Burnley Grammar School

Terry on 2nd March
Terry, you’re saying all the correct things in your third paragraph, and working with film and photography archives is a large part of my work. All recorded material becomes increasingly important as time moves on, and I can assure you nothing is ‘washed away’ as I expect a copy of this school film will exist in the tv archives. But I certainly wouldn’t have been anywhere near the camera if filming had taken place in my school changing room!

I wouldn’t have minded in the least about the nudity in this film if it had included a similar section in the girls area, as that would have created balance by illustrating that girls too would be expected to shower in their next school. I’d have thought all watching children -when the giggling of surprise from girls, and embarrassment from boys, had subsided- might well have been left with the impression that girls wouldn’t have to shower, only boys. But I do agree that the way it was shot was unnecessarily gratuitous, especially when intended to be shown to a mixed class of children, with only boys filmed. I feel uncomfortable with that, and I have good reason to hold such views. It would have been so easy to have included both genders within the same amount of footage, and without shooting it that way at all.

Several awkward moments from my own childhood contributed to making me feel uncomfortable about the short nude bit in that film, when usual double standards permitted some really awful times for me while being looked after by some women in charge. Mainly these moments occurred during three months spent on a children’s ward when only 11, back in the late 60s with a fractured femur. There seemed to be no regard for boys privacy at times in that place, and I was often put in a situation where I was fully exposed to same aged girls in adjacent beds, due to being in traction and so unable to wear pyjama trousers. This really upset me at that time, as I was naturally always a bit bodily shy anyway. In comparison, whenever girls were dealt with, double layers of portable screens would appear, and all carefully placed around their beds. Some of the female nurses were really unkind and didn’t appear to care that boys might appreciate a little privacy, whereas others were really lovely and respectful, but as Alan says, it only needs a few bad apples. A few weeks earlier, when I was alone in a side room, I had a somewhat strange experience while being given a bed bath by two young, giggling, student nurses. I don’t want to go into details about this but I’m sure they would have got into trouble as they certainly abused the trust put upon them. Boys don’t say anything, as it would only compound embarrassment. Obviously an 11 year old girl would just never experience anything like this would she, as she’d never be allowed to be left alone in a room with nothing on while two 15/16 year old boys washed her down, especially while under the jurisdiction of the predominantly female staff of a children’s ward. There were other moments, including a far too touchy feely final junior school female teacher, who one day as I stood reading by her desk, suddenly pulled me across her knees to playfully slap my backside, to the hilarity of the class. I can’t think what she’d got from my reading that made her do that, but do remember feeling awkward as I returned to my seat. I believe all things like this are experiences only a young boy will have to put up with. As I was a good looking little kid, so in an innocent and childish way, I began to think certain things that happened like these were my fault.

So, due to experiencing such awkward moments, and there were others, as I grew up, it became the old double standards that I learnt to hate from such a young age. Consequently, just as Christine Sanderson predictably said, that she’d feel less comfortable had same aged girls been shown in that way rather than boys; due to my own experiences, I felt that with only boys being shown naked in this film, this just perpetuated and illustrated the expected disregard for boys privacy, even though the culture those boys found themselves in was probably a factor that encouraged them to comply. This is the very same reason I was treated the way I was just a few years earlier, and how this scene was directed, just pushed on this accepted disregard for young lads. This is what I didn’t like. I hope some can understand.

Nick, Tony and Matthew.

Agree, very poorly written. From what I can work out it could also be read that the head teacher, or any other teacher, could refuse to let boys go swimming in bare chests, and let's be honest, even the really sensitive and anxious would see that as mad wouldn't they? Turning a boys swim lesson into a big wet t-shirt contest.

There again from the opposite end, it suggests to me any girls brave enough to hang out with the boys topless would be able to. Equally mad!

Why do schools have to create such stupid rules. If a girl thinks she's a boy she should still have to wear the girls outfit and if a boy thinks he's a girl he should still be treated as a boy is. They are at school and under eighteen.

Comment by: Nick H on 5th March 2025 at 05:47

Oh dearie me. It sounds like your old school has been captured by a very silly woke as hell head teacher or his/her acolytes.

'Male identified students'....three words and seven syllables to say - BOYS!

You don't 'indentify' as a male, or a boy, or a man, 'you are' one. It's not a choice. I know that people recently have been talking about some radicals trying to cancel women but this looks like a school trying to cancel boys and men too.

