temperature in his trackie top and saying it was okay to run shirtless cross country as a 14 year old. These teachers, mostly fit, fairly young men, NEVER did what they told us to, you would never see them run the school cross country 'stripped to the waist'. One of life's great mysteries maybe.

As you state Marcus, and that's true in my case, these cross country runs in school make you think of pleasant jogging along lush green fields somewhere by yourself don't they. That was not entirely true. Yes, we found some decent running areas that's fair enough but we still had to reach them first and that meant pounding the streets first to get there. Whether anyone who saw us thought we were a 'spectacle' only they could answer, but we and other classes doing the PE cross country must have been a familiar sight to the locals. I never thought like that. A few of the seriously decent runners in school did take to this quite well, no denying it but the rest of us just sucked it up for what it was. There was no pint being a cry baby over it. I adapted quite well but then I had no option other than to do so. That was the way it was. End of.

At secondary school in Wiltshire, with not a hint of embellishment, this sits long in the memory bank.

My most disturbing experience in secondary school (there were many) was also one of the first, the initial double-P.E. on a Friday morning, in my first week of Y7. This was in the late 1990s, and we were told to kit up for rugby. However the first 45 minutes turned out to be a lecture by the Head of PE on the importance of personal hygiene and how to shower properly. And very very specifically, how to wash ourselves beneath the foreskin. And then after a shortened PE session, we had to strip naked all at the same time with each other (28 young lads) and shower with him watching, and demonstrate that we had listened to the instruction, half heartedly peeling back our foreskins, which everyone I think had. (Yes, really!)

He left a couple of years later to coach a national hockey team, god knows what else he got up to in his career. It left me with a permanent fear of communal showering and I have difficulty using urinals in public loos which I put down to this and more.

I don't know whether some like him just went rogue or not or just did it for a laugh back in the staff room.

Comment by: Marcus on 7th May 2024 at 22:33


"....Some of the people on here I read going back fifty pages actually said they went out on shirtless cross country runs with school through the residential roads in quite public areas, so the schools felt no shame or sense of spectacle about making the teenage schoolboys do that a few years ago did they......"

I bet the teachers wouldn't have liked to do it themselves. Just another example of the truism that "those who can do - those can't teach"

I was dubious about your post Martin but it appears to check out quite remarkably. But it reminded me of another a few months ago. Just leaving this here from what I found out to my surprise about the person who wrote it.


This person with these credentials;

Allen Williams
M.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, University of Oxford (Graduated 1974)

Appears to have been the same person who wrote this here;


Comment by: Allen Williams on 21st December 2022.

From 1960 to 1963 I was at a (mixed) state-maintained primary school in north-west Surrey. PE was done in the school hall. off which the classrooms led. The process was that the class would strip down to underpants/knickers in the classroom, then go to the hall for the lesson, then trot back and get dressed again. Some children came from very poor families, and, while the girls got underwear, boys did not, two boys in my class falling into this category. They had the choice of sitting out the lesson, or doing it in the nude, and they both chose the latter. So did boys whose underwear would not stay up during exercise without the support of the waistband of their shorts (including me). When I did get replacement pants, they were of the “string” variety, which concealed nothing, and were restrictive, so I stuck to not wearing anything. Some of the girls said they had the same problem, so went naked as well. I suspect it was more that they were more embarrassed to display their old-fashioned baggy knickers than what was underneath them. We also had swimming (at another school's pool). Neither of the two boys without pants had swimsuits either, and both wanted to swim, so they were permitted to do so in the nude. Boys who had not brought swimming costumes for any reason were given the same choice, and, then, of course, some of the girls claimed the same privilege. Effectively, either a boy or a girl had the same option to sit out a PE or swimming lesson or do it in the nude if they wanted to. At any lesson, about 20% to 30% of the participants were naked.

