Burnley Grammar School

I remember the afternoon break on 5th April 1973 when I cracked a well timed right hander straight at the face of a 14 year old bullying the younger brother of my best friend in school. Over a few weeks he'd extorted a lot of money in silver coins from him. He done the same to some others and taken food from them too. I left him with a great shiner of a black eye for days afterwards. You should have seen those who swarmed around this threatening maniac melt away from him in the days afterwards isolating him and I got a few pats on the back for having the gumption to go for him and it gave me some credibility and respect. I was always quiet and introverted and I acted completely out of character in a fleeting moment of fury and adrenaline which made what I did all the more powerful. I never got into trouble for landing one on him, even though the teachers saw his black eye and knew I'd done it, although no teacher saw me actually do it. I even managed to get a lot of the money he extorted returned. What I learned that day was that many school bullies actually have a glass jaw and they might look all big and threatening, this guy was bigger than me, but with one well aimed launch like you really mean it you can bring them crumbling back down to size in seconds with an intimidatory reputation they can't recover very easily.

TimH on 3rd August 2022 said;

Rich C - agree with you pretty much whole-heartedly.
Roy C - agree with you.
I'm always a bit bothered about people who post messages on these boards in the middle-of-the-night.



Agree with you Tim on the first two points. What a great poster Rich C is.

As Roy C said, the best comes from first hand experiences and I like to hear how similar or different other peoples school life was and the attitudes they took to things like PE. There seems to be a definite divide of opinion much like how I remember the sporty and non sporty kids divide in my own classes.

Worried about night posting, I suppose you might mean myself as one of those who has stuck a couple of night time posts. Quite simple really, as I work at a media organisation on their night desk and have some quieter moments and a break that gives me a chance to read up when I grab a quick moment. I'm not one of those quiet solitary insomniacs sitting in a pokey old bedroom browsing social media all night and sleeping all day with no job to go to. At work in an air conditioned building is the best place to be on a humid summer night rather than trying to sleep back at home in a stuffy bedroom. In the best place right now before I start work shortly. I live increasingly in the 24 hour society and it suits me very well. I'd have probably chosen to go to school from 12am to 6am if the chance had ever been available. Love the night time.

Rich C is everything that this history thread should be about.

Well written, intelligent, informative and deeply personal. Plus answers asked questions put to him in a nice manner.

Rich I thought your philosophy on life was hugely inspiring following the childhood you described to us here. It's to your immense credit that you overcame that and achieved so much and it was so pleasing to read your ultimate positivity.

Johan to Laura - "your post is totally inappropriate and full of breath taking arrogance."

No it wasn't - but yours was.

Some people don't seem to like seeing some professional level headed common sense being written on this thread do they.

I wonder why?

Laura on 3rd August 2022 at 00:14

I suspect you would be able to find abuse anywhere, congratulations. Please do not patronise me, your post is totally inappropriate and full of breath taking arrogance.

A well made and brilliantly written post Laura.

A little tale of mine from the past weekend around where I live. There are two 17 year old boys (Jake and Leo) living either side of me a couple of homes along the road. Both go to the same school. I know one very well, Jake. The other lad, Leo is considered a very quiet and polite young man who has never been a bother to anyone and never makes a nuisance of himself in any way at all, and comes from a decent family and upbringing. Both boys do actually and the neighbourhood is a good one and the school they go to is too.

Yet at the weekend speaking to the family of Jake, the boy that I know very well I was shocked to discover a very different side to this other quiet polite boy in our road, Leo. I found out much to my amazement that in school for the past couple of years this well regarded 17 year old Leo had actually been making the life of the 17 year old Jake that I know an absolute misery and unhappy with persistant low level petty bullying in school and even outside of school. I would never have believed it possible as Leo projects a completely unassuming, quiet personality who keeps his head down and behaves himself and has never given anyone living nearby any reason to doubt this.

