Burnley Grammar School

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.

Shirts would be my active choice as a kid and now.

On initial entry to my comprehensive school in 1983 when I was twelve years of age I was already not looking forward much to doing PE, mainly due to the rugby and football requirement boys had to take up outside as I hated most team sports.

I'd overlooked the school gymnasium though. Up till then I'd always worn T-shirts for PE or a simple vest at my previous schools up to age twelve, so doing any PE shirtless wasn't really part of my thinking process, and I spent no time at all at home going around with my chest bared and always wore T-shirts through summertime and didn't lounge about the house undressed very often at all, almost never infact.

When my first comprehensive school gym lesson came along the boys all changed and went into the gym in trainers, white shorts and a plain white vest, no logo or anything on it, just generic. That PE teacher beckoned us to gather around him in the centre of the gym and told everyone to quickly remove our vests as we wouldn't be needing them in the gym. With that he made us all screw our vests up into a ball and sybolically throw them as far as we could across the gym floor where they remained until we finished.

At the moment we did this and I took my vest off I remember physically shaking to myself and trying to tell myself not to be so silly about it but just couldn't help myself. I exaggerate not one bit when I say I must have been shaking through fear of it and possibly shock. I was absolutely mortified I had been told to do the PE lesson in my bare chest and knew it wasn't going to be a one off but the thing we did each time, and the sight of everyone else around me stripped shirtless, some of them boys I'd known a few years as junior school friends, was not any kind of reassurance to me and made me feel even more strange. I had this desire to keep using my arms to protectively cover my body up for a bit. It took a lot of getting used to and I would say it was six weeks before I finally found acceptance and settled down into that routine at school gym but I never found it automatic and easy to remove and keep my shirt off to do PE lessons. I was very envious of some of the boys I could see who it came easy to.

I do remember a couple of boys in my PE class who knew there were some of us who gave off unconfident body language while shirtless and found it cause for unhelpful comments.

So I guess the question is what was I fearful of exactly, and I just don't feel able to answer that question.

There was a PE cupboard along the corridor to the gym with a lot of gym bits kept in it. You had to pass a couple of English classrooms to reach it. Our PE teacher would often just grab a couple of us and take us along to this cupboard to get some bits to bring back into the gym, mats, balls, racquets, whatever, and this meant going past two English classrooms who could see you. If chosen it was just a pointed finger and, 'you and you, come with me now'.

So forgive me for saying I'd be a shirt by choice. I think comprehensive school gym put me right off shirtless for life, I just associate it with my days in school PE in the gym feeling pushed about and anxious.

I don't think it's so bad to admit being this way as a boy or man.

I remember having good days and bad days at school when I felt confident or unconfident about the way I looked or myself in general. So on the skins v shirts question if it's a free choice that would have depended how I felt when I got up on the day. It's very hard to put myself back into the little 12 year old boy at school facing another PE class ahead of me, but on balance I had many more good days than bad ones so on that basis I will be generous and say I'd elect to be - "skins". It would probably please the PE teacher!

I'm pleased you have apologised to Veronica there Alan.

How nice to see you back Craig with your own bareskin update. The video of the bareskin runner you posted showed him getting incredibly muddy and that took me back to cross country at school which could be a surprisingly muddy endeavour. How can modern boys run cross country's, get like that and not shower I ask you?

David P, skins or shirts answer.

Skins.

Secondary school gym classes were a mixture of kit types in the years I was there from '75 onwards. The gym being filled with boys in many colours of tops and shorts, and lots who went shirtless too because they just did so, not because they got told to. I was one of these who just went into PE like that, favouring the bare chest appearance because I saw that as easiest, felt right for me, meant less baggage to bring and didn't mind being seen with my shirt off stripped to the waist. The teachers seemed content to let us decide on all that. Some boys wore trainers for gym, others chose not to. Sometimes when we did team games then some shirts did have to come off to make the right teams up but that was all. We were all required to shower afterwards under the watchful gaze of the PE teacher who would sometimes jump in himself after all the boys in my class had come out when we had gym just before lunch hour.

Mike, simply reflecting the fact that the majority of posters on this article are strongly in favour of shirtless PE. Some to the extent of believing it should be compulsory.

They clearly didn't grow up with skinny ribs or a sticky out belly button.

Comment by David P - Skins v shirts. Free choice, what would you choose to be?

Me at age 13-14: shirts.

Me today: skins.

And that's at least partly because when I was at school in the late 80s to early 90s, I didn't get a choice. It was up to my PE teacher whether I did lessons as a shirt or a skin and that meant, like all the others in the class, I had to get used to the latter.

Comment by: Mike on 4th May 2024 at 17:17


Sorry Mike, but I get the impression people like Veronica have not read all the material I have posted regarding Quinlan, and wishes to have us just recall happy schooldays that some of us did not experience. I suspect the indecencies that went on in Quinlan's school are beyond the imagination of Veronica (and many others)., and I would just ask them to read all the material to see just how the most egregious offences took place, seemingly with the facts being known to the authorities by this pervert, of the local council and the school authorities who even had warnings from parents, who were rewarded by the school and the council threatening them with legal action. They clearly hoped for a cover-up.