At my (boys) private secondary school in Croydon, from 1963 to 1970, the official PE kit was white cotton T-shirt, brief, but loose-fitting elasticated white cotton shorts, white cotton socks and white gym shoes, and absolutely nothing else. However, turning up wearing nothing but the shorts was acceptable. No kit meant you got punished. There came one occasion on which one boy did this, but he had borrowed the shorts, and the elastic was gone. Once he took away his hand holding them up, they fell down, so he took them off and did the rest of the lesson in the gym naked, without sustained objection from the teacher once the circumstances had been explained. Having established the precedent, boys who had forgotten their kit asked permission to do the lesson in the nude rather than get punished, and this was usually granted. Nobody objected or was offended by this. We all saw, and were seen by, each other naked most days anyway (in showers and changing rooms); we were in and out of changing rooms and showers six or seven times per week, so this sort of social nudity was entirely normal in any event. It was part of the curriculum almost. As far as swimming (in the school's own pool) was concerned, the rule was simple: “boys may swim in the nude, but if a costume is worn, it must be of the approved school pattern”. That is, the uniform trunks, of the right style, colour, size, and intact (not damaged or deficient in any way). It did not matter if it was your fault or not, if you did not comply with this when directed to go swimming, you had to swim in the nude. Swimming was compulsory, wearing a costume wasn't. Again, nobody objected or was offended. Embarrassed initially, yes. Anxious beforehand, yes. As the result of the rule, almost everybody did swim in the nude sometimes, often because the school arranged swimming at the last minute when some other thing was unexpectedly cancelled. They could always do this, because a boy could always go swimming: he could do it naked and did not need any kit. I got caught out like this when I was 12 and discovered that I thought I had hated swimming, but in fact it was wearing the costume that I hated: swimming in the nude felt wonderful! Everybody actually agreed with me. I know, I made a point of asking everybody subsequently whom I knew had done so, whether they preferred going naked or wearing trunks, Not one person expressed a preference for clothing, although they continued to use it, solely because a large majority did so. I continued to do so frequently, and, a year later, when I grew out of my costume, I decided this was a silly reason, and did not replace it.

As to how frequent the practice of nude swimming for boys was in other schools, there are two points: one, when we had our first swimming lesson at the school, half the boys turned up with trunks, the other half walked into the pool area naked. The nudists had all gone to private preparatory schools, at every one of which boys were obliged to swim in the nude. The other half had gone to state-maintained primary schools where either no swimming was done, or where the wearing of a suit was compulsory, or expected. Each half had simply done what they thought was normal. I conclude that at private “prep” schools, at least in the north-west Surrey area, boys always swam in the nude, at least to the 1960s. The second point is that, when visiting other private schools in London, Surrey, and Sussex, as part of our fencing team for away matches, I asked them about the policy there on swimming. Nowhere was it banned, and at some it was either compulsory or de rigueur. We were once shown to the side of a small training pool at Dulwich College and were told there were no showers, but we could use the pool to freshen up afterwards. On being told we obviously had no swimming costumes, the senior boy guiding us said “We never wear them, and I don't see why you should have to, either.”, and left us to it. We all used the pool in the nude. It was bloody cold, though. I conclude that, well into the 1970s, most boys-only private schools in the region either allowed or generally adopted nude swimming, too.

I don't think boys have evolved into different creatures in the past 50 years. I learned at school that social nudity is actually not an imposition, it is genuine, and entirely non-sexual fun, giving a feeling of freedom, confidence, and empowerment. That these days it is drummed into them that it is a terrible perversion, and they should be ashamed of revealing their naked bodies to anyone, is a monstrous disservice to them, and to the truth.

While I'm at it, don't call this a reversion to Victorian standards. They were certainly guilty of dual standards for boys and girls, but they never objected to boys being naked together, or, indeed, in public places where male nudity was known to occur. Ladies' modesty could be protected quite sufficiently by their not frequenting such places. No: the “New Prudery” is far, far, worse than that, and it ought to be stamped out vigorously.

Greg2 said;
"I went through a jogging phase, starting in my early 20s. I actually ran without a shirt a few times during those younger years when it was particularly warm. I always looked younger than my years even though I would have been over 6 feet tall at the time, and would have been wearing those short adidas nylon (?) running shorts of the time, as I remember having two pairs, one white with blue trim; the other pair red with white. It makes me cringe a little thinking back how incredibly naive I still was when just out of my teens, as it didn’t enter my head that I might have been making a spectacle of myself."



Do you really think you were making a spectacle of yourself by running while shirtless in public Greg, or was it the style of the shorts of that time? If like I think you do, you meant the shirtless running then I'm surprised you would think of it as being a spectacle because that suggests you think running in your bare chest was making you look like a fool. I think that's a bit hard on yourself don't you. Presumably you were in reasonable shape and condition at the time as well. I wouldn't look on anyone at any age running shirtless in that way.