But speaking with Jake's grandmother, not his mother, at their house I mentioned the other lad Leo in a positive way and then suddenly found myself confronted with indignation and a lesson in what quiet respectful Leo had been getting up to in school, with another boy, against Jake who was also present while I was talking to his gran. It seemed like a targetted campaign of bullying harrassment had been ongoing for two years. Jake is a boy who is thoughtful, polite and quite sensitive but when younger was actually a bit of a hyper child but has calmed down into what you'd call a rather nice sweet young man with a caring attitude. The other quiet lad Leo is more sporty, plays football a lot and all that kind of thing. I'd say he's quietly confident, but as I've said never a problem in any way ever. Yet in school and with another lad his own age who lives in the same road he has been creating trouble and making Jake unhappy for a long period of time.

I thought it was worth a mention here.

Rich C - agree with you pretty much whole-heartedly.

Roy C - agree with you.

Johan - interesting comments - Thanks for posting. Unfortunately some people look to have their own agenda.

I'm always a bit bothered about people who post messages on these boards in the middle-of-the-night.

Gentlemen, how about we stop feeding the troll?

Through the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s many millions of boys passed through secondary schools. Most had a healthy and fulfilling time there and gained a decent education and I count themselves among them.

A few, a statistically insignficant number had a bad time including being abused perhaps sexually but the number was in relative terms very small and there is no evidence to the contrary.

On the child abuse enquiry, do remember that initially it was to be chaired by a judge, she was removed amidst allegations she was not independent, another lawyer was appointed who was also ousted and then a second judge was brought in from New Zealand, she could not have been anything but independent but she also quit. Judges would not have allowed hearsay evidence, do you see a theme?

Finally, a social worker was appointed, a social worker who had given credence to the most spurious claims in the past and all proceeded so the account of allegations being accepted about someone long dead by two people who were contradicted by many more would be par for the course.

Those who are obsessed with abuse generally have one of two backgrounds. They either have been abused or are abusers trying to cover their tracks. In either case, this isn't the place for them to be airing their thinking, as has been said before, this is a place for innocent memories and in the main that is what the vast majority post here, diverted at times by a couple of posters who I will refrain from naming but they know who they are. One is fortunately fairly scarce these days in their contributions, the other less so.

I would suggest we stop feeding the current poster or other handles with similar issues, as either an abuser or abused, they are not going to find what they need here.

Thank you.

There he goes again - Andy, the amateur psychologist. I didnt say EVERY school was tainted, but a good many were, except that people like yourself either were lucky enough not to attend a bad school or if you did, you were so morally superior you didn't notice what was going on.

Stop with the insults, and don't presume to tell, others if they are allowed to post or not in your not-so-humble opinion.

As someone who has spoken to many people down the years on this kind of subject matter I'd like to raise a point related to what Johan has written.

The part where you wrote about the two people in class being listened to whilst the other fifteen were ignored.

First, I think all comers should be heard, not dismissed. Listened to with the views taken on board.

But there might be a bit of a misconception here. Where abusive behaviour takes place in a situation such as a school or workplace with many people present, abusers only ever tend to focus attention on a very small amount of individuals at any one time, often just one, maybe a couple, possibly a few more in rare cases. It would be highly improbable that an active serial criminal abuser would take on an entire class in one go or even a large number of anybody in a school year. It would be more likely picking individuals off bit by bit over a period of time if it was ongoing persisitant addictive behaviour rather than a one time concern.

This is why Johan you could quite easily have a group of your 15 boys including yourself who think your schoolmaster was a right and proper respected teacher whilst another two had a completely different opinion within the same close environment and might have been abused in some way by him. In this case I am talking potential sexual, physical and mental abuse as a cover all. Do not for one moment think that one or two boys being abused by a teacher away from others eyes would necessarily choose to confide in their friends in the class. A lot of the time this just does not happen for various reasons such as shame for instance, and as seems to have been proved here, the believability issue.

