Burnley Grammar School

Yours Truly and Julian P,

I posted this recollection on 9/10/23. Please don't mind my repeating it, as it touches on the suggestion school staff were quietly looking out for signs of mistreatment (Graham Butterfield, a retired PE teacher posting on this site, agreed):

In my first, or one of my first, PE lessons at junior school in the early 1990s, we got changed in the classroom beforehand. The boys put on white shorts with our chests bare; the girls wore white shorts and white T-shirts. All of us had bare feet. The teacher handed round an open metal tin in which we placed any spectacles, sleeper earrings, watches or other jewellery.

We filed along the corridor to the school hall and the teacher told us all to run round the hall in circles. I had been very self-conscious in earlier PE lessons in infant school, but that was easing, to my relief, and at that moment, not quite eight years old, it was rather exhilarating to be scampering around the parquet flooring at peace with myself.

As we children were running round, the teacher, a kindly lady, suddenly called me over. On the side of my left foot, there is a dark, large, flat mole. She pointed at it and asked, "What's that?"

I explained (not much troubled), she accepted my explanation and we went back to the lesson. Only now, as an adult, does it occur to me that she was, perhaps, discreetly observing the children for any, very rare, signs of mistreatment (partially explaining the minimal PE kit) and that the mole could easily have been mistaken for a cigarette burn.

Hi Julian P,

I had heard that rationale for the full medicals as well. although I don't see why the teachers couldn't have kept an observant eye on us when we were changing into and out of our PE kits.

Although we wonder why there seem to be the necessity to be completely undressed for what seems a basic medical exam, I am wondering was it so that the person examining us could see if there was any bruising on our body that was not evident when we were clothe. I.e. a form of social welfare check?

Hi Alan,

It's not my intention to have an argument with you about this but the hygiene argument for circumcision is totally spurious. You said it yourself - neither parents nor teachers told them. It would have taken a PE teacher moments to explain about pulling back and cleaning under their before their first high school shower.

Unnecessaryand non-consensual amputations on baby boys is an utter violation of their basic human rights. You might as well pull out all the teeth of seven-year-old children because if they don't clean their teeth regularly they will suffer dental problems.

Hi Alan,

It's not my intention to have an argument with you about this but the hygiene argument for circumcision is totally spurious. You said it yourself - neither parents nor teachers told them. It would have taken a PE teacher moments to explain about pulling back and cleaning under their before their first high school shower.

Unnecessaryand non-consensual amputations on baby boys is an utter violation of their basic human rights. You might as well pull out all the teeth of seven-year-old children because if they don't clean their teeth regularly they will suffer dental problems.

Yes, Yours Truly.

We had to undress around our class tables at our chairs to just wearing one clothing item, our underwear. I don't know why they didn't send us to the school PE changing room but they didn't. Speed and convenience possibly and it was easier to watch us in class. Girls had been moved into the dividing activity area we had between two classrooms but could still strain their necks and look back at us, there was not even a partition to pull across, then we were all filing along to the hall and any staff or admin would see us if they were about. I remember being told to sit on the hall floor with arms and legs folded and remain quiet until it was our turn.

I don't think we even knew about what was going to happen until that same morning and it got sprung on us. I was about the same age as Matthew said he was in his account, but a few years later in time.

When called up for my turn I remember just standing there and there being two people, one man and one lady, the lady seemed to be a nurse of some rank, and she grabbed my upper arm quite tighly and pulled me closer to her. She looked in my ears, my mouth, listened to my chest, looked at my hands, did something with my legs and lifted up my feet and looked on top and under them. She also ruffled my hair through with her hands and messed it up. I was spun around a couple of times and I had something felt at my shoulder blades and mention of posture, and at one point had to stand on one leg for a few seconds to do with balance. I also had to raise my arms high above my head and keep them there but I can't remember what for. I most certainly remember repaeting to myself 'please don't take my pants off, please don't take my pants off' and thinking that was going to happen as well but phew I was pleased they didn't even try to do that.