Wasn't it interesting in Craig's associated video of the bareskin runner on YT that even he was doing it in a very quiet location and seemed less than keen to be seen by too many people doing it, almost like there is a secret shame in wanting to run like that.

Some of the people on here I read going back fifty pages actually said they went out on shirtless cross country runs with school through the residential roads in quite public areas, so the schools felt no shame or sense of spectacle about making the teenage schoolboys do that a few years ago did they.

Comment by: Sean on 6th May 2024 at 16:01
Comment by: Colin Johnson on 6th May 2024 at 13:05
'On any given weekday in the 1970's or 1980's, a common timeframe for many posters on here, there would have been hundreds of thousands of schoolkids like me and many of you here going through this kind of thing at the same time each day and when you think about that it seems quite bizarre doesn't it.'

It conjures up quite the image when you put it like that. I see what you mean. Half ten in the morning, a few minutes to noon, about quarter past two and then half three would seem to be the times in the school day for this if you think about it. Most schools structured the day the same way and hours.





Your timings are impeccable.

On the school timetable I hated the period when I had to have a PE lesson begin mid morning and run up to lunchtime. The PE teacher would run the class quite close to midday, just about 11.50am or a few moments later than that which meant we felt rushed to get out and done and off to the canteen to choose our dinner before what we wanted had gone. Often we were late.

I know a lot of people might have liked end of the day PE but I didn't. Once again our PE teachers often ran the lesson right up to the clock, even worse than before lunch, often ending the PE lesson right on 3.40pm which was final buzzer for home. If in the school gym we could hear the buzzer easily enough, if outside we didn't at all. Sometimes the school day had actually ended five minutes ago and we were still out doing PE. The teacher would become quite annoyed if you tried to tell him when to end his lesson.

After the school buzzer had gone it was techncally our own time but the water went on and in the showers we had to go. This 'own time' was a common mention at the time only for us to be told not to get smart. Sometimes we left school at the end of the day 15 minutes late.

I've never quite known if we were smart and the teacher was wrong or what on that. If the buzzer had ended school for the day surely the teacher no longer had juristiction over us to do things, or did he because we were still on school premises. Probably the latter so we were not so smart after all. Any technicality to skip the showers was welcome. None worked though.

At first read I thought Martin was on a wind up but at closer inspection it's actually all quite true. If they all came out of a school like that with a healthy body image then I suppose it must have worked.

I was at Shears Green Primary School in Kent (southern UK) from 1979. Our school was a normal local primary school with just over 400 children from 7 to 11½ years old. PE and country dancing lessons were always mixed but we were only allowed to wear one item of clothing, thin cotton shorts for the boys and knickers for the girls, we ALL had to do the lessons barefoot and topless (even the girls!) although girls who had started to 'develop' could request permission to wear a t-shirt. However the school was MOST famous (infamous?) for it's dinnertime nude swimming lessons in the schools indoor pool, this went on from the late 1960's to the mid 1980's and was girls nude swimming on mondays, boys on fridays and MIXED on wednesdays, I seem to remember there was mixed nude swimming on saturday mornings as well. Normal swimming lessons were done in swimwear, these nude sessions were voluntary and you needed your parents to sign a permission slip, but astonishingly a very large number of kids took part, I always went to the boys nude swimming and MOST of the boys and girls in my class also went on wednesdays to the mixed nude sessions when the pool was crowded with naked 7 to 11 year olds! This would NEVER be allowed today, and frankly sound pretty unbelievable, but it DID happen and we didn't think anything of it and even more amazing was that most parents were quite happy to give us written permission to run around naked at school with other boys and girls! see these facebook or Friends Reunited links. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2232710443/ http://www.friendsreunited.com/shears-green-county-junior-school/Discuss/9b5c582f-4f9b-40f0-9be8-8695265ccc0c
Further to the above, I have found another facebook site dedicated to Shears Green Junior School, again there are many, many memories of the mixed nude swimming that many of us from 7 to 11½ took part in, most people comment (looking back as adults) that it was rather dodgy and a little bit 'strange' but I think this is looking at it from the perspective of 2024, at the time all of us who took part every week thoroughly enjoyed it. From memory I think we only needed our parents permission for the 'mixed' nude swimming on Wednesdays and Saturdays and judging by the numbers that used to take part, most parents were surprisingly unconcerned about the idea of naked boys and girls playing together at school! I'm pretty sure we didn't need our parents permission to swim nude when it was the 'just boys' or 'just girls' swimming lessons, and while it was never compulsory, everyone was strongly encouraged to take part in nude swimming. https://www.facebook.com/groups/445297598902917/
Shears Green Junior School in Kent is still going strong and STILL has the same indoor swimming pool! (I saw the photo, how many memories it brings back!) They have a very nice website for the school these days, however boys and girls doing swimming lessons completely naked and everyone doing PE and country dancing 'topless' with none of us (including the girls) allowed to wear anything except a single very thin pair of shorts, is unfortunately very much a thing of the past having died out in the late 1980's or the early 90's when Mr Hale retired as Headteacher! Bit sad really!