Matthew I don't know whether you agree with me, or if anyone else does, but the way I read what's been put here by Nick is that his old school seems to be suggesting that yes boys can be shirtless in swimming/PE or whatever but that if a female pupil, a girl, actually wanted and asked to be topless in any activity that boys were shirtless in, that they would oblige this request. Unlikely I'm sure, but that seems to be the upshot of this to me.

This type of current ideological radicalism with school bosses is far more concerning and troubling than some of the most recent concerns that have been written on other matters.

Nick H, after re-reading the passage, I now think it means that biologically male pupils, or transgender pupils identifying as boys, may swim bare-chested or do PE bare-chested, unless the head says otherwise.

It is very badly worded, whatever the meaning. Sorry if my attempts to decipher it are clumsy.

Hi Mark, I took a look at that article in the Mail. It is pretty typical for articles on the subject in the media in recent years. All these articles seem to have a similar slant: saying how bizarre it was to “make“ or "force" boys swim naked as the day they were all born right up to their mid teens and sometimes beyond. As the writers are invariably younger, they really have not a clue as to what was going on.

I wonder what makes the Daily Mail suddenly write up an article on that subject matter at this point in time, as it was mainly an American requirement.

The idea at that time, now seeming quaint to the Johnny-come-latelies, was that we boys and soon enough men were all made the same. Therefore in a setting in which young males, boys at school, or male teachers, are respecting each other, there is no problem and should be no problem for anyone in such classes even if they are all bare arsed and having penises all on show. Sure, if some young person showed up without any experience of it he might have been surprised. But the activity of showering and swimming together without clothes, was nothing remarkable or unusual at the time. Never mind the ignorance of effete smarties in the 21st century.

Nick H, I suspect that sentence is designed to cater for transgender pupils. Perhaps it means that biologically male pupils (boys, basically), whether transgender or not, may swim bare-chested or do PE bare-chested, unless the head says otherwise.

That's just my interpretation; perhaps I'm mistaken.

This was in the Daily Mail paper just last week. An item about how boys at school in America in the 60's and 70's were often forced to have swimming lessons with each other at school in the pool entirely naked without any costume at all. Some remain very unhappy to this day.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14414043/Minnesota-men-public-schools-naked-swimming.html

This clothing wording in respect of school sport/PE currently sits among the lengthy school rules on my former secondary school website, exact quote sentence;

'Policy allows the school head teacher to impose discretionary restrictions, such as restricting male identified students to go bare chested but only as part of their standard swim wear for that limited activity, and permits discretionary exceptions such as allowing males to play sports PE bare chested but only if offered fairly to any female identified students who would make the same request.'

WTAF is this saying?

The producer of that education TV series on health issues, Philip Grosset, reminds me very much of film producer Peter Greenaway, if anyone knows what I mean by that.

I was at school a lot more recently than most on here seem to be, my primary school was 2001 - 2004, and even then the boys in my own primary school would get undressed for PE lessons in the main building assembly area and were not allowed to stick a top on to do PE which we all did bare chested. We also shared most of these times with the girls in our class too like you do at primary school with your own class. The PE was all taken by female teachers, some quite young. I knew some friends that were starting to get uncomfortable with it as they got older. When we got to secondary school we did a lot less PE like that, it just happened a few times a term on the team games. We had to shower for the first two years at secondary school and then they seemed to stop telling us to do it, so nobody really carried on with it.

Comment by: Tom on 3rd March 2025 at 17:09


I will point out to you - though I suspect you know it perfectly well already, - I was referring to that old film being available on You Tube available for anyone, regardless of occupation, to watch unedited. I made no reference to teachers in the post you referred to, merely those people who want to watch it more than half a century later., and seem to regard it as some masterpiece of ATV..

What I do find surprising are the number of people who rush on here to defend the programme. It reminds you of the experts who rushed to court to defend the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover, claiming it to be a work of "great literary merit", when it was nothing of the sort, unless repeated use of the "F" word constitutes literary merit.

A tale of two very different games teachers I had at secondary school in the late 80's.

One would sit on the bench that faced away from the showers and not watch us at all after he'd turned the tap to get the water going which was near the bench he sat on. He nearly always kept his back to us until we all finished and were dressing again. He was full aware of his surroundings though, we all knew that.

Another would actually stand on another bench beside our school showers and keep watch directly over the tiled shower wall divide thingy and look down on all of us from above showering with a very good view. Sometimes he was quiet and other times he was mouthing away about this and that but you couldn't hear properly for the sound of running water.