While this was happening I remember the man just sitting there with a warm smile looking at me, I didn't know who he was and nobody said who he was. The lady examiner was officious and abrupt, one of those 'come on now, turn around' types who expected you to read her mind about a second before she had actually said something. I remember a lot of teachers themselves being just like that too. As quick as you were, you were still not fast enough.

On completion I remember being given a slip of paper to take home with me and then walking back from behind the screen, seeing everyone else sat waiting and having to walk back to the classroom by myself to dress by which time the girls in my class had come back from the pretending to give us a bit of privacy and were back at their desks working as I walked in the classroom door and weaved myself around the tables to mine and got dressed again, and every couple of minutes another boy in class did the same thing returning from his health check.

I remember the boys in class thinking it would be fun the next day when the girls turn came to see them going off for their health checks but all they ended up doing was leaving their shoes behind in class and walking off to the hall fully dressed. So I think this kind of meets your double standard threshold doesn't it Yours Truly.

Comment by: Julian P on 16th November 2024 at 15:12


..."However, when I was at secondary school, there seemed to be the obsession during school medicals to check foreskins and in many cases recommend circumcision which several of my friends went through which again I suspect was totally unnecessary".

To be honest, Julian, though I am no defender of officialdom, I think this was a good thing. Anyone who ever spent time in a school shower and changing room will know so many lads had a total disregard for personal hygiene. No retracting during micturation or when showering. To be fair, neither parents or school will have instructed them on matters like this. In America neonatal circumcision is a given, so the lads will not have the pain and embarrassment of having to endure it in their teens and twenties. At one time it was mandatory if you wished to join the USMC (United States Marine Corps)

Mark,

Do you mean to say you boys were all made to actually strip in your classrooms in front of the girls in your class?

Hey Mark,

Junior school age boys really were made to strip completely. I can state this from my own personal experience. It's just, we were not made to do so in front of the girls.

I am hardly surprised to read that the girls at your school were treated with more consideration.

This thing about being under-dressed for basic check ups is so true. I had a junior school check up where boys were sent to the school hall and had to all sit in only our underpants with our legs crossed and arms folded and wait to be called up behind one of two screens at the front of the hall. Boys from different classes had taken all their clothing off back in the classroom at their desk and had to walk to the hall as we were, just in our underwear. It was the girls turn the next day and they went off normally, and undressed only behind the screen in the hall they told some of the boys back in class. I think there was a consent form our parents had signed but none was present to actually see our check up.

For those boys that actually had to remove their underwear and wnet to schools with the other sex I wonder if they had to do this as well, it doesn't seem likely does it.

Eight days ago when I had a chance to reunite with former staff and pupils at a Class of 84 reunion I was able to meet one of my main PE teachers from back in the day.

I asked why we were expected to run the school cross country barechested so often and so late in the year. His answer to me was that doing sports barechested is good for the immune system and especially when done outside, and distance running is very good for this. So he played on the health benefits physically. I retorted back about the mental health benefits on insecure pupils.

I certainly don't remember such an explanation in those days. There was never any explanation, but then nobody asked the question in the first place.

Matthew's post about eyesight tests reminded me of the medicals at my school in the late 1980s. There was a general medical for all boys each year and the first part was a sight test. For whatever reason, we all had to take off our shirts and then stand in a line waiting for our turn. Once your sight test was done, you went through to an office where the doctor did the rest of the exam, each boy in turn. Once inside the office you had to strip down to underwear and then (briefly) naked. But when you exited the office you were still shirtless of course. I could never understand why I had to be shirtless just to have my sight tested!

In reply to Matthew's comment about stripping to underwear for what seemed to be just an eyesight test is odd to say the least. And Yours Truly, in response to your comments about mass circumcision. I was at junior school 1958 to 1961 and it seems as if there was the situation where it seemed the thing for so many of the children to have their tonsils removed, when in fact in most cases it was unnecessary.
However, when I was at secondary school, there seemed to be the obsession during school medicals to check foreskins and in many cases recommend circumcision which several of my friends went through which again I suspect was totally unnecessary.