Johan, without meaning to, and you wrote a fair minded piece, you have illustrated quite well issues surrounding the believability issue and why some of those who did face abusive people, in school, at home or in the workplace often don't say anything at all, wait many years and then fail to be taken seriously. I've dealt with the after effects of quite a few in my job and while some speak out at the time it is notable just how many bottle such traumas up for an incredible amount of time before finally being able to speak.

One thing I have heard from numerous people is that silence was always far easier to them than speaking out.

I'd like to suggest a little more kindness towards others who may have been affected goes a long way.

Alan on 2nd August 2022 at 18:58

Further evidence, not that any is needed of your pathological obsession that there was an abuser disguised as every adult member of staff in a boy's school.

Please seek professional help and stop posting here.

Andy wrote: "This poster is obsessed with there having been abuse everywhere even though most people who post here do not share that point of view, he continues to insist it was happening."

As I pointed out to Johan - because he - and presumably you - did not see it, witness it, or experience it personally, it is an insult to those who did to continue to insist it didn't happen. There is always the danger in single sex schools of that sort of behaviour, because some people will be unwilling to admit it happened and even try to see base motives in those who speak out about it. Hopefully, with all the extra precautions taken today, it does not happen now, but it certainly did well into the 1980s.

Alan, you wrote this -

'There are posts I read (for example grown men looking at old TV shows which should by now have been wiped, commenting on the physiques of young pre-pubescent boys naked in the shower), which leave me feeling very uncomfortable indeed'


This is presumably about the Fit & Healthy school show much talked about on here. From what I've read on recent comments it has been perfectly acceptable OBSERVATIONS on the general appearance of schoolchildren a number of years ago compared to the likely change on today that have been made, citing how slim, lean, etc they all were. An innocent and wholly accurate and normal thing to say as part of the conversation around that programme. That should not make anybody feel uncomfortable in my opinion. These were just factual and historical comments based on what could clearly be seen in a real life situation.

Where I would have agreed with you would have been if people had come on here and made personal comments with specifics about the boys physiques/appearances, such as backsides or privates to name two. That would be worth your ire. But nobody has done so.

It just feels to me that you are in danger of blurring the line a bit here from what is not a problem and is genuine to that which might be less so. I hope and think I'm grown up enough to understand the difference.

For example, it was clear to me a few months ago that constant repetition of underwear and jockstrap talk clearly was being undertaken with less than genuine motivations at times.

Richard on 1st August 2022 at 01:11

Thank you for your comments. I only learned about Song for a Raggy Boy relatively recently by which I mean in the last year. I have watched it and it is indeed shocking, while my experience was brutal, it was as nothing next to that. By what I have read, this may have been more representative of an Industrial School in Ireland where the Irish Christian Brothers held great sway over decades. These schools have not had the same publicity as the Magdalene Laundries where many girls endured horrific conditions a the hands of nuns and of course that wasn't limited to Ireland either, they existed in the UK too but have not had the same degree of publicity of honesty about them.

The reasons boys were sent to Industrial Schools were similar to the ones girls were sent to laundries - with the obvious exception and many had done nothing to deserve it though they could be sent to one after a court appearance or just because they seemed a bit 'wayward'.

My experience, while brutal, was nothing like that.

Another film that is around which I saw years ago was the Leaving of Liverpool showing the role of the Brothers in the child migration programme and the brutality of that. The UK government was party to this in no uncertain terms but unlike in Ireland it has not had the same degree of publicity here.

Robbie on 1st August 2022 at 03:09

Thank you also for your comments.

IMO, there is no point whatever in hanging on to bad things in life, I've seen people do it and they only eat you up, life is all too short. I watched my grandmother hang on to the memories of both her husband and eldest son being killed during WW2 and her life had really stopped when that happened, she died while I was about 14 and I was determined never to be like that. Her treatment of my mother was shocking and my mother was often made to feel guilty simply for being alive when her brother was dead and of course that guilt trip had consequences for how I and my brothers were treated but somehow I was able to stand back from it all and be determined I would never be like that. I think I succeeded!