The one who turned his back on us was the far stricter PE teacher who liked things done properly in his lessons and tended to go with surname only usage and was keen on having a disciplined attitude to everything.

The one who watched over us closely was the softer easy going one, the more affable bloke who was on first name usage with us and treated us all like his best pals act.

We always used to get a better lesson out of the first teacher rather than the second and preferred him, and we respected him far more too.

Last line from the Alan early morning comment today..."If you want an idea of British life fifty years ago, there are far more innocuous programmes broadcast on a regular basis on numerous TV channels, much more edifying than that sordid peep show."

There you have it. "Sordid peep show". This says more about how you view the world Alan. The others are right who have confronted you on this. You are taking something that to most of us is a thoroughly mundane and unremarkable piece of film and almost attempting to turn it into pornography, sexualising a normal childhood school activity. By your definition that presumably makes every single PE teacher, not just the men but the women as well, a viewer and observer to a "sordid peep show" three or four times per school day all week long when they ended their PE lessons with us and told us to get freshened up.

Your language is quite extreme and almost frightening but seems like a product of your well documented upbringing and recently admitted homosexuality.

There have been a lot of schooldays worriers and admitted shy kids and all that on here who still manage to talk a lot more measured common sense and sound reasonable about it all, people like Matthew, Danny and Greg the most recent ones I've read.

Comment by: Don on 3rd March 2025 at 03:33



"The state of this nonsense above from this chap. You are always annoyed by something, people like you are never happier than when they are annoyed by something or other.

But let me tell you what I find really repulsive about some of the things you say like this above. It's the way I've seen you nonchalantly smear other people and throw doubt on others motivations so easily and without shame. It never ends does it. In this latest example you are now smearing someone for having recorded something and kept it for many years, going so far as to describe it as 'preserved'...."

First a dictionary definition from the Oxford Dictionary:

Preserved: "maintained in its original or existing state::"

A fair enough word to use for a programme that is AT LEAST 55 years old and possibly older. I am sorry you don't agree, but argue that one with the lexicographers at Oxford, not me.

I don't think the rest of your bluster is worth responding to, - for somebody who complains about others "getting annoyed" you sound pretty annoyed yourself!. I continue to make the point that the locker room/shower scene ought to be edited out, and that is the main argument against that programme here. People showering looks the same throughout the ages so there is no educational, historical or artistic merit in retaining that segment, especially with the hideous "humorous" bassoon music dubbed on. It is, I maintain, voyeuristic, and I make no apologies for saying that.

Hi Faye,

'Am I the first 'girl' to come on here and lay claim to topless gym lessosn at school then?'

Would you believe that you're actually not?

There was another woman poster, quite a while back now, either on here or another of the school PE related threads. She stated how on her very first PE lesson in her first year at a mixed grammar her woman PE teacher made the girls all take their tops off. She said that she was very stern and assertive about this and made it plain that for their first year no tops were to be worn in PE. They didn't wear a PE kit at all. They did it in nothing but their knickers. From their second year on they were allowed leotards. And this was in a secondary school. She even said how her mum was fine about it, just flippantly remarking, 'great, less laundry for me then'.

Boys and girls should be treated the same. It's amazing in this feminist era how many women automatically, unconsciously assume girls should have certain privileges.

I'm the same age and generation as you. In my infant school we had to do it in just our underwear as well. But at least they let us keep our vests on. In junior school we were allowed to bring any t-shirts and shorts, (which is what I have been advocating on here,) with footwear optional inside and compulsory outside. In secondary school there were various different items of PE wear but tops were always worn. I was luckier than a lot of other male posters on here who were forced to topless PE, sometimes with girls present.

I can only remember one boy, from a poor family, doing PE in infants in nothing but his pants, and I can remember looking at him and inwardly shuddering ang thinking how thankful I was not to have to do that.

I think that back in that era there was a very casual attitude towards the dignity of children, like they hadn't developed any sense of it yet. This wasn't always true, like in my case.

It is interesting that you describe the girls at your junior school as wearing a 'proper' PE kit, as opposed to the boys, who continued to be stripped. It says a lot.

There is another double standard unrelated to gender. You say you did not start school until age five. Where I grew up everybody started at age four. My first year of school was traumatic and deeply unhappy. It felt like being sent to prison. I wonder how differently it might have been if I had not had to start till the following year.