Comment by: Chris G on 6th May 2024 at 16:21


It was the Commodore for me - proper keyboard, you could get printers and disk drives (if you could afford them), they were more pricey but the Sinclair keyboard was so mesy and confusing (5 functions on ech key), I just didn't have the patience.

Of course, the Commodore was more expensive (but you could easily get a secondhand one cheaply when the Amiga came out). The trouble with Sir Clive was that he was a penny pincher,and used fewer components, not, as he said, because it was more simple *it was far from it), but because saving two pence was more important than good build quality.

That said Sinclair was ahead of his time, and he gave employment (temporarily) in Scotland (the Timex factory) at a time when it was needed. They did make a printer - but it used silver oxide paper no bigger than a till roll in width (and quality). The QL was his biggest mistake - meant to have a built in screen and hard drive, they settled for TV output and "microdrives" (non standard) just to save a pound or two. Very sad.

Our school was about half and half for both.

I have handled Sun Microsystems servers and even a PDP 8 .in the workshop, but as you will know they need a lot of space, but I would love to have been round in the days of big metal. There is quite a conservation scene in old computers now

Comment by: Terry on 6th May 2024 at 00:59




......"My problem with how you frame your argument is that you appear to give the impression that teachers did/do this for salacious reasons in the main. You seem to feel your own PE teacher received gratification from seeing you all in PE classes....."



I genuinely believe that SOME P.E teachers DID (and sadly, probably still do), get sexual gratification from seeing boys naked or nearly naked. For most I agree it was merely a power trip, because otherwise their lives were so inconsequential that bullying kids was the only way they felt they could ever have "power" of any sort. They were humdrum little men living humdrum little lives. I also suppose some enjoyed both aspects - the idea of forcing boys to obey your orders added to their cheap thrills.


I'd like to correct you on one of your assumptions, Terry I didn't "seem to feel" what I and many of my classmates thought about our P.E. teacher. You don't spend five years a few yards away from such a man, for forty weeks a year twice or three times a week without knowing he is a pervert. We KNEW exactly what he was.




Mike and Greg2 make some excellent points. Boys, especially younger ones, don't like to rock the boat and will pretend they are OK with things, even if they are not, for fear of derision, if they don't toe the party line, which is why I strongly suspect Nathan Hind got the results to his recent poll I suspect he wanted.

Humiliating (and worse) lads seems to be a hobby for some schoolteachers, especially PE ones - like the abuse Leyton received. Even if it was legal in the 1960s, the teacher concerned showed a total lack of integrity. control and morality. I always hope that those teachers who did. or do, ill-treat or abuse boys, later meet up with the man who those boys once were, and that the now grown up pupils, have a chance to "discuss" the matter with them, and perhaps do a bit of teaching the tutor

I know one of our perverts has been dead for years, and I suspect given the age, the other one is now, too. If I knew where they were buried I would go and p*ss on their graves. That is how much I despise them, There seems to be an inadequacy in men who want to spend too much time with young boys, bullying them and making them "conform" to their whims. (scoutmasters and teachers alike come into this category) would they have the guts to try it on full grown men?

Alan -

"Never mind - lets keep it light and frothy, just to please you. Did your school have the Sinclair Spectrum versus Commodore 64 interminable arguments, and which did you have?. Serious question - just as serious as the middle aged posters going on about whether they'd choose to be shirts or skins, forty or fifty years after the event."