However if I was brusque in replying to Veronica, I apologise.

9-3 in favour of skins vs shirts so far, with one fence sitter from Mike (Lurker not original). That's 12 defimnite votes, and 75% in favour even in this small sample size which remarkably matches Nathan's class vote too!

I endorse the comments from Veronica backed up by Mickey and Mike.

Skins 100% any time I'd choose for PE lessons, with just boys or with girls, makes no difference to me.

Nice pic Nick, that's how PE should be done for boys, certainly in the gym but looks like schools in the seventies were ahead of their time taking lads like you cross country in bare chests with 'bareskin' running in PE. I never did any of that in school but very familiar with PE teachers telling us to remove our tops whenever they decided we ought to do it.

Alan, I agree with Mickey here. That was not a nice way to speak to the lady here even though I generally agree with the points you made within your comment about the failings to deal with people such as that, who could possibly argue with that to be frank.

I think Veronica is correct. It is time to give this subject a rest please. I've stood up for you in the past and you make some fair points but like Mickey I did not like your tone and character assassination of someone who wrote you a polite response, even if you didn't like it. Please reflect.


David P question - I would choose to be shirts.

Mickey, when answering this question the same as me you said sorry for your choice, why did you feel sorry about that choice of answer? It may say something about men in general that feel we have to be a certain way and show no sense of reticence or reservation.

Comment by: Nick on 1st May 2024 at 02:44

https://www.facebook.com/camberleymemories/photos/a.1546972158849342/2613441038869110/?type=3


I like your photo Nick, all good looking nice boys of the time. You must have been the keen ones at PE there and all look perfectly presentable like that. I was also at school in Kent back in 1972 at a similar age to you at the time, I'd just gone up from primary then, and I remember sharing many PE lessons with boys my age at my school who didn't seem to stick tops on for PE much. Your old photo brought back quite a few memories for me there actually, it took me back to doing games outside with boys looking just like you lot there. I don't know if you or any of your class there felt bashful about it but you should not have done. I think you all look fine and well. I don't think the PE teachers ever made any distinction between boys doing things by themselves or with the girls and I myself never looked at boys in school PE lessons and thought it was unfair of them to be with us in bare chests, actually we would have expected it I think and might have been more surprised if they were not like it perhaps.

I agree with the other welcome female contributor here today, Veronica. I think Craig's running group is a lovely idea and it seems to be going great guns.

Veronica was gentle and made some good points Alan.

Your constant mischaracterisation of people's frustrations with your complete demolition of discussion on this board, backed up with insults really does suggest you to be unwell.

Comment by: Veronica on 4th May 2024 at 00:26


"I'm rather concerned about you Alan and why you remain committed to posting these press articles on the history forum and the one in particular which often mentions a specific named person."

Thank you for your faux "concern" Veronica. The reason I have named Quinlan is because for reasons, known only to themselves, the police refused to co-operate with the press in supplying photographs of that appalling pervert, even after conviction. It was only thanks to a whistle-blower (not me, I hasten to add, though I would have done it, had I known his whereabouts), that we can now see what the creep looks like (and he looks like a child molester straight out of central, casting - bald, fat, bespectacled and ugly) that after his first conviction, he was allowed, after serving a too-short prison sentence, to return to teaching and practising his perversions on a new set of boys. Had the police published his photograph, as they would with a common housebreaker or shoplifter, he might not have had the chance to re-offend, at least in a state school. The police, in my opinion, acted appallingly. They should be made to explain themselves.

I am not repeating my history here, except to say we had a paedo PE teacher who got away with it, because at that time there was no internet, and nobody would believe what a bunch of common kids knew to be fact, and other teachers didn't have the guts to challenge him, even though they were aware of the problem (as indeed other Royal Liberty teachers were at the time - read all the reference quoted by the Romford Recorder), bet read that than your amateur psychology on me. What did you read to reach your prolix conclusions on me, Veronica, Teach Yourself Amateur Psychology, or the Ladybird Book of the Bonce?.

It is no more questionable for me to mention cases of genuine concern (and remember two other - unnamed - as yet - teachers from the same school are being investigated for the same loathsome sort of behaviour than it is for all these middle aged men pretending they are still at school and deciding if they would be a"shirt or skin".

Does it not bother you that Quinlan is only "Vaguely aware" of the impending legal case (of course, he knows in a civil case he will not be imprisoned, as he should be), that he seems to have no shame, hides behind his solicitor and claimed to be "in a great hurry"? - an old man in his seventies, in a great hurry? Pull the other one. He should be manifestly aware of the legal action regarding his scabrous past behaviour. He was lucky the offences he was convicted of - twice - were before he would have been required to sign the Sex Offenders Register. At least everyone can now see what the pervert looks like.

In short, Veronica, I am sorry I cannot write in the manner of "Hello" or "The People's Friend" - nice cosy articles about a past viewed through rose-tinted glasses, where it is always a summer afternoon. MY life wasn't like that, even if yours was.

History dictates that we recall the very bad as well as the good - and Quinlan is part of very recent history. I also strongly suspect there are many other Quinlans, whom the law has not yet caught up with. But thern we were only boys - had it been girls or women he would have been inside for much longer - both times.