Comment by: Frank on 2nd March 2025 at 21:38
(also Terry same date)

..."This is symptomatic of a problem we have nowadays. I must say I really find this projected empathising a bit hard to take from you Alan and the subsequent desire to ban things on that basis. It's this kind of nonsense that leads to a situation where something that was designed for and shown to quite young children at the time for their own educational needs is now age restricted to the over 18's. The absurdity of this cannot surely be missed by anyone......."

Life is full of absurdity, as we all know. One of the things I enjoy is to listen to and watch old British comedy radio and TV shows and Carry On films. These days apart from verbal warnings "that this show was made 50 years ago and it does reflect language and attitudes of its time". You need not worry about that, because the BBC will have excised any hurty words prior to transmission, and it is not unusual for a programme which had a running time of 28 minutes reduced to about 25 minutes. Similarly on TV at the moment they are repeating Steptoe & Son and again words are bleeped out and sometimes entire lines and exchanges edited out. Last week for example they showed an episode where they go the cinema - Harold wants to see Fellini's 8 And A Half and the old man wants to see a nudist film. They even managed to distort the poster advertising the latter so a woman's breasts are pixilated, so that the picture is distorted and the next line is cut. ITV repeat Carry On films and whole scenes are cut. I can guarantee that not one of those scenes involves nude children. I have some of the Steptoe's on video and even sound recordings issued by Pye of complete shows taken from the original soundtracks, so I know just how innocuous some of the excised lines are.

If the work of two of our greatest comedy writers (Alan Simpson and Ray Galton) can be butchered, (Dr Bowdler did the same thing with Shakespearian texts) to make it more "acceptable" to modern audiences, then I see no problem in making that dubious schools programme be put on the banned list. I repeat - why do people wish to see it?. If you want an idea of British life fifty years ago, there are far more innocuous programmes broadcast on a regular basis on numerous TV channels, much more edifying than that sordid peep show.

Comment by: Alan on 2nd March 2025 at 16:31
Unless one of those men who took part in that film comes forward to explain the procedures we will never know. I think it is the pretend innocence of TV executives and school heads that annoys me most. I seem to remember that Schools broadcasting would run all term and each programme would either do stand-alones or a short season on one topic, then move on to something totally different. Odd that of the dozens of programmes that went out, this episode was preserved on a VHS tape in somebody's home. I understand the school where it was recorded no longer exists. Perhaps that is just as well.


^^this above^^

The state of this nonsense above from this chap. You are always annoyed by something, people like you are never happier than when they are annoyed by something or other.

But let me tell you what I find really repulsive about some of the things you say like this above. It's the way I've seen you nonchalantly smear other people and throw doubt on others motivations so easily and without shame. It never ends does it. In this latest example you are now smearing someone for having recorded something and kept it for many years, going so far as to describe it as 'preserved'. We all know full well what you are really driving at Alan and it's a nasty insinuated smear and like other accusations you make, you have no justification for saying these things in the way you do. It's also not true, there are many other editions from the same source as well on the Vintage Schools TV channel, not just the one under scrutiny here at the moment.

The problem isn't the television programme and its details, it's you and anyone else who can't accept the past for what it was and can't see such total innocence without thinking malevolent thoughts about the situation.

I think Tony you made the more reasonable and thoughtful post for those here who hold such views, and did so in a well written and non judgemental manner and although I would not have written what you said I did at least agree with your final line - 'I think this show raises so many interesting questions around the whole issue of privacy, exploitation, double standards, procedure and consent before you even get to think of the actual content.'

Fair enough Tony, I'll buy into that point of view. I will not buy into yours Alan because you always overdo it.

Like you Greg I've been braodly empathetic to much of Alan's backstory content and how it leads to his views now but Alan I must take issue with you describing that programme as repulsive, that's way too strong and I disagree with banning things too.

Greg, you said - 'I’m certainly not condoning the programme as I too have said previously that I wish it would be taken down. I think it displays the cruel double standards that only boys would be subjected to, with a complete disregard for how they might feel.'

For me this comment of yours makes the case quite strongly for keeping things like that available and in the public domain as a modern historical archive. To see quite clearly how times change even in a very short passage of time. I don't want to see things washed away out of existence as if they never happened in the past, no matter how uncomfortable they may look. I would not object if that was me there if I had originally agreed to be part of it, whilst still being able to admit and agree to all the double standards etc and arguments that have been made that boys like me and you put up with when young. The more we can see from the past the more we can learn from it, and that is the case here, the programme has unwittingly served a wider later purpose you might say.