My mother was the ardent catholic, my father was a bit more luke warm but it was my mother who drove our religious practice which meant going to mass daily and confession weekly! Her view of the Brothers was that they could never do anything wrong and nothing, at the time would have swayed her view. My father would not have challenged those views but he was no push over.

As for my education, well I left school with twelve top grade O levels and four top grade A levels and went to Cambridge where I graduated with a distinction so academically, I succeeded I suppose. I also left with a number of friends who have remained friends for life so I'm not sure what more I could have wanted.

I really don't believe the Brothers, at least in my school acted with malice, it was their job to educate and they did. On the day I left though at eighteen, I was determined to never look back and never to dwell on what had happened and that in future, I would sieze every opportunity that was offered to me with both hands and I think I have! I rose as high as I ever wanted to in my professional practice and now am retired with a decent pension, a very loving partner and a comfortable lifestyle that perhaps some would see as aspirational.

One thing I determined I would never do again as I went to Cambridge was that I would never set foot in a catholic church again and apart from the odd christening, weddings and funerals I never have. I also, but like many more, moved away from my parents during the time I was at university and we were never close again if indeed we ever were close.

When the whole thing of abuse and the behaviour of the Brothers came to light I was very tempted to raise it with my parents reminding them of how I used to vomit in the mornings before going to school but what good would it have done? The past couldn't be undone, they believed they were doing their best for me and why guilt trip them? My father was just as capable as any of the Brothers of delivering a serious arse warming and did when he thought it was required so he would not have seen anything wrong with what the Brothers meted out. It was no secret it happened, parents did used to comment that the Brothers use the right means to keep lads in line in a world where corporal punishment was normal. Lads I knew who went to other schools certainly received corporal punishment though probably not on the same scale as we did but certainly I can remember going to the swimming pool and lads in the changing room with a reddened of cane striped arse was not so unusual.

So, to summarise again, IMO, there is no point in holding on to the bad things in the past, you can't change them so let them go and get on with what's in front of you now!

Take care all.

Alan on 2nd August 2022 at 05:29

Once again we see Alan determined to find abuse everywhere even in the face of knowledgeable people saying it didn't happen and the more he posts, the more distasteful he gets.

Making allegations about a man long dead is distasteful and perhaps the only motivation for doing it was seeking financial compensation for something that was alleged to have happened decades ago and that the word of a significant number of men who were there at the time says this was unlikely to be the case, is disbelieved by Alan which is par for the course.

This poster is obsessed with there having been abuse everywhere even though most people who post here do not share that point of view, he continues to insist it was happening.

Johan, You seem to be suggesting that the allegations made against your teachers was untrue, because you and a few of your friends decided it wasn't true. You can't prove the allegations were not true.

You seem, if you will allow me to say so, to be one of those people who are perpetually offended if your beliefs are challenged.

I was making the point, in perhaps too, jocular a way (I apologise unreservedly if it offended you), that a teacher with certain tastes or tendencies, is very unlikely to "try it on" with every pupil he meets as he would soon be rumbled. For example, I very much doubt Jimmy Savile molested every girl pr woman he met - he and others would target more subtly than that. I read after Savile's death of many women who said, in effect, that because he acted the perfect gentleman with them, it couldn't have been true what many others alleged against him.

I suppose what I am saying is that just because it didn't happen to you, or your group of friends, it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I don't understand why so many of you have such a strong reaction to my posts. There are posts I read (for example grown men looking at old TV shows which should by now have been wiped, commenting on the physiques of young pre-pubescent boys naked in the shower), which leave me feeling very uncomfortable indeed, but I don't go around telling people what they should, or should not post, as you do. We all form our own opinions, and most of us keep that opinion to ourselves.


Believe me, there WERE dodgy teachers, especially in PE departments. You were lucky you never rang across one

Alan on 1st August 2022 at 05:30

You seem to be attempting to find abuse where there was none yet again, for God's sake give it a rest man.

What I said was that claims were made at the child abuse enquiry about a master at my school which I found unlikely to be true, I didn't name the school and it was not where Nicky Campbell went.