Comment by: Matthew on 15th November 2024 at 23:41


I suspect the idiots were trying to ape the procedures of the army (that and the semi naked PE lessons) - it was their outdated idea of military life.

There was an argument for it during the years of conscription, getting lads ready for the mass nudity and bull of the old army, but seeing those days ended 65 years ago, it just shows how behind the times educationalists are. MInd you, Bridget Phillipson will probably take us back to the 1930s.

Interesting to read that others went to schools that imposed the same PE kit rules on the sixth form. My school was the same and sixth formers were expected to have one PE and one games lesson a week and in the same PE kit as everyone else so shorts only shirtless and barefoot, which since that's what I wore in high school for pe it was fine I think I was more disgruntled at having to do PE

Julian P.

We had an examination one day in middle school where all the boys in our year had to assemble in the hall and get down to only our underwear and then go and sit in batches of boys about ten at a time on chairs along the corridor waiting outside the medical room to be seen. Once inside we were given an eye test by looking at a book and covering one eye at a time. That was it. Back to the hall to pick up my stuff and dress again. I could not understand why they went to such effort and made us remove nearly everything we had on, shirtless and barefoot, just to do an eye check on us. Very weird. I think I was 9 or 10 years old. That took place around 1976 or 1977.

Does anyone have anything like that?

Yours Truly, another decent read and am happy to respond.

Like your sister I tended to conform. Most of us did though didn't we? Looking back now I rather wish I had been a little less conformist and a lot more questioning. As a younger child I am told I was known as a "why? bird" and was always asking why this, why that, and why are we doing this, kind of questions. I'm like that much more now as an adult in more recent years, but I am not sure what happened during secondary years and that general age range. I must have been flattened into submission, it did sometimes feel that way.

You asked the sixth form question. As far as school was concerned in 1985-87 we knew the rules before we made the decision to stay on so we had no cause to complain about it. There were a lot of free periods so we had to fill them up with a minimum of at least one PE lesson each week, done shirtless if in the school gym or sports hall, or if spring summer athletics or a run. It was completely non negotiable even as lower and even upper sixth formers to age 18, we had to participate as required and in the manner the school laid down. I knew someone who was actually thrown out of the lower sixth form within three months for persistantly failing to meet his PE requirement, so he had to leave. I remember he was very upset about it but the answer was to simply continue with some PE but he wouldn't and so was gone. Rather foolishly I thought. In truth Julian I'd been doing barechetsed PE with the boys for 4 years by the time I'd got to lower sixth so was so well used to the situation that it no longer really registered with me as an issue to carry on doing so even in the sixth form and I think the majority who stayed on probably would say the same. Doing something for so long, even if you are unkeen, ends up being normalised. But there is an interesting addition to this however. There were a small group of boys who joined our school lower sixth from elsewhere in 1985 who had never been pupils at the school before and had not been subjected to the rigours of our school regards PE enforcement to the level those old timers like me had. I think one or two might have even found themselves doing a dose of barechested PE in school for the first time at lower sixth age, remarkably. One person in particular sticks in my mind about this. I used to play a lot of squash when in the sixth from which had these viewing areas, and we played squash the same as we were in the gym or sports hall. I played the new addition to our sixth form a few times and he thought it was ridiculous, but of course he conformed!

Another thing you mentioned that is highly relatable is getting used as sixth form boys to do the jobs of the teachers who were paid to do them. In my case this involved being designated a classroom to watch over during wet break times, meaning no break for those who had a class to get off to when it rained just to stand on guard like a lemon. Sometimes upper sixth boys were asked to join in helping on a PE lesson or supervising a changing room in place of a teacher. I was on the end of a sixth former doing this to me when in my youngest secondary year and you are right, they were just as bad as the teacher for being strict, like trying to prove a point to us. When I was in upper sixth I was asked to put my name to a list of boys on the stand in rota for the changing rooms and was very reluctant and didn't see this as any part of my reason for being at school, but it was drilled into us that it was one small part of all about taking and learning about responsibility and some leadership. I only did this twice in the upper sixth and out of an entire school found myself "standing guard" inside the changing room door on a group of two merged classes including my younger brother by three years who was about 14 and a half by then to my almost 17 and a half. I was left alone and had to make sure these boys showered. I'd have been happy to let them all go off as they wished with or without but knew from someone else that let that happen they'd be getting a real rollicking for it. My brother wasn't as sensitive to these issues as me but I just had to pretend I hadn't seen him and briefly stood back outside the door at one point. Sometimes I was told the teacher would suddenly appear as if trying to catch you out not doing as you'd been asked while standing in.