There's also a lot of sense in what Frank has said here too.

This is symptomatic of a problem we have nowadays. I must say I really find this projected empathising a bit hard to take from you Alan and the subsequent desire to ban things on that basis. It's this kind of nonsense that leads to a situation where something that was designed for and shown to quite young children at the time for their own educational needs is now age restricted to the over 18's. The absurdity of this cannot surely be missed by anyone.

My own children were primary school age in the 1970s and I still remember all the consent forms I used to get given to sign even on things like school trips, swimming and medical emergency issues to name three things there. I'd wager a decent sum of money that proper consent was followed by all involved, and I'd also wager another sizable sum that those involved would worry a lot less about it if they saw it again than you are Alan. They probably all know it's out there.

Have you seen the rest of the Good Health archive, there's a lot more where that came from.

Comment by: Greg2 on 2nd March 2025 at 13:39


We are not disagreeing Greg,, and I am not trying to start an argument - I was merely making the point that a lot of things that are said as - let's call it "state speak" - cover a multitude of sins. It is akin to the Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police when claims to be "shocked" when one of his officers gets caught doing something he shouldn't have been. Once, yes and he might well be shocked, but it is like a biting dog - when one gets caught it seems to be the law of nature one hears about more and more cases . There have been so many cases in the past couple of years he should stop being shocked and do something about it. We hope that nothing untoward can happen, but it often does, and what I find especially reprehensible is that in these days of CCTV (we are the most closely watched society in Western Europe, with more cameras per head of the population, yet they still can't catch fly-tippers!), and all sorts of checks, so many people find a way of circumventing the system. Is it carelessness, or too great a reliance on the systems in place, or that the systems are not as foolproof as they are made out to be.

Unless one of those men who took part in that film comes forward to explain the procedures we will never know. I think it is the pretend innocence of TV executives and school heads that annoys me most - are they seriously trying to pretend they were unaware that there were paedophiles prior to that film being made, and you can only wonder at the motives of the person who saved that isolated example of that series. I seem to remember that Schools broadcasting would run all term and each programme would either do stand-alones or a short season on one topic, then move on to something totally different. Odd that of the dozens of programmes that went out, this episode was preserved on a VHS tape in somebody's home. I understand the school where it was recorded no longer exists. Perhaps that is just as well.

Comment by: Alan on 2nd March
Alan, for goodness sake, I've kept out of your previous posts that seemed to rile so many, as I've often had some empathy for what seemed such awful schooling, and such a dodgy gym teacher who so obviously disturbed you. But here you seem to be getting worked up due to your own chosen interpretation of an English language word that already has its own meaning. In this case it’s nothing more than to make sure that a procedure was in place to help protect people, especially minors, who might appear in a television programme. It’s ensuring respect, and care. Are you disagreeing with those things? Yes I know the interpretation of those words resulted in a programme which those very same words would’t allow today, but it was a long time ago, and they were very different times. I’m certainly not condoning the programme as I too have said previously that I wish it would be taken down. I think it displays the cruel double standards that only boys would be subjected to, with a complete disregard for how they might feel.

I also despair at the way so many have posted on here giving the impression they can’t wait to see it. I also found difficult Christine Sanderson’s comment that, ’It does intrinsically feel and look more acceptable to see boys in such a situation than girls and I would have felt less comfortable with girls shown in the same precise manner from that school at that age' which I saw as such a predictable comment from a female only able to give an interpretation from her own adult point of view, instead of trying, at least, to imagine how it might have been from the boy's, or at least the child's, point of view. I see this in itself as a failing for someone whose work is to inspect schools.

I’ll give up now trying help people understand that it’s unlikely those showering boys would have been forced to do as seen. I can’t prove it, and I could be wrong as it was a long time ago. I just think it would be unlikely. I’ve learnt long ago that in the end people continue to believe whatever they want to believe for their own reasons, including it seems their own meaning they give to words.

I mean no disrespect to anybody, but somebody mentioned the word "protocols" in relation to that repulsive 1970s/80s school TV film, that along with two other meaningless expressions always annoy me:

"Best practice" often used by captains of industry and floundering politicians - it's otiose - who would advocate "worst practice" and "affordable" - another trite buzzword. What is "affordable"?. What is affordable to me might not be to you, or vice versa.

