Burnley Grammar School

I've got four grown up sons who all went to secondary school in the 1970's and 1980's, all born within less than 5 years of each other, the eldest twin boys and two others only slightly younger. They were all at the same school together at one point in time.

I remember me and their mother having a discussion about the cost of all the school clothing we had to buy at the time and the need to keep replacing it as they all grew out of things. I had a similar discussion with their PE teachers at open night and his suggestion to me was to cut down my costs he'd allow them to do PE at school shirtless and I had no objection to that in the least. Their teachers had to us that they discarded tops a lot anyway for PE so we shouldn't worry too much about constantly buying fresh clothing and bigger vests etc, or even trainers.

Pupils were not allowed to come to open night with their parents back then so the boys weren't listening in to this conversation.

Clearly it cuts down costs, especially for bigger families with a lot of male children at school at the same time if less uniform is needed, and PE offered up that opportunity and their PE teachers at the time recognised this and took many of their classes in bare feet and bare tops.

My own four sons had differing attitudes to this, two were carefree and easy going, that was the twins but the two younger ones struggled with PE at school, one especially disliked the need to shower I seem to remember and didn't like being shirtless, something we used to talk about and I made the same case to all of them all those years ago about how much more efficient it was, no washing for their mother and no constant extra costs on growing bodies for me, when money was tight for a hard working family man raising his children.

One or two of the grandchildren I now have are made to take far too much into school nowadays, including for PE. The school should supply shin pads if they want them on, I wasn't expected to bring in a pair of my own flannels for cricket when I was at school, and when I did our school gym I rather enjoyed the freedom of movement that removing my PE vest gave me when I had the chance.

Zak you said something that I'm certain someone else on here once pointed out too;

'One little observation I always used to notice on days we did that at school, and it was when we were all standing around listening to our PE teacher instructions the boys who were bare chested as the skins would stand and listen with arms folded and the boys who were the shirts would stand hands on hips or beside them.'


Well this reminded me of some clips once put on here from a school doing outside PE shirtless, and I found what I was thinking of just to try and help you confirm what you were saying. It's a school in 1980 doing shirtless PE. I do think there is a bit of what you are saying within this clip, although perhaps not as much as I initially thought, but there are other clips from other years much the same on this person's archive YT channel, which I'm sure has been mentioned before otherwise I wouldn't have vaguely recalled it. I think this is quite an interesting observation in shirtless PE body language from boys just waiting about not doing much. It looks like there is some self conscious body language here for sure, even more so with a camera being pointed at them which would magnify the feelings I'm sure.

https://youtu.be/uyzO5cA14v8?feature=shared&t=110

Comment by: Callum on 21st April 2025 at 03:10
Quote - "So my father owned a quite old fashioned hardware store in our High Street in Banbury, now run by another family member nowadays. In the mid 90's while still at school he used to employ me and pay me to do a Saturday job in the business and a couple of other boys I was at school with, mainly because he knew he could trust us. The shop was an old building, since renovated a bit more inside, but was very hot and stuffy in summer with no aircon and even with the windows open could be like this on still, humid days. I remember how I used to actually work in the back part of the shop mending small things and bikes with my shirt off many times over my first summer doing a Saturday job, I was just 15. I even used to think nothing of serving on the front desk shirtless too and nothing was said about it. One of the other Saturday boys with me did this too sometimes, feeling brave because I did so and was the owners son, so my voluntary shirtless was infectious and made him do it too. The summer I started doing the Saturday job was very hot and long, that was in 1995, and we got really quite used to it. I never felt self conscious doing this and meeting lots of people face to face. I got to a point where I no longer noticed I was working there shirtless at all. What's weird about that is I was never embarrassed at the time, but think back now and can't quite believe I did a Saturday job in the family business meeting public and kept my shirt right off for hours on end for weeks on end on non school days. I'm a touch embarrassed now though for some reason!"





Hello Callum. Just repeating that part of what you wrote above to answer you.

You have nothing to feel embarrassed about. You were working in your own parents business under their guidance and watchful eye so what you did was fine and I commend your confidence. It would have been a bit different if you'd been working the local Woollies at the time, or someone in another shop who was normal employer had asked you to do that. But in your case no problem at all for a young man to do this, even as a minor.