What I would say on the subject of that enquiry, when I and others who were my peers found out about the allegations made by two of our one time peers, fifteen of us met and discussed what was being said.

On the back of that and our agreement that this was highly unlikely to be true we agreed the content of a letter which was sent to Alexis Jay, the chair of the enquiry and it was written by one of our number who is in his professional life a Director of Social Services so he knows on that score what he's about.

We received an utterly dismissive and disinterested reply so the thoughts of fifteen of us counted for nothing against the word of two men about a man now long dead. I was utterly disgusted and would still maintain, there was no abuse.

As for Alan's insult about not being the right 'type'. Please don't sink to that sort of speculation, it's quite disgusting.

You really should think very carefully before you post here further.

I much prefer it when people talk about their own schooldays rather than second guessing the motives of some media personality.

Paul J on 24th June 2022 at 14:59
I've just watched the Good Health video which I remember from years ago, I'm amazed it's still around.

https://youtu.be/NRRw-k7cGJs

One of the things that struck me immediately was that among the lads they were all of healthy size and more importantly weight for their age, there didn't seem to be an inch of fat to be seen.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I have just seen this. It very much reminds me of secondary school showers that I had although they seemed a bit bigger, the showers that is, not the boys. You're right all the boys do look very lean and that's my personal recall as well from being in the showers with a group from class like this too in the 1980s. Not much fat about, even slightly so. If anything we all seemed on the underweight size of things and slightly skinny. But we all ate bags of crisps, plenty of sweets and all the processed rubbish like burgers and drank fizzy sugary drinks galore quite often, but we stayed like the guys in the showers on TV. Nobody ever seemed to put on weight. Were we really that much more active that we simply burned all those excess calories away as soon as we consumed them?

I have to salute the fortitude of those schoolboys back then putting up with having themselves filmed for television literally going through the entire school showering process from start to finish with each other and no filter on what got shown either. How the hell did they get permission to go that far with it. Perhaps because it said it was a junior middle school it gave them more leeway to do that compared to a slightly older secondary school. I wonder if they would have been able to do the same at a secondary with post puberty students or was that a taboo back then. To me the taboo would seem to be with the younger age group, not older. I certainly found it surprising to see a middle school doing the showers thing even then from the era I went to school. I'd have been shocked to the core if my middle had got me doing all that.

Someone here said it was a bit of an event seeing your mates with nothing on at school. At first definitely. I can still remember the awesome sight I got when I saw my best friend for the first time stripped off next to me in our school shower. He wasn't very tall and had very little actual meat on the bones so to speak but seemed to have an appendage out of all proportion to the rest of him. I was just so pleased to be bang on the average for 80s boys in all measurements back then but even so you'd get apprehensive about how you look.

I wouldn't change this aspect of my schooldays. I think communal school showering was always a natural thing for a group of boys to do with each other in school.

Andy on 30th July 2022 at 20:40


I made a point of saying that he could return to this country and fight a dreadful slander, if Mr Campbell's remarks are untrue. I am now pre-judging the case.

As regards Johan not finding the claims credible, even though he was at the school mentioned, and presumably knew the teachers concerned - well, I mean no offence to Johan, but perhaps he just wasn't their type.

You will usually find somebody behaving in a questionable way does not behave in the same way to every boy or girl, because that would confirm rumour or suspicion - they are selective.

I still find it hard to believe that both Mr Renton and Mr. Campbell would invent such wicked lies, as they have so much to lose it it were proven that they were lying - they would certainly lose both their reputations and careers, and lose a very large sum of money if they were proven to be lying. Why trash your career by inventing things as grave as that?

Rich C.

I was having a late night read, no intention of writing a thing but I've just read your post through three times in succession. You seem to have found the strength of forgiveness.

Were your parents right in believing these 'Brothers' would give you a 'good and sound education' and can I ask if you believe they did yourself?