"Protocols" sounds very reassuring doesn't it;. I am sure there were "protocols" in the education industry, but they didn't seem to stop the minority of teachers who used the cane to excess for trivial reasons back in our day, or paedo P.E. teachers - protocols didn't clean out the rotten apples in the barrel, even when other teaching staff had suspicions but turned a blind eye.

As regards that film , it ought to be withdrawn from You Tube - those men will be in their late 50s now at the youngest, and I am sure if some of them knew it was available they would be aghast and embarrassed. You do have to wonder why somebody thought it necessary to preserve an old VTR of an episode of a schools broadcast and make it available for everyone to see.

I totally agree with Yours Truly that those boys would have, at the very least, been coerced to appear in it, whether they really wanted to or not - perhaps a fee, or a day out or a days holiday, or perhaps just told they "had to" do it,.


If it was all so innocent, why not show the girls in a similar scene?. It would be interesting to know what the writer and producer/director got up to in their spare time!. We will never know - after at least 45 years (some people have dated it earlier) they are probably in the great Pinewood in the sky now. If the P.E. teacher is still alive, I wonder what he thinks of himself now.

So PE played to all my weaknesses in school, and one was my aversion to team sport and another my absolute aversion to showing my body off because I was very skinny. I didn't wear shorts much as an older kid because I thought my legs looked weedy. No shirt on was a definite no go, so I tried to avoid both being a skin in PE and a shower user but was very rapidly slapped down into my place and told I must muck in like the others and that was the final say in the matter, and I had to do both these things like others and if I made further excuses I'd be in detentions. I was among a group of boys in my class given the same ultimatum. At first I remember being absolutely devastated by this and it consumed me, even thinking about taking the detentions. When I said this to my PE teacher he told me not to try that and informed my head of year who gave me a warning on a possible two week suspension if me or anyone else didn't buckle down and act our age. I remember the act my age comment. I still recall the deep anxiety I used to get on school nights when I knew I faced PE the next morning and the dread of it. By the age of 15 I was so sick of it that I just wanted to get up in the morning and go and do a proper job of something and get some money instead of the of school PE lessons.

This is a great discussion.

I'm Faye and I'm 53 years old and yet school seems like yesterday and a lifetime away in the same thought.

I've interests in sport and history so that's what has brought me here. I've yet to see it but intend to when I get a chance but from the sound of it I think I might also have seen the programme on health education that is being mentioned here. We did watch a series or something with that title at school.

Am I the first 'girl' to come on here and lay claim to topless gym lessosn at school then? I had to do that in my first school almost from the word go at five for at least a year, possibly two. The girls and the boys at my first school were all the same, doing PE in our underwear in many cases and treated all the same as each other with no difference. I can't even remember taking much of a PE kit to my first school, we certainly went outside properly dressed for PE though. I may have mentioned to my mother something along the lines of doing PE like the boys, that's quite possible knowing me, but I don't really know what I thought of it at that age. It looks like it was common practice.

Moving along to our primary school the same pupils all followed on and the school was adjacent to our first school, I remember the boys there never wearing any tops in PE when we did gym like at the first school but girls always had a proper PE kit to wear of some sort.

Hello again. I was doing my part time flower delivery job in and around Dunstable on Friday morning and passing down some familiar roads like I always do and once again saw a large group of schoolboys running with an adult from the Queensbury School in Dunstable along the Langdale Road if anyone knows the area and off to a quieter area. There must have been 25 boys in that running group and 80% were running in their bare chest only, I spotted maybe four or five others with some kind of T-shirt or vest on, they looked anything from 15 to 18 to me but were definitely coming from that school. That's the third time I have seen this now in the last year and a half and seeing such a group is an attention grabber. It was a sunny morning but it was still only February.

One thing that also caught my attention was that two of the boys wearing the T-Shirts were black/asian looking while all the boys running with a bare chest were clearly white. It goes without saying in this day and age they must all have been choosing to go off running in that way. It does look impressive as a spectacle outside to actually see like that, whatever one thinks of the merits of it.

To the latest PE teacher Yorskhiredad, is this something you could imagine doing with your lot?

Here's what I think happened with those PE boys in the television programme.