I'm afraid my school days predate anything but mainframe computers, which I first encountered in the shape of "Elliott 803" and "KDF9" machines, each comprising some half-dozen white cabinets the size of domestic freezers, programmed via punched tape.

We did, however, engage in the usual Arts versus Science disputes during our free periods, but with a sixth form of only 12 pupils, six committed to each discipline, the outcome was generally an ongoing stalemate. I was in the Science stream, and stayed there throughout my working career, so you can tell where my sympathies lay. I'm rather more broad-minded these days, even if I can get a bit up-tight at times!

Comment by: Colin Johnson on 6th May 2024 at 13:05
'On any given weekday in the 1970's or 1980's, a common timeframe for many posters on here, there would have been hundreds of thousands of schoolkids like me and many of you here going through this kind of thing at the same time each day and when you think about that it seems quite bizarre doesn't it.'


It conjures up quite the image when you put it like that. I see what you mean. Half ten in the morning, a few minutes to noon, about quarter past two and then half three would seem to be the times in the school day for this if you think about it. Most schools structured the day the same way and hours.

Comment by: Mike on 6th May 2024 at 01:29
It’s true what you say that boys don’t want to stand out by admitting something that they feel uncomfortable about. They just put up with it, which is so often proved with the years later comments on here. Especially at that age, kids like to be the same as the majority. There’s enough ‘newness’ going on, especially at the younger ages when just starting at your next school. I can remember the feeling of slight bewilderment of being bombarded with so much seemingly oddness and newness all at once, that I just resorted to trying to accommodate it all; it just seemed that this was what was expected of us all from now on. You don’t have anything to compare anything with do you at those very young ages. You're still so trusting of all adults around you, or you were back then, so you just got on with it. I do think certain adults always took advantage of this natural naïvety, but that’s how life has always been down the ages, and certainly would have been so during the times of Victorian child labour, and all times before that. It’s just social conditioning of the times you find yourself in, and I’m sure, has always been so.

As I can’t remember doing gym without my shirt, and always with blue or red bibs to differentiate teams, I often try to imagine how I would have felt if I’d had to. I can only go back to the ‘everything being strange and new' syndrome that we all felt bombarded with at those young ages, so I expect I would have just tried to conform as we all had to, just like the swimming, and certainly the showering.

Interesting points you make about Craig’s running group. I think ‘making a statement’ is just a random comment to try to prove they now all feel sufficiently confident to run without their shirts, but why they need to state this I don’t know. It’s possibly true I suppose, that there might be health benefits in doing this, or confidence boosting benefits maybe? Again, with everyone’s needs being different, most will be taking part in something like that for their own personal reasons, and there’s nothing wrong with any of that. I went through a jogging phase, starting in my early 20s. I actually ran without a shirt a few times during those younger years when it was particularly warm. I always looked younger than my years even though I would have been over 6 feet tall at the time, and would have been wearing those short adidas nylon (?) running shorts of the time, as I remember having two pairs, one white with blue trim; the other pair red with white. It makes me cringe a little thinking back how incredibly naive I still was when just out of my teens, as it didn’t enter my head that I might have been making a spectacle of myself.

Comment by: Leyton on 6th May 2024 at 04:31
Leyton, he was just disgraceful behaviour by your gym teacher. He was a bully who enjoyed abusing his privileged position by inflicting, with humiliation, his punishment on you while so young. Perhaps I shouldn't say, but he sounds just the sort of bully where I would hope he met up with an incognito grown up boy somewhere, so that he could receive back, just a little, of what he enjoyed dishing out years before. Unforgivable.

If you ever watched One Man And His Dog and saw the way the sheepdog would chase up the flock into a gated pen then this is a good analogy to draw with one of my school P.E teachers from my early teens. He would clip his fingers at us and wave his arms wildly about and even blow his whistle at us in the changing room killing your eardrums in the process, while shepherding everyone in the class into the communal showers at the exact same time together, flick the water on and then stand there with his arms folded giving us all the once over and telling boys to wash properly and wet their hair through or not be let back out. Now I'm not one of those kids who was at school who was especially troubled by the need to shower or remove my top but I did find the manner we did it in this way to be terribly demeaning and I think the main problem many boys and girls who were made to shower at school had was this kind of overbearing P.E teacher watching like us that.