There are so many questions I'd like to ask you but I don't want to come across as some kind of psychoanalyst. To throw up before school many days was the stand out line for me. I've no words for adults who would turn a childhood into that kind of ongoing year by year fear.

Thankyou Rich for that powerful and compelling piece you have written.

It reminded me of the film Song For A Raggy Boy. When I saw this film some time ago, made in 2003, it left me incredibly angry and unable to stop thinking about it afterwards. In it there is a scene where two young boys who are brothers are beaten and whipped very badly on Christmas morning of all days in a yard in front of everyone and their wailing actually felt so real I could barely believe they were acting it at that age. It was stunning and very very upsetting to watch.

Then later another boy is eventually killed after being beaten so viciously and uncontrollably by one of the vicious Brothers, who seems to get away with it. I would urge anyone interested to see this film if you haven't done so already. The boys in this film are completely dehumanised even being known as just a number. What was this incredible wickedness all about and to what end? I so wish this film had been no more than a work of fiction but it is infact based on reality. But at least there was one good egg who tried to save the boys from that hell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_for_a_Raggy_Boy

The full film in good quality can be found here;

https://ok.ru/video/1194570746593

In the 1960s I went to a school run by the Irish Christian Brothers in the UK. I won't go into the history of the order, it's well documented as is the conduct of the Brothers during that time. They ran a number of prep schools and rather more Catholic secondary schools across the UK and many more in Ireland with their reach extending across the English speaking world in particular to Australia.

I was sent to a prep school by my parents at the age of seven and I passed the 11+ and moved to one of their grammar schools where I spent the next seven years until I completed and passed my A levels. The staff of the school were about 50% Brothers and of the remainder 49% were men and women making up the remainder. I was only taught be one woman for a single year in the prep school.

Boys schools back then were perhaps fairly brutal places and that was my experience. The school was strict with no let up and all of the Brothers and most of the men always carried a hefty leather strap with them and it was used very liberally. A summons to the front of the room to hold out your hands for one, two or three delivered on each hand happened in almost every lesson to at least one lad and sometimes almost every one right the way from seven to eighteen. The pain varied depending on who was delivering it and over time, tolerance of it rose too so your hands would burn and sting for a while but it was no big deal.

In class and around the school, the brothers often added an air or more obvious brutality. Hair pulling was pretty normal, I remember several times having my hair pulled and head banged off a wall or blackboard until I saw stars and I would say most lads would have similar memories. There was no consistency though, one day what a Brother laughed at might the next day earn you a hiding. Of the PE staff often known for brutality, ours were no exception but the two Brothers who took PE (two other men took PE too) they always had their strap up their sleeve and they would come behind you without warning and just leather the backs of your legs with no warning at all perhaps for not trying hard enough. The other men also strapped the backs of legs but not in the way the brothers did without warning.

The ultimate sanction short of expulsion was a summons to the 'back room' which was a room not far from the staff room where a more serious beating took place. It was equipped with a horse to bend over and usually two Brothers were present but sometimes it was one of the other masters with a Brother. It was blazer off, trousers and underpants down for a bare arse leathering. Twelve was normal and quite a few more was not uncommon but I certainly had more on my mind than to count when it was happening. No lad even up to eighteen failed to leave that room in tears. I certainly did on my at least once a term visits - probably about average. It left you with an arse that burned and stung for hours afterwards and was a deep shade of purple for about a week.

Almost every morning before leaving home and at the prospect of school, I used to vomit. My parents knew this but believed the Brothers knew how to deliver a good and sound education so I was always told to get on with it and work hard - bearing in mind this happened for eleven years of my life.

It's over, it's passed. I now have no wish to retrospectively claim I was the victim of any sort of abuse - and please, no one be patronising enough to suggest that I was, I'm an adult, now retired and quite capable of making my own decisions. My experience may have been a bit more brutal than that the majority but it was not wildly untypical at the time. The Brothers were known for far worse things than the strap in some places and it would seem that where that was the case, justice has been done and matters should be left to rest.