When my son was 18 he took a job in a local bar on Friday and Saturday nights serving and collecting glasses. The bar employed a few quite young people, and had a young bar manager too who I though was a bit immature for his age when I met him, goodness knows how he got the job. Well the bar manager began pressuring three or four of the young lads, including my lad at the time, to partake in a shirtless Friday bar hour to bring in more custom. All they would wear was a bow tie and nothing else above the waist, along with jet black trousers. But this young bar manager wasn't going to do likewise and follow through for himself on his own suggestion. I thought the whole thing was a bit tacky to say the least and my son was pressured into doing it a couple of times and although he was no longer an underage minor I told him he was best to take his money and get the hell out of the place after I saw a photo turn up on social media of him in the bar. Would you believe this was actually under the Mitchell's and Butler's chain back in 2006 where this manager was pressuring young male staff there to work for an hour a night with bared chests. This was a normal family bar, not even a gay bar, where you might not be so surprised by such a thing.

Hi Terry,

'That could be an urban school legend Yours Truly couldn't it. Who knows?'

I think it probably was true. Because it's the kind of thing that is just too trivial for anybody to go to the trouble of making up.

As re Stevens' posts, I would have been mortified if my teacher had drawn my attention - and everybody else's - to my personal situation. Even our tyrannical senior PE teacher never showed the faintest interest in that sort of thing, so, credit where it's due. That does sound unlikely, I'll admit. I really can't see why a random erection should even be an issue in a single-sex class (ie, not like what Danny C was subjected to) But if anything it's an argument that boys should be allowed underwear in PE rather than not.

I can't remember if it was on this forum or another where I read it, but I can remember once reading of boys' school medical exams. The boys queued up in just their underpants and entered the room two at a time where the nurse supervising them ordered them to lose the underwear. One boy was unfortunate enough to be sporting a situation and received the sharp end of the nurse's tongue along with the order to face the wall with his hands on his head until said situation had abated. I have no idea if that is a true story or not but I know from my own life experience that boys in particular are treated callously.

I don't remember any erectile fears in the school showers, probably because I was too scared/ embarrassed/ humiliated even to get one. The only personal emergency I can recall in that area was aged six in a school medical in front of two women healthcare professionals who couldn't have looked more bored.

If I ever sound like an amateur psychologist it's only because I'm trying to figure out my own stuff. Not to be anybody else's pedagogue.

'Going back to the start with your story YT, I suppose if a lad walks out the showers boldly sporting a full erection then possibly someone might mention it! But didn't most of us soon wrap towels around us anyway'


Did we? I didn't. Our senior PE teacher was far more frightening than any sense of humiliation so you left your pants on the bench with the rest of your clothes and any vulnerable feelings you were too timid to venture and you got on with it. I can remember the odd boy making his way there with a towel wrapped around him, but it seemed utterly pointless to me given that every last vestige of personal pride and self-respect had already been stripped from us. I always went in with bare balls, given that we had no choice about personal dignity, and this despite being probably the shyest boy in my year. There was nothing left to save.

'The story you mention means the teacher must have forced the boy to keep his arms by his side and keep everything on view.'

I think that was the gist of the story. But even if the boy had his hands clasped over his unmentionables the rest of the class would still have got the message just as succinctly. I can easily imagine a trainee teacher being that callous, simply because he was too young and immature himself to have yet evolved any instinct for empathy. What were you up to at twenty-three?

I don't know about abuse but it was definitely bullying. It's not the way to treat an eleven-year-old boy, I know that.

I can remember the Monday of my second week in secondary school, which was the occasion of my very first Games lesson, out on the fields, playing football. We didn't even have an actual teacher, rather two sixth-form boys who my school still made to do PE and enlisted as auxiliary PE staff. They were exactly as considerate and professional as you would assume any two sixteen-year-old boys to be. Ie, not at all. I can still remember their casual contempt. It was one of the lowest points of my life.

I can remember urban myths. There was Towel Lady. I actually saw the incident to which I have previously referred confirmed on Friends Reunited many years after hearing it.


I can remember other boys with towels wrapped round them, but that just seemed futile given that every iota of personal dignity was stripped from us in the first place. Even though I was one of the shyest kids in the year I always went in balls-naked because there was no escape from it.