They were just doing a perfectly normal regular PE lesson outside, it looked like they were coming in from a game of football to me. The cameraman and any crew told the school/relevant teachers they would set up in the changing room and film when they ended the lesson and the PE teacher probably gave the film crew an exact time he would end the lesson and go back in, so they would know to be ready for the shots they wanted. The boys will have been told this, but not actually asked if they were okay about it. I don't believe they had much choice whether to take part, they probably just had to when it was mentioned, irrespective of any nudity involved. The film director will probably have told them to act like they were not there and invisible and not to look into the cameras at all. They all simply come in as normal and try their best to ignore the cameras. Despite this I noticed one boy did glance into camera while showering. Like others think, I don't suppose any of them had much say in the matter other than being told what was happening and what to do and went along with it because adults all around them were saying so. Children will end up putting up with all kinds of stuff adults throw at them, or at least they used to.

What nobody has picked up on here is that there was a named boy called Warren who was the focus outside briefly beforehand and then on his bench removing his stuff, walking last in and then being the focus on him rinsing away. He had no hiding place did he, and looked like a mild mannered quiet boy to me there deep in his own thought. Did he volunteer for the extra role within the whole thing or was he just picked out as a done deal and told what to do. There was no extrovert body language going on.

Someone mentioned school vetoing it if they didn't like it. I doubt they would have even had that power to do so. On final edit if they saw that film and thought, uh-oh that's too much there, with the full on exposure shots they didn't expect then I doubt any objections would have made much difference as they had already agreed the situation and signed it off somewhere and film makers don't allow the subjects of their documentaries to also become the editors of them as a rule do they. I don't think many of the parents would have been able to veto it either in those days, and as others have said, it was shown for many years to lots of schoolchildren and these boys were probably 20 and it was still going to air in the weekday daytimes to schools everywhere, god only knows how many times.

You can't help but wonder what was going through the boys minds there and what would be going through your own mind in their place when showers at school are already a quite tricky situation for many as it is without knowing someone wants to make some TV with you doing them at that age. Enough professional adult actors have big issues with all this kind of thing when asked to film nude scenes, and often they have closed sets where only the very few who are essential are in the vicinity of that part of the production, which is always strange when the end product is going out for mass public viewing anyway. I'm curious about what the boys in this show's reaction would have been when they must have first seen it themselves. I'd have liked to have been a fly on the wall when that was done, not to be a voyeur, but to just see how they were treated and how it all worked out in filming terms and the manner it was done with them. It would not surprise me to discover the boys received some treats for appearing, not just a credited thankyou at the end of that.

I think this show raises so many interesting questions around the whole issue of privacy, exploitation, double standards, procedure and consent before you even get to think of the actual content.

Could I please try to clear this point up once and for all. It really is highly unlikely that children shown in the pe/shower film would have been made to feature in it by either their gym teacher or the school. It would have been the television company, in agreement with the school, and with parents having been informed, that provided the children who complied. All those filmed with speaking parts; those featuring prominently in foreground or middle distance shots, which already includes boys featured in the foreground of the shower scene, would all have had to have parental approval with release forms signed at that age by parents of guardians, otherwise they would not have been used. Any children who wanted to be in background shots only would have been respected.

There have been for many years, rules and protocols in place, which go into great detail, and intended to protect not only those featured in footage, but also the tv company themselves, to protect from any possible litigation that might arise in the future. I work in documentary film and I just know this. I would have been the age of those boys only a few years before, but I’d be very surprised if things back then would have been much different to what they were in the 90s-2000s. Obviously anyone appearing naked under the age of 18 these days would not happen, but I’d be very surprised if similar protocols would not have been in place for the very same reasons I state above.

What might not be known is that those featuring prominently, including those with speaking parts, would likely have been offered a small fee. Unfortunately this might have been a sufficient incentive for boys to agree to do something that they might later have regretted. I’m thinking the boys in the shower scene who subsequently might have received teasing and ridicule, not only from their girl classmates also filmed, but any others around the school, which I think highly likely following a probable school screening before the releasing of the episode to terrestrial school television. I wonder whether Christine Sanderson, or anyone else even thought or cared about this?