On any given weekday in the 1970's or 1980's, a common timeframe for many posters on here, there would have been hundreds of thousands of schoolkids like me and many of you here going through this kind of thing at the same time each day and when you think about that it seems quite bizarre doesn't it.

There were things that once took place in school that now seem surprising, shocking even, or borderline illegal but were infact completely lawful in their own time. In my case going back to 1964 when aged thirteen I was at a state school where the head teacher of physical education had the authority to deliver strokes of a cane and I once found myself being caned on my exposed behind with one hefty swing of a stroke for nothing more than what was described to me as being late coming out of the showers after physical education class. It was given to me on the spot, the teacher laying the charge at me, convicting me and punishing me all within a few quick moments. I was standing there not even having time to dry when I was stopped in my tracks and held by my arm and watched him go for his cane and before I knew it I was standing bolt upright, totally naked and felt this cane strike me plum on the bare bum. It still hurts sixty years later if you understand what I mean. It was a completely bogus accusation but I remember quite liberal use of the cane at school in physical education where lack of effort was often rewarded with a summary cane strike.

Comment by: Mickey on 5th May 2024 at 16:59

Comment by: Chris G on 5th May 2024 at 13:24




I see gentlemen that you subscribe to T.S. Eliot's famous line "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." By the way, Mickey, I am sure you thought your last six lines were terribly funny, but I thought they were just a shade childishly overdone. I hope you don't mind my saying so?

Can I just remind you that this story, that bores and upsets you so much, is recent history, not the history of 50 years ago, and the dirty old pervert paid very lightly for his crimes (and didn't pay at all for many) and I seriously and genuinely wonder if you would feel the same sense of ennui had you been one of his victims?. By the way, as real life distresses you both so much, I sincerely hope, for your own sakes, that you were not listening to Radio 4 news programmes week commencing 22nd April as they were openly and seriously discussing the possibility of World War 3. Luckily, by week commencing 29th April, they had calmed down to their Mr. Chamberlain returns from Munich waving his piece of paper mindset. However,.....


Never mind - lets keep it light and frothy, just to please you. Did your school have the Sinclair Spectrum versus Commodore 64 interminable arguments, and which did you have?. Serious question - just as serious as the middle aged posters going on about whether they'd choose to be shirts or skins, forty or fifty years after the event.


Comment by: Gerry on 5th May 2024 at 22:35

It is and was a power thing. They enjoyed having the power to make you do things that you might be uncomfortable with, just because they could. I think Nathan has proved that, even in 2024. Take their power away from them and they become the mediocrities they really are.

Comment by: Greg2 on 5th May 2024 at 23:07

Good points on swimming and I agree. Swimming generally speaking gets a free pass compared to gym and yet swimming was even skimpier and did as you say often involve girls too. Technically a boy could swim in a wet vest or t-shirt I suppose with it making little difference but nobody ever suggests a boy should do swimming anything other than bare chested and how many on here who have said about the woes of shirtless PE as youngsters also went on holiday and swam free will with shirts off and didn't care or just sat on the sand somewhere just the same.

On your final point, I think I did realise this in my own schooldays but of course boys just don't shout about such things do they. I knew boys who were incredibly uncomfortable being told to strip off for PE and stay like it. They absorb the discomfort they feel for fear of what saying something might mean. On an internet forum such as this all those constraints are ripped away and finally it allows a lot of people to say their own truth and possibly in doing so feel a sense of relief at saying it. I also think that discovering there are so many others just like them must come as some kind of relief too.

In looking at the video that Craig left with the bareskin runner, that man said that people who decide, as adults, to take up that challenge are quote 'making a statement'. Now that's an interesting thing to say don't you think. When I heard him say that I thought, making a statement about what exactly? What makes a group of random men want to join together to run bare chested in a way they would not probably do wearing shirts? Would Craig's group be so enthusiastic about normal running, no I don't think so. These adult men are needing to prove something about themselves are they not.

Comment by: Alan on 5th May 2024 at 10:03
Comment by: Terry on 4th May 2024 at 23:06
......." I will be generous and say I'd elect to be - "skins". It would probably please the PE teacher!"
Interesting that throwaway remark, Terry. You do have to wonder WHY P.E. teachers (then and now in some cases that we know of) seem to want to see boys running round half naked when it really isn't necessary.