'I couldn't agree more on your 'rite of passage' comment about school showers YT. I think many feel this way. There was much more to it than washing, it was about establishing a culture of some sort.'

This is what I have concluded. it's interesting to discover I am not the only man who thinks this.

I do go on, don't I? I suppose it's because I need to get this all, out. Thank you for reading and I shall respect your opinions.

Comment by: Christine Sanderson on 21st April 2025 at 23:03



Christine, forgive me if I sometimes come across as a trifle brusque, but my own experiences, and that of some of my schoolmates, two in particular, makes me very passionate about the abuse, physical or verbal, of school students, which still sadly pertain. If I were made Secretary of State For Education today, my first act would be to ensure that all school inspections would be carried out without prior warning, be extremely thorough, and that a safe space be found, free of school staff, whether a teacher or an admin worker, for any boy or girl to discuss any concerns they might have. Damn Ms Phillipson and her "teeth brushing lessons", this should - and usually is - done in the home. It is a cheap and easy gimmick that solves a problem that doesn't exist.

I was very lucky, in that though the nightmares lived on for years I coped with it, but one of my mates turned to drink, I am sure, in great part, because of what happened to him as a 15/16 year old, the other one became even more introspective than me. Our time was bad, but the case I have mentioned, years later , many times, is extraordinarily repellant, not least because the teacher concerned was shielded by his school, even though his behaviour was common knowledge amongst the staff and the pupils - many of them (an all boys school) wrote messages on desks and around the school. The idiot headmaster must have been blind or perverted himself.

What are your views on single sex schools?. Mine was, and the other I mentioned. Should they be allowed to continue, or be made like more normal mixed schools these days. Anyway, if I was rough yesterday, I am sorry.


Comment by: James on 22nd April 2025 at 02:23




"....What amazes me most as a reader of this site and once in a while contributor is how Alan is actually trying to defend this guy, whether he's real or not. I think he was a fake. Is this the same Alan who seems able to sniff out bad teachers like dogs sniff out drugs and is quick to condemn them, rightly so....."


A straight question deserves a straight answer, James. I got the impression Steven was a schoolteacher, partly because he wanted to make a situation which was dictatorial sound as if it were being done for the pupils own good (a bit like the old "this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you" crap some caning teachers used to spout). He wanted subservience from the pupils, and once he got it, it sounded as if he became reasonable. That is not uncommon in music - the younger the bandleader, the more dictatorial he is likely to be. They mellow with age - usually. So many of you seem to think he wasn't a teacher, I will have to go along with the majority verdict, this being a democratic country (just about, still).

I think you will see I made it very clear to his face so to speak that I disagreed with the stance, and suggested that IF "bad boys" played up, punish THEM, not the vast majority of the lads who were not troublemakers. The innocent should never suffer for the guilty.

I was fairly easy on him because, when I was a bit more abrasive with Mr Hind last year, one or two people suggested I had bundled him off the board and one even said I was the one who welched on him. I wasn't, I think it was despicable of whomever did it, but it wasn't, I assure you. I didn't agree with him, but I leave all arguments on the board I would never go behind anybodies back. At least he was being honest, he didn't come over in the least to me as a perv. Just misguided, like Steven was.



Comment by: Zak on 22nd April 2025 at 01:27



Zak, there is one point about your message that I would like to point out, which, shows even as late as the early 2000s P.E. teachers were in a class of their own in trying to demean boys and it is this:

"....when we were all standing around listening to our PE teacher instructions the boys who were bare chested as the skins would stand and listen with arms folded and the boys who were the shirts would stand hands on hips or beside them. I remember two of the fat ones in our class often went skins and I used to look at the pair of them and it worked as an incentive never to look like that and I wondered how they would look when they were about 30 if they were piling on the flab at 14. Our teacher drew attention to their weight once in the gym when they were on the bare chested skins side one day but none of us actually did"


That first point is very perceptive and showed that many lads were self conscious. One of your teachers decided to humiliate two boys, who might have had glandular problems, for all he knew, or had puppy fat. What a charmer! It is to the credit of your fellow pupils that you and they did not add to the boys humiliation. Now ours would have had no hesitation in joining in the shaming.