When it came to the rain day break times there were many times I simply didn't show up or made out I'd left the school on a free period so hadn't been about, even if I had been. It only occassionally got checked up. I still do think it's an absolute nerve to expect 16 to 18 year olds to do unpaid work that teachers are paid to do. I can even remember sixth former being asked to go around litter picking, not just around school but even just outside the school perimeter that was not only not our job but not the school's either but the local council!

There was mentioned taking a dining room PE lesson. Again I can match you on that or even trump you with something more extraordinary. I can even remember the exact date it happened, Wednesday morning 17th February 1982. We found ourselves having a PE lesson in our changing room! I kid you not. Quite why this happened at a school with four squash courts available, a huge sports hall, a decnet sized gymnasium, an all weather sports pitch, tarmac tennis courts and an absolutely vast school playing fields with rugby and football pitches and cricket nets I have no idea, it was not like we were short of options. Okay so the changing room was decent sized but not enough to swing a ball and we all crammed in and sat along benches having changed to just shorts and did something akin to rounders in a changing room. A very bizarre experience that I wish I knew why it happened. It was just stupid. At the end of it all nobody had been able to move much or do anything and most of us had spent the time sitting on the benches as this makeshift game progressed and not drawn a bead of sweat or raised our heart rate, but the teacher still got someone to turn on the shower tap and tell us all to drop our shorts and head to the showers to wash off non existant sweat. You have to laugh now at it all.

I just wish to make clear regards the link I gave to the blog last night that although it appears to be run by someone called "No Shirt Dan" that is not me and I have no direct personal connection to that site and forum whatsoever, other than as a guest poster. I see someone else has posted there since me yesterday.

https://shirtlessbarefoot.blogspot.com/2018/05/how-to-start-shirtless-sports-and.html

Gosh there Danny C, I wish I looked as good as the picture of the boy on that blog you said you closely resembled on that. That was really good looking and athletic, I can't believe boys like you at school would worry when you had such good looks and body. It's a funny old world. I'd swap with you like a shot, I never quite shaped up or looked as good as that. I agree on the shorts, you could make three pairs of old style shorts from that amount of material he had there. Thanks for the heads up about that forum.

Hi Julian P,

Thanks for your reply.

As an adult I have seen it stated that the full exam was done to check for undescended testicles, which would explain why girls seemed to be spared the full ordeal.

However that doesn't explain why I also had to strip completely for my second school medical at aged 8 - surely once they were down there was no further need for checking??

That second exam was considerably worse than the first and stepping naked into that room felt like a shock of cold water. What really made this one worse was, in addition to the doctor and health worker/ nurse or whatever and my mum again, our old classroom assistant from Infants' was also there. I don't know why she had to be there, there were already two professional adults in the room. I have long speculated that the school just wanted to have one of their staff there to represent the school's authority even in a fraught and sensitive moment like this.

This woman was utterly vile. She had a hairtrigger temper and seemed to hate kids. She once sandblasted my ears because she claimed I had completed a painting too fast and therefore not only turned in a sloppy result but wasted precious school paint. There was no evidence of kindness in her and as an unusually self-conscious and nervy kid I used to draw her ire. I have plenty of memories of her scolding me harshly, shouting at me or seizing me by the arm. All this between my fourth and seventh birthdays. She once screeched at me because I stopped at the sight of a thorny bramble across the path. She was leading me down to the school's sports day, it was summer and as usual I was in shorts. Basically she should never have been allowed to work anywhere near children.

Given all that it really added insult to injury to see this vile woman in the room. I had to dangle meekly there in front of this harridan while I was weighed, measured, turned around to check my spine and had my heart beat checked. I can remember letting my mind drift away, becoming remote within myself, as a defensive response against the humiliation of it all.