I've just seen the Fit & Healthy video under discussion here and the shower and changing room strongly resembles what I remember from my own school changing room (1994-98) and the naked filing in and out like that we always did from about the age of twelve. It really did make me hark back to things seeing that. I don't have a problem with it existing in that form but in my opinion they were told to do that and didn't get choices. That was clearly a real class of real children there, not child actors like someone laughably suggested. What you've got to remember is that you were told to do things at school, not asked. None of us were asked if we'd like to take showers after our PE lessons in those days were we, we were told to do so whether we wanted to or not, compulsion all the way, one of the few things I remember being strictly compulsory to do, and forced to cram naked with each other whether we were the shyest kid in class or the most outgoing carefree showy kind. Nobody's feelings were taken into any consideration in the least by anyone who made us do those things. In my case the water was only ever lukewarm at best and we only used the water, no soap or anything, just told to stand under the water jet, get wet through and rub the water over ourselves using our hands, what kind of proper hygiene is that anyway. I used to find I was simply washing off the deoderant body spray I'd already put on before school, and we were not allowed to spray those in our changing room either so I couldn't use it in school.

I'm convinced those boys were made to do those scenes even if reluctant, I was trying to see if they were the same ones who were doing the gym scenes (all shirtless and mixed PE like we did in primary school) including the two sat on the bench taking pulse rates with the PE teacher.

I was only born in late 1981 but many of my memories match identical to those of you who were at school in the 70s and 80s on here.

Hi Christine Sanderson,

Thank you for engaging with me. I hope I have not come across as too hectoring in previous posts. I do have a tendency to go on a bit.

I completely agree with you that we all carry embedded unconscious assumptions regarding gender roles, whether through nature or nurture. That is precisely why we all need to be made aware of them as much as possible.

The shower scene didn't trouble me - I have no doubt it would have found its way to the front page of the Daily Mail long before now if it came out that Jimmy Savile had been off-camera holding the towels. If I feel irritated or offended by it it is because if by chance I had attended that school at that time - those kids will have been almost exactly my own age - I might have found myself in that scene despite my own unwillingness - I still cannot accept that those boys freely chose to be in that scene.

'Double standards are a fact of life and were quite dramatic when I was at school. I had a friend who wanted to do woodwork but she wasn't allowed to do so because she was a girl and they only allowed boys to do so..'

You are quite right. Double standards have always been around and were more blatant in the past than now. I remember reading somewhere that the former Labour MP Margaret Beckett upset her teachers when in the sixth form she insisted on applying for a science degree rather than any of the arts or languages that were considered 'seemly' for girls.

Of course your friend ought to have been allowed to pursue what she wanted - as a matter of fact I can remember one girl who joined our metalwork class in third year because she was considering taking it as an O level option. (Normally girls did not do woodwork or metalwork at my school, although, weirdly, we boys did join the girls for cookery classes. Looking back, my secondary school seems to have been somewhat progressive, although I still remember it as a human zoo.) But at least your friend was not forced to do Home Economics in her pants.

'I think one of the most important lessons that should be given to children is that life isn't always fair, you can't always get what you want and there are winners and losers, but if anything we were more likely to have told that to the previous generations than the current school age generation and that concerns me.'

What a pity that Gandhi, Luther King, Pankhurst and Mandela plainly were not taught that at school!

It always seems to me that this argument is advanced by people who are either unaffected and therefore unconcerned by the inequality in question and/ or are aware that they themselves are actively benefiting from it.

I half agree with you. It is invaluable for children to learn that life can be unfair - and they then need to learn that by taking up the courage to challenge the things they find unfair they can, sometimes, by no means always, get these things changed or abolished.

But if this is such an essential lesson it is equally applicable to both sexes. So why, why is it that in any issue involving the infringement of personal dignity and feelings it always seems to be the boys on the receiving end?

James, you poor soul, you have my sympathy. It's appalling that a teacher should respond with anger to an eight year old's tears, when they had done nothing wrong.

I'm about your age, my eighth birthday being in autumn 1992, and was also instinctively self-conscious about doing PE bare-chested, particularly at infant school. I kept my feelings completely hidden in my first year of infant school, as I mentioned before, but then things became considerably worse - though I cried about it only once. It was the Friday before breaking up for Christmas 1991. Aged seven, I was quietly thinking I wouldn't do any PE for more than a fortnight, with seasonal excitements imminent. And then, an extra PE lesson was sprung on the class that afternoon as a "treat". For various reasons (the anger of adults, my and others' distress), it was particularly unpleasant.

James, please excuse my asking, but what had you been used to wearing for PE indoors at your school before primary?

(Greg2, you asked me in another message what Lord Burghley would have used to weigh himself. I don't know; his biography by Stephen Alford doesn't say, but I ventured to have an e-mail sent to Professor Alford asking that, so I'll pass on his response).