Comment by: Terry on 21st April 2025 at 22:31


"..... I'd just ask people like you YT or Alan and others here what you would have thought or felt if you'd been in a PE lesson and your teacher came up to you and 'sent you off' so to speak, ....."

Embarrassed, ashamed, terrified and afraid of the consequences afterwards in the changing room and showers. That would have been how I would have felt.Terry, but I think you have to put it in context of where you went to school, and the era. I am sure many of the lads on here who went to nice schools in Surrey or Kent, say, would have been horrified going into mine in a run down part of East London, and our teachers would have been as out of place in Surrey, as we would. Ours was a pretty rough lot, and our teachers matched the area. Our P.E. teacher was very coarse, in that respect, and indeed did make a floor show of it, when it happened, and spoke to us in ways which (I hope!) would not be tolerated today.


Comment by: James T on 21st April 2025 at 14:47


"....Alan, there was no difference doing PE in the 6th form. Like every year group we still stripped to the waist in the gym and our teachers still had us taking our vests off outdoors regardless......"

James I totally believe you (Danny C has said the same thing was the rule at his school), but I have to ask myself WHY you all put up with it?. I don't want to pry, but what decade was your experience?. When you are 18 (when I was 18) you would have been free to get married, drive a car or take out HP agreements Why did teachers expect you to comply with their bloody childish rules?. Please don't think I am having a go at you because I genuinely am not, but you were all young men in sixth form, not boys.

For domestic reasons, which will be of no interest to anyone here, I had to grow up very quickly between 17 and 19, but the one thing I was adamant about was that nobody was going to push me around again and make me do things I didn't want to do. For example, I was offered two jobs - one was in a back street company with a friendly feel to the place, the other was with a company which is still a household name (if you come from that sort of household). The back street company just wanted to know the basics, age, experience, interests, the manager asking when can you start Al?. The money was slightly less, the other company had an enormous form to fill in, the interview was more like a solicitors meeting - two interviewers with Parker pens poised in their hands and before taking me on they wanted me to have a medical examination, because they offered a BUPA membership - who thinks of being ill when you are 18.? No prizes for guessing which job I took. I liked informality and I was happy there for several years. Similar things happened in my musical career (such as it was). If I didn't like the direction things were going in, I left. I think Don't Fence Me In would have been my sig tune. Freedom was (and is) more important to me than money.

Again, I hope these days sixth formers don't even have to face the indignities of the school gym and shower room, unless they want to. I would like to know the position of these poor kids forced to stay on in their prisons till they are 18, just so that governments of ALL persuasions can fiddle the unemployment register, and show how much they have allowed the economy to fail.

Comment by: Andrew on 19th April 2025 at 22:55
OK Steven, cut the claptrap please.
The moment you started talking about schoolboys erect penises down their shorts in PE lessons was the moment I fully understood you are not an authentic PE teacher but a fantasist.




Of course you're right Andrew.

What amazes me most as a reader of this site and once in a while contributor is how Alan is actually trying to defend this guy, whether he's real or not. I think he was a fake. Is this the same Alan who seems able to sniff out bad teachers like dogs sniff out drugs and is quick to condemn them, rightly so. I mean, we've got someone claiming to be a teacher who actually admitted to shaming boys in PE lessons who he saw with erections. That is the basic fact of what that chap was saying when you get down to it. So if he was real then he was a rotten idiot but somehow managed to make out he was being kind and considerate. Ha bloody ha to that I say!

Even if you were sporting the most massive boner out of the blue in PE and trying to get rid of it through your own embarrassment, and let's suppose your teacher on the day even accidentally clocked it, the teacher would probably be far too embarrassed themselves to say a word. That's why Steven the teacher has been pilloried on here by almost everyone, because it's transparent rubbish and everyone knows it, and so should you Alan, and I think you must, because you are not a stupid man I know that.