Looking back over all these experiences it just seems my primary school was completely inconsiderate regarding the emotions of the young children in its care. It was as if they saw us as little animals that didn't have feelings. And if you did display emotion you got it in the neck for it. What they wanted was - compliant children.

I never experienced the trauma of having my balls palpated or my foreskin retracted as other respondents here have previously detailed. Much less the following arbitrary mass circumcisions that one respondent posted about several years back.

I came to realise that there was great inequality in the imposition of these violating exams across the country. I can remember a fellow secondary pupil recounting to another pupil about his primary medicals and the boy behind him later gloatingly repeating his tale to another boy - seemingly there were no medical exams at all at his primary even though he was the exact same age as me. On the other hand I recall the mother of an old primary friend telling my mum about his full nude medical at his secondary school which was different to mine. Seemingly there every child had to undergo a full medical exam at the start of every school year. Apart from the inevitable communal showers I never had to get my bare bollocks out ever again for any adult after I turned eleven. Inequality is always the worst thing.

Comment by: Yours Truly on 15th November 2024 at 01:02


...."You stated that even the sixth-form boys at your school had to take PE stripped to just shorts.

That is just appallingly callous and negligent. Imposing a belittling dress-code regime forcing boys in their mid-teens to get nearly naked is crossing a particular line......"

YT I couldn't agree more with you, in fact I agree with everything you have said and your feelings as you have stated them, because they echo mine.

What always angers me is - whether we are talking about 1964, 1984 or 2024 lads have all faced the same problems - to put it bluntly, lads in mid teenage are likely to experience involuntary erections (luckily it never happened to me - I was a bit slower than some of my peers), but you can just imagine the ribald comments that would
cause. If you are only wearing shorts there is no hiding place. If you have a top on at least you can try to disguise it.

Teachers, of whatever age should try to remember back to their teenage years and put themselves in those lads situation.

I sincerely HOPE the days of making older boys remove most of their clothing is over, but I definitely think that a 16 or 17 or 18 year old ought to be allowed to decide for himself whether he wishes to take clothes off or have showers.

To my mind there is something very dubious about teachers who are so obsessed about a lads clothing and his showering arrangements.

In reply to Yours Truly, I vaguely remember the medical exams at infants school. As far as I remember we did not undress completely. I took off my shirt but of course in those days we all wore vests. that may have been removed but we kept our shorts on. Mum was present.

Worse was to come at Secondary school. (All boys school) for the medical exam we lined up outside the room already stripped to the waist. The rumour went round that you the doctor would tell you to drop your trousers during the examination. Upon being told to enter the room there was a boy in front being examined and then i found out that the rumour was true as he was told to drop his trousers and pants and so a got a full view of his behind!! And so my turn came and the instruction came and I just had to blank out what the Doctor was doing when he told me to cough.
I said earlier that at infants school mums were present at the exam. In fact mums were invited to attend the secondary school exams though much to all our relief no ones mum ever did attend. for me it was a greater relief because my mum had died and that manet my nan who was looking after me got the invitation and said she would attend. But luckily I dissuaded her and I am glad I did. To think I would have had to stand there with as a 14 year old fully exposed would have been mortifying.
Why were we put through such experiences?

Hi Danny C,

I just wanted to reply to a detail in one of your previous posts.

You stated that even the sixth-form boys at your school had to take PE stripped to just shorts.

That is just appallingly callous and negligent. Imposing a belittling dress-code regime forcing boys in their mid-teens to get nearly naked is crossing a particular line. A young person past their sixteenth birthday is a young adult and their dignity is to be respected. Especially given that they have chosen to remain at their school when they might just as easily have enrolled at the local sixth-form college where their dignity would have been respected. And also especially as boys that age have as many body issues as girls albeit different ones. Making them appear in public looking like Tarzan Of The Apes - well, frankly, that was bordering on assault.