Claims were very hard to believe against certain people.

It doesn't mean they were not true.

ROLF HARRIS! Ten years ago almost nobody would have said a bad word against him. Now look.

It's worrying that some people here are pushing back against this issue and trying to deny the problem in the past. Why should they be so touchy about it and do so. Makes you wonder just a bit.

To say Campbell should be more or less ignored because he hadn't come forward when he had the chance is dangerous nonsense. Who knows why he chose now to come out with this. There could be as many reasons as that man who won't come back to face the music.

Believe me, if I was 100% innocent and knew it, there is no way I'd sit back and allow such terrible allegations to go unanswered, few could tolerate it. Reputation is everything.

Only in recent years have I come to realise just how abusive one or two of my own teachers actually were. In the early 70s when boys had quite long hair we had one who had a habit of pulling boys hair and another who would kick lads up the backside just because he seemed to like doing it. Neither was a PE teacher mind you.

Alan on 30th July 2022 at 19:01

Once again, where Alan is concerned a person is guilty until proven innocent.

There could be 1001 reasons why the gentleman concerned does not wish to return to the UK, given his age, his health is probably a major consideration but as ever you want to believe the claims and fail to even consider for a moment that they may not be all they seem.

Johan also said that the school he attended was part of the child abuse investigation and he, having been there found allegations made about people he remembered very hard to believe but as ever you ignored that bit of his account in your hurry to assume guilt.

Johan wrote "
Nicky Campbell has used his position to air his account, he had a better forum in which to do it in the very recent past and failed to do so. I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to take him seriously now."

He had apparently responded to an investigation being carried out by Alex Renton, a respected journalist.

Let me put this to you: Mr Campbell on a radio interview this week named the "gentleman" he was accusing. If that man, is innocent, then Mr Campbell has committed a dreadful, dangerous and unforgiveable slander. If somebody accused me of such a grave offence, I would be minded to sue him. Why doesn't he return to the UK and seek his remedies in the courts?.

Perhaps one day, like Ronnie Biggs he will, through age and illness, be forced to return to the UK and break his silence on those matters discussed.

I have to say I pretty much agree with recent posts by Clive, Bernard, & Christopher ... we’ve had some thoughtful comment over recent time and it’s a pity to see things reverting to a slanging match. I particularly appreciated Billy’s recent piece.

@Tanya – Could I suggest this sort of behaviour affected both boys & girls schools – it’s just that its boys schools that seem to get the limelight. Regarding ‘mumsnet’ – I saw a bit of it sometime back when there was a troll called ‘maltamom’ active in variously places including, I think, here. Some of the ladies on it had some rather (to me) strange views. There was the lady who saw two boys going to school in shorts in October and reported the parents to ‘Child Protection’, and a heated discussion over the age at which boys should go into the ‘Men’s’ changing rooms at gyms, swimming pools, etc.

Please let’s keep it polite, folks

(I have to say I’d never heard of ‘Nicky Campbell’ before this came up).

"he aims to silence all and sundry who don't want to agree which him and yet when you confront his behaviour".

Gaslighting. You're descibing yourself.

The bigger question for me is why this Alan seems to push your buttons so badly and triggers you so quickly when he reappears with something that doesn't suit your specific views? If you feel you've got a good case against him and his opinions then take him apart with reasoned, respectful and forensic argument to make your point. The whole manner of this at the moment is self defeating.

I could say much the same to Alan from the opposing viewpoint.

Defeat your opponent with your ideas, not your insults. Fair enough?

'Comment by: Alan on 29th July 2022 at 05:37

You really area an obnoxious little man, you have to turn every comment into an insult or an accusation - I bet you were one of the most verbose of the playground bullies.'

And yet again we see Alan projecting his own behaviour on to others. You only need to scroll back through the pages here to see how he aims to silence all and sundry who don't want to agree which him and yet when you confront his behaviour, it is you who are the bully.

At least most here can see Alan for what he is.

Let's get back to a sensible discussion.