I wonder if the answer to this whole question is actually far simpler than we realise. Maybe it was done like this so much for just trying to gain male pupils the maximum body confidence about themselves and nothing more than that. Plus of course it is a low maintainence easy option to take.

My problem with how you frame your argument is that you appear to give the impression that teachers did/do this for salacious reasons in the main. You seem to feel your own PE teacher received gratification from seeing you all in PE classes.

This discussion never seems to lead to common ground with you does it.

All you men remembering back to your school gym days with such awful memories of how uncomfortable you felt having to remove your tops for bare chested gym, I know it’s been mentioned before, but how DID you feel during swimming lessons in this regard? Most of you would have been wearing those skimpy swimming trunks back then too, and literally nothing else…and all eventually wet through while sharing this lesson like that with all your girl classmates. At least in gym you were mostly with just other boys, which would be followed by showers anyway.

I said before, I don’t ever remember having to do a gym lesson without our usual white tops, but I do remember feeling uncomfortable wearing just swimming trunks in front of my girl classmates, and they all did seem to stare at us all, unless I was the only one who noticed this. I know most of the time is spent in the water, but there always did seem to be a time, usually just after changing, when you’d often all have to stand around for a bit.

I’ve never really understood the difference, nor why swimming is never mentioned as an uncomfortable time. I think I felt more self conscious during swimming due to knowing all the girls. I must admit that until reading on this site, I never realised how many boys felt so uncomfortable without their tops on.

So I was on the school athletics team in back in 1970/71 which involved a lot of after school club extra curricular input once a week and some Saturday mornings too as training and extra tuiton to make us nice and competitive against other schools when we came up to compete against them as third and fourth years.

Whilst the athletics team was open to all, it was largely taken up with the boys at school and a smaller group of girls. The athletics team would work inside all winter in the school sports hall and use both the hall and the playing fields over summer. It was most enjoyable just about now when we had some nice late afternoons after school in good weather to do athletics outside. I was a keen hurdler and short track runner.

There were always a pair of teachers took the school athletics club, split between someone from the boys PE and someone from girls PE, more often than not the heads of both.

Now during a typical normal school PE lesson in 1970 we showed out for PE much the same as the associated image for this thread here, except no plimsolls in gym, or socks, just our feet alone. Very much bare chested.

Now you might think that out of school hours when we were doing athletics club voluntarily because we liked it and wanted to do it that the teachers who took us would have a more relaxed attitude compared to run of the mill everyday PE with the whole rag tag of class. Not a bit of it. We were pushed even harder still to do ever better and achieve, for ourselves and for the school, and even though we were in our own time after school and even on Saturday mornings our PE teachers who took us didn't deviate from the school regulations on PE, and we still went bare chested in these out of hours sessions too, and we were all made to shower just the same as if it was a normal school day even on a Saturday morning. If it was a Saturday morning and some of our parents had come along to pick us up for any reason they were allowed to wait at the changing room while we got dressed again and showered. It was seen as acceptable to just let the occasional parent (fathers) entry to the boys changing room. Even if you thought it, and I did, the last thing you would dare say was can you get out of here please. One Saturday one of the boys on the athletics team had his father turn up and wait and at one point he exited the shower and wrapped the towel around his neck and stood talking with his dad and our PE teacher bold as brass in the raw all hanging there without a care in the world and I was thinking that's what too much confidence looks like. But this just goes to prove and show that only in 1970 even under 16's nudity, childhood nudity, was seen as completely unremarkable even in the company of adults in what I would call a semi public area.

Adding my voice to David P's question, I'd decide to be - skins.

The only time I hated being a skin and shirtless in school was when I went through a major spots breakout phase at the age of 14 when it affected my whole upper body, chest, back, arms and shoulders. This became quite demoralising and I was given no special treatment when the time came at secondary school to whip those tops off in the gym, although it wasn't all the while at the secondary. I'd already come from a primary school which had a permanent bare chest rule for the boys in PE plus showers for the boys in the top year there.

So notwithstanding a bad year enduring a spotty body I would have chosen skins even at an early age I think and likely stuck with it through free choice with it.