My school imposed the same PE rule (not the appalling shorts-only one) for all sixth-formers and they too had to do PE until they did their A levels. In fact they seemed to use to used the sixth-formers as a kind of unofficial auxiliary police force, even detailing them to supervise classes of younger kids when there wasn't a teacher available. My first ever games lesson, the first Monday of my second week, was taken by two sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boys, who were exactly as conscientious and considerate of their younger charges as you would expect from boys that age. Ie, not very.

I have mentioned before about the unfortunate changing-rooms/ dinner hall/ assembly hall geography in my school. One morning we boys were taking a maths class in the dining hall when the assembly hall doors swung open and a class of girls in the usual aertex/ gym pants/ bare feet combo, filed out, led by two attractive sixth-form girls dressed the same way. Those girls received a piercing wolf-whistle from some boy in our class. They showed no reaction, just stalked past impassively, treating it with the indifference it deserved. But even so, and even as an especially gormless fifteen-year-old boy, I thought it was wrong they had been exposed to that, especially given their status as young adults.

My eldest sister went into our school's sixth form, I didn't. That meant she fell under the school's sixth-form PE policy. My sister was naturally conformist and really quite straightlaced. There was no illicit smoking or getting silly on weed for her. She actually believed our school's purported 'caring christian community' propaganda. I suppose because being conformist had worked out very well for her from her first day at school at four.

And yet. I can remember my sister gloating about how she and her friends were bullshitting the tyrannical head of the girls' sixth form in order to get out of doing sixth-form PE. She consistently ducked those PE sessions for the whole two years. This is the single sole example I am aware of of my sister ever deliberately engaging in rule-breaking.

Which is telling, isn't it?

Julian, yes when I refer to "boy pants" in my mind I'm talking about the skimpy y-fronts that parents bought for us when young. Around the time of my 16th birthday I started buying my own underwear and switched to my first pair of boxer shorts and since then have never changed habit, always buying boxers/trunks. I wish I'd worn the things as a younger child too. Thinking back I don't think many if any boys wore such things, I think we were all y-pants or similar type wearers.


Some on here might be interested to browse this site that I accidentally discovered recently which appears to have a lot of comments quite similar to those here in content. This morning before getting down to proper work I decided to paste up my debut post on this History World thread from this week four years ago onto it and it was published in my own name instantly on the site with no need to register. You would be able to quite easily have real time to and fro discussions on this, unlike here. Worth a mention to those who may feel interested or inclined.

The photo of the boy to go with this discussion is actually a spitting image of how I looked at his age in terms of body shape and look, hair and face for school PE, except for one big difference, the size and length of those shorts! The two pairs I used in black or white colour were much shorter and firmer fitting, and nobody wore longer or baggier shorts then.

Take a read on this;

https://shirtlessbarefoot.blogspot.com/2018/05/how-to-start-shirtless-sports-and.html

In reference to Danny C's comment "wearing little other than basic boy pants of the time" and Yours Truly's reference to pants I suppose during that era they were just briefs. At least the Boxer style underwear of today would have been less exposing. Although I should not think that nowadays boys would boy be treated in the same way.

I've previously on this site described my own school in the 1980's as having what I call a "barechested culture" when it came to boys and PE, which seemed to spill across into our drama department too, but then the head of drama stood in on some PE lessons himself on a regular basis, mainly rugby.

I also found football tedious and simply a bore, you described it as soul destroying Yours Truly, true if you had noo interest or were simply no good against others who were. Any chance to avoid it I'd take. That was next to impossible in a secondary school of the 80's. But my school's desire to keep PE lads as skins as much as possible even extended outdoors to football games sometimes, these were the few times at my school I actually did the skins and shirts set up. Inside we were always skins, so it didn't apply, even in team games which often got divided on shorts colour only.

So my house colour was red. Therefore we had plain red long sleeved sweatshirts for outside for over autumn and winter only. I still have mine. But the PE lessons were only taken by classes of boys within the same school house, so we were all red tops. We were not allowed vests or anything else under the tops, only the one layer. You can see the issue if you want to play football and divide up teams. So my main teacher went the skins v shirts option, and I always felt like I was on the barechested side of it. Sometimes it was quite chilly, and he made us just jump up and down furiously to warm up and thrash our arms about before getting on with things. So as someone who already hated football and had been made to do it barechested it was a double whammy of joyless endurance, add in some less than great weather and you got the full hatrick of hate.