I was at secondary school between 1999 and 2005 and took PE lessons twice weekly. Taking our shirts off to be bare chested was something that came along a reasonable amount of the time both inside and out. Some boys often took their tops off on the cross country run and the teachers didn't mind that. The most common place we actually got told to take our tops off and go bare chested was in the school gym for any number of reasons. Everyone seemed to do so instantly when told to. I stayed on at school and was in the sixth form from 2003 until 2005 and also did some PE during that time. We had lots of free periods to fill and the easiest thing to do was PE. I did some of that PE bare chested. We were expected to shower at school and all did so, but not in the sixth form where it was voluntary if we did PE. Some of us did and some chose not to. Sometimes I did and other times I didn't bother. Teachers were not really watching us in the sixth form like they were before that. Showers were just the normal communal type but there was plenty of room for us all to do the job. I think many of my gym classes were more like 20 to 25 rather than the bigger numbers some say on here.

I've never spoken to anyone about bare chested PE lessons before so I have got no idea what anyone I was at school with 20 to 25 years ago must have thought about it. I was fairly quiet, but not shy although not someone who would have taken my own top off of my own accord in school but would have done on holiday in Ibiza or somewhere.

Bare chested team game sports play was still popular in my time at school as well with class divided up into the skins side or the shirts side. One little observation I always used to notice on days we did that at school, and it was when we were all standing around listening to our PE teacher instructions the boys who were bare chested as the skins would stand and listen with arms folded and the boys who were the shirts would stand hands on hips or beside them. I remember two of the fat ones in our class often went skins and I used to look at the pair of them and it worked as an incentive never to look like that and I wondered how they would look when they were about 30 if they were piling on the flab at 14. Our teacher drew attention to their weight once in the gym when they were on the bare chested skins side one day but none of us actually did.

Alan I am neither in favour of or against the type of PE kit you and others disliked, the shirtless look no tops allowed approach or the use of showering. I am completely neutral about it. But anything that aids improved standards and attainment is always welcome, which is what you would expect me to say at the very least isn't it. My preference is for voluntary arrangements and agreements that meet acceptable standards.

I don't hold the teaching profession in unconditional high regard at all, if I did that I would have made a very poor inspector of schools. I've already said how I knew all the tricks school heads could get up to to, and you needed a certain level of critical thinking in the job and to know what to look for and what questions to ask and what to see.

Please don't feel I've doubted your comments, that's to overthink things too far. What you say as a school child should be treated differently from what someone says as a school teacher, and a person such as Steven should be held to a higher level than yourself, simply because you were the minor and he was the adult. The balance of probabilities leads me to conclude the particular story of his actions was no more than a tall tale and his wish to leave confirms this to me on account of his being confronted openly. I'm not saying there were never any teachers that did any wrong, we know that's not the case. There were and are. I'd have a teacher behaving in the way Steven suggested, down as a bad egg. I not only say that as a retired inspector but as a mother of a son and daughter too who would not have been very happy to discover my own son being handled in that manner.

I also think that the genuinely bad or sexually inappropriate teachers out there would tend to keep quiet about behaving in such a manner towards their pupils and not admit their past behaviour openly, which also adds to my lack of belief in Steven's account on the erectile issue he raised.

Alan, I must remind you that 8 out of 10 cats did not say they liked Whiskas. It was 8 out of 10 OWNERS who said their cats preferred it. I have three cats and they all eat it. You never even named the brand but I knew the one you meant.

That could be an urban school legend Yours Truly couldn't it. Who knows?

Regarding the 'Steven' posts, I'd just ask people like you YT or Alan and others here what you would have thought or felt if you'd been in a PE lesson and your teacher came up to you and 'sent you off' so to speak, which is what Steven suggested he did, if he thought someone was having an erection. If you knew why you were being approached and sent off for five minutes, how would you have felt about a teacher actually making you know he'd seen what's happening down your shorts. No matter how discrete, I would be mortified and it would add to any embarrassment I already might have felt. That's why I don't believe it, like the others.

It's quite a different thing for those of us who were pupils at school coming on this forum and talking about ourselves as school age boys doing PE and having showers and seeing our parts and mentioning erection fears and all that kind of thing. We were the children then, and are talking from out own childhood perspectives. That is sort of alright by me and if people wish to discuss those things so be it, we were all boys and know how things can get at that age there and even any other age. We can say these things to each other.