The only reason I wouldn't have wanted to be a skin at the age of 14 was because I hated looking at my body and the mess it felt at that age with all the blotches and spots that were tempting to pick at and hard not to. I often succumbed to this but made things redder and worse but never learned not to. I used to look around me at 14 and see all these other boys with perfect skin on their bodies and wonder what happened to me. It was so frustrating. But I was never let off a bare chested PE lesson because of it and the teachers didn't exactly seem very sympathetic to my plight at that time of my life.

It's really great to see so many men using Craig's bareskin running group via whatsapp to bond like that, and I do believe that men who get together shirtless seem to bond in some way, and I may be wrong in this but isn't there an aspect of bonding with all these schooldays classes too that went shirtless. You kind of felt part of the team in some way, in it together.

I was quite surprised to see the result from Nathan's school, I would have expected a more level view on shirts and skins for PE, roughly a 50/50 split for both so to see it come out at 75/25 in a current situation across multiple classes was definitely a striking result there. If that was the case this year it makes me think 40 or 50 years ago it might have been more like 90/10 in favour of skins. There have always been boys who hate taking ther shirts off in any era of course.

Matt1971 you took the words right out of my own mouth there, I could have told a very similar story to you there about how I was introduced to the compulsory bare chest school PE requirement. 1977 in my case it was. I won't claim to have shaken but you do get a physical reaction to being told to do it when you're not very willing to. My confidence just seemed to drain away when my top came off in PE when I first did it because I was the only boy in class to do so, having been told off for not having the correct colour soled gym shoes. So because I had the wrong shoes my PE teacher made me remove my top for the whole lesson. Go figure that one out, as well as losing the gym shoes too.

We did shirtless PE at other times too, and skins against shirts too, but my first time as described happened inside the first couple of weeks at my new secondary school that year. I remember it making me ridiculed when I asked when I could put my PE top back on and was told I couldn't.

Imagine a message board for people to recall family holidays in UK coastal caravans in the 1970s. Some had a wet time, some intense 1976 heat. Some found it too noisy, many found it peaceful. Family memories were made, usually happy.

One poor girl's mother was electrocuted by a faulty kettle and died. A tragic event, and not a blameless event.

50 years later she spends all her time visiting websites where people are remembering happy holidays, growing increasingly frustrated that they are ignoring the plague caused by faulty kettles. Every comment about a fold down bed, returnable 10p Corona bottles, and chippy teas is brought back to a conversation about why people feel able to recall happy holidays when the real issue is killer kettles. People even seem to want to relive those unsafe days.

Nobody disagrees that shoddy maintenance was to blame. Everyone agrees it must not be allowed to happen again. People express sympathy, and occasionally horror.

But after a while, sympathy on the board turns to irritation. Then irritation turns to pity.

But still, almost every day, the same point is made again and again and again and again and again again and again and again and again and again again and again and again and again and again again and again and again and again and again again and again and again and again and again and
again and again and again and again and again again and again and again and again and again again and again and again and again and again again and again and again and again and again again and again and again and again and again

Comment by Alan, some time in the recent past

"I get the impression people like Veronica have not read all the material I have posted regarding Quinlan"

Alan - I can't speak for Veronica, but I suspect many of us here, myself included, have neither the time nor inclination to read all the material that you have posted regarding Quinlan, especially as so much of it is repetitious re-posting of the comments of almost everyone else here, interspersed with your own responses.

I long age gave up detailed reading of your "dawn choruses", preferring to seek out the more interesting pieces from posters recording their historical experiences from the period evoked by the photographs, of which, pleasingly, there have been quite a number recently.

So, Alan, please give us a break. We all know that bad things happened in the past, and while the perpetrators can, in some cases, still be found and brought to justice, in many cases they cannot, and energy spent on fretting about them would be better applied to ensuring that the these abuses no longer occur.

I would therefore suggest that continually reminding us of Quinlan is not the most effective use of your efforts in achieving this.

Comment by: Terry on 4th May 2024 at 23:06

........" I will be generous and say I'd elect to be - "skins". It would probably please the PE teacher!"

Interesting that throwaway remark, Terry. You do have to wonder WHY P.E. teachers (then and now in some cases that we know of) seem to want to see boys running round half naked when it really isn't necessary.