So we've done loads of these skins v shirts football games under this teacher, my head of PE at the time, and then another time we get another PE teacher come out with us wanting a game and all of a sudden he has a small cardboard box under his arm and out comes some green I think it was, flimsy bibs to stick over our heads on top of half the boys red shirts. No skins that lesson, and this guy took a few lessons over time when he did something similar, including rugby. Then we started having football games done with the head of PE again and it was back to half of us going skins to play again. Where were these bibs? Someone must have mentioned it and was told they were not essential. As head of PE he had the final say I guess. One thing I did notice about our Foxy (Mr Fox) was he'd sometimes join one of the teams of boys against the other and he never ever chose the skins team to play on.

Having read Danny C and Yours Truly's post's (I so agree with you YT and understand your feelings), I will say one thing for our school - we never had to endure "drama" lessons, because at least the school was pragmatic - we had to earn a living in a run-down area and apart from those childish"nativity plays" in the very early years (and I never took part in them either), we were spared "artistic" teachers or militant women concerned about the "patriarchy" in contemporary drama, because how would one expect to be employable if you had no practical skills except for reciting "Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more". It wouldn't have impressed our local employers, not even if we had given them Hamlet's soliloquy. "That this too, too solid flesh would melt" would have cut no ice with the manager of Woolworths or Currys, for what was left of local light industry.

Drama, like music, should be a voluntary pursuit. Not everyone was meant to be David Tennant (thank God!), or play the trumpet, and though I did, the latter, that was in my own time and I was well aware that trumpeters were ten a penny, as were actors. If anything, thanks to the lunatic budget Reeves forced on us a couple of weeks ago, people will struggle even harder to find work, and the theatre is well down the list of essentials.

Perhaps if schools cut out the crap, there would be no need to stay on till the boy was a man of 18. Let people develop as individuals. If they want to act, fine, but the local comp isn't RADA.

Only about 1% of Gen Z could survive the kind of physical education we lads were put through in the seventies and eighties in school. It was brutal at times. They'd be thinking they were in an army boot camp under some sergeant major if my gym was anything to go by. There was blood, sweat and tears and a lot of agony, scrapes and sprains. The equipment could be lethal. Went on a four mile run and were then expected to play football too for a further half hour and keep running the pitch, in a blizzard topped off with a naked parade to the unavoidable almost cold showers we shared as collective added torture while the teacher smirked at our predicament. So why am I kind of nostalgic for all this? We were a hardy PE battle scarred generation, the Boomers and Gen X.

Christian Cooper,

Weirdly enough, and rather unexpectedly for the same kid who hated shorts, dreaded school plays and found playing football soul-destroying, I got used to the communal showers pretty quickly, although I never felt them anything less than degrading. I suppose it was a question of having to. The sooner you got yourself in there the sooner it was over. Certainly there was no arguing with our stereotypically angry, hard-bastard games teacher. Male PE teachers seemed to be a specific breed, didn't they? At least during my growing-up years. It was as if they bred that way in kennels or something.

As regards the double standard with showers, that was quite simply sex discrimination and wrong. Girls got to preserve their dignity while we boys were herded like cattle. 'Tween' and adolescent boys lack the more sensitive and compassionate instincts that girls usually have and it takes us longer to discover our own basic humanity. If anything the practices ought to have been reversed, with the girls being treated more callously, given that they were much more likely to look out for each other and not let it degenerate into a Lord Of The Flies-type scenario.

On the other hand I find that worn-out trope that boys must be toughened up, which was the constant justification for so many
discriminatory practices against boys, to have a glaringly obvious flaw. My secondary school was basically a human zoo. Probably a third of the boys I went to school with did not need any more toughening up, they were quite toughened enough already. What they needed was civilising. But civilising was not on the curriculum. Perhaps schools are different today. But I shan't hold my breath.

I have remembered two other random details about PE kit at my secondary school.

As well as the aertex polo-tops and gym knickers the girls were also allowed to wear navy blue cardigans as part of their kit. I don't know why - since when has knitwear been a part of sportswear? It wasn't a thing I envied but it always made me scratch my head a bit. And most of the girls did wear them. They were happy enough to leave their trainers at home but anxious to remember their cardigans.

There was also an 'adult PE kit' for the women teachers - but not the men. This one is another headscratcher. Our male PE teachers just lived in their inevitable tracksuits, as you would expect (in the case of our tyrannical PE senior teacher I think he really did live in his, he only seemed to own the one). For the ladies though there was this somewhat minimalist standard issue PE attire of a vest top and a very short pleated skirt. (They could also wear tracksuits if they chose.) We had a constant stream of young student teachers through our secondary school and seeing the more attractive ones out on the playing fields bouncing around in youthful enthusiasm in this gear was an uplifting experience and an unexpected fringe benefit for us developing young men. Especially when it was the new school year and someone had obviously been on holiday and was nicely tanned.

It was character-building (har har) and the first intimation to me that there was actually more to life than daleks.

Yours Truly - I've enjoyed reading your comments, they are so accurate and I'm sure many will agree.

On school plays, I've mentioned the ones I did at secondary school. But one part I could have had a leading role in and declined was at my primary in my final year, where each Christmas we did a whole week of evening shows for parents about a fornight before Christmas if you were in the two top years. My final primary year I did Joseph & The Technicolour Dreamcoat. I had a nice enough child singing voice and was in contention for the main part of Joseph, requiring a solo song. This in itself didn't bother me too much, it would be great to get the lead role and my parents would be thrilled. But I declined the chance to do so, simply because I was told the part would mean I would have to stand up and be barechested for a period in the role. I was not going to do that voluntarily under any circumstances. Singing was nerve wracking enough but I could have just about done that for the pride of the main part. I told my music teacher I would prefer another part but did not give her the reason. I can only wonder what she would have said if I'd told her I would love the lead role but couldn't face an audience without my top on before I got the posh coloured dreamcoat on my shoulders. So the role went to another boy who did the honours instead on consecutive nights and I took a lesser role. I know my music teacher was surprised I declined. Then I was later off to the secondary where I was forced into these things anyway. These Christmas shows at primary were all done barefoot, and even the whole school choir beside the piano had to be too, which always seemed a little weird to me. A year earlier I'd done a week of David & Goliath, and although almost all were barefoot in that I managed to get away with new plimsolls on my feet in my role in that. No such luck with Joseph.

I remember a feeling of embarrassment even age 5 when I first had to do barefoot PE in infants. No idea why or where that came from. I had no shirtless anxiety at the same age, that came later. I remember a teacher making me be the only one in tne school hall remove my footwear and socks when I was around 6, and feeling dreadful. I'd forgotten to bring the right shoes for something we were doing so lost what I had on completely. I felt punished like that.

At my infants school I do remember the whole class of both boys and girls taking the PE in the school hall in just pants and knickers, even the girls like the boys. Not often, but just now and again from age 5 to 6, maybe 7 tops. Even at that incredibly tender young age I looked on at the others and thought it wasn't right that the girls were in their knickers like that and had no top on like the boys. These lessons were taken by a lady, there were no men at all in my infants school anyway.

I have one memory of my mother taking me to a riverside park with another mum and child when I was about 4, pre-school and her being fine with removing all my clothes off of me with others around after I'd been in the shallow river water. An age so young that self consciousness hasn't kicked in yet much. I also at 5 have another memory of being around a friends house with him at his pool and then me and him being taken to the bathroom with both our mums and being bathed naked together. I recall it well. Us boys were not deemed to have any need for personal privacy even from our own mothers.

Hi Christian Cooper,

Admittedly I was an unusually inhibited child. School plays and football were particularly torturous to me.

Out of interest, what were the girls' sports kits like at the schools you attended? Hopefully not as blatantly discriminatory as the regimes Simon and Danny C had to endure?