It's a big difference when someone comes on here from a teacher perspective and starts talking such talk. That not only lacks credibility but is actually rather creepy to me. If Steven was a teacher then he was breaking the boundaries of acceptable. Sending someone out of a PE lesson for a momentary erection issue that probably most of the class wouldn't even have noticed. Come off it. That's not a real teacher talking to me, and if it was then like Christine suggested last night, he sounds a bit dodgy, masking as respectful and caring. Don't many inappropriate people around children try to pull that persona. I don't think he was a dodgy teacher, because I don't think he was a teacher at all. I'm more than happy to be proved wrong in some way with further proof, such as what these teacher training colleges told new PE teachers in the past over certain PE related non sport issues. Showers for example, did this crop up at teacher training and how to behave responsibly or was it ignored as something to train about.

The thing is, and I don't want to come across as what Alan sometimes calls 'amateur psychologists' but often when we feel self conscious about something to do with us we are told that it's only us that is noticing and nobody else really is, which is probably accurate in many cases, including if you got a bit hard on in PE unwanted.

Going back to the start with your story YT, I suppose if a lad walks out the showers boldly sporting a full erection then possibly someone might mention it! But didn't most of us soon wrap towels around us anyway or if someone really did have such an unfortunate event they'd have both hands glued to the groin as they walked away. The story you mention means the teacher must have forced the boy to keep his arms by his side and keep everything on view. It seems unlikely don't you think, that would be abuse good and proper wouldn't it. That's why I think it could be one of those school urban legends that sound funny. I remember a few myself. Does anyone else have any really good school urban legends they used to hear?

I couldn't agree more on your 'rite of passage' comment about school showers YT. I think many feel this way. There was much more to it than washing, it was about establishing a culture of some sort.

Hi all,

I had missed this thing with Steven so I took some time to find out what was said.

Steven still sounds utterly believable to me. There is none of the fervent embroidery that is characteristic of fetishistic fantasists.

On the subject of unwelcome obtrusions I remember a tale told by my late sister's best schoolfriend who became a teacher herself.

Being one of a group of twenty-two/ twenty-three year-olds they weren't the most mature or sensitive group of adults. She related to my sister the anecdote of a first-year boy who came out of the showers with a situation going on. Their teacher called him over, straight out of the showers, on a concocted pretext, holding him there in front of his whole year for all to see.

Then he did it again. And again. He kept on calling the boy over for as long as the situation lasted.

Then, being the aspiring young professional he was, he told the tale of it in the staffroom, including to my sister's friend.

Neither my sister nor her friend saw this event as anything other than a hilarious story.

If I ever had to be eleven all over again I would willingly take Steven, the 'fantasist', over that real-life teacher.

Just my two cents, as they say.

Alan, there was no difference doing PE in the 6th form. Like every year group we still stripped to the waist in the gym and our teachers still had us taking our vests off outdoors regardless. Football matches as skins vs vests while our outdoor fitness lessons were performed exactly the same way as in previous years... with everyone absolutely barechested. The only thing that differed was cross country turned into laps of the field rather than the customary runs away from the school gates again with everyone barechested.

Hi Christine Sanderson,

How important is PE achievement, really? As long as you know to exercise and look after yourself, surely that is all that is required? PE is a non-academic subject so a GCSE or A level in it counts for nothing in real life. Nobody in your later life will care whether you were good at football or netball or not. This doctrinaire fanaticism about competitive sports leads to all too many adults with lifelong bad memories of school sports. And the insistence on team sports leads to more bad memories for those of us who weren't sporty or were particularly shy. I was one of those kids that always got picked last of all for the teams.

I can see the logic of a minimal kit. It cuts you down to size, makes you feel vulnerable and therefore more biddable. You seek escape from your embarrassment by trying to lose yourself in the activity. And you're probably right that boys will be more conscientious about their physiques if they are made to display them on a regular basis. And as Susan F said, children will never learn anything new if they are not forced beyond their comfort zones.

But then again I have no doubt that if I had suffered the usual regime of the 1950, '60s and'70s, with the imminent threat of the gym teacher's size-11 gymshoe across my shorts for not trying hard enough, that would no doubt have got the best effort out of me as well. But there is a very good reason that was all banned.

The recent poster Felicity made the interesting statement that she thought that communal showering would be good for her son on the grounds of what she chose to term 'discipline', (while she also felt unsettled by the idea of him having to do PE in only shorts!). She probably hit the nail on the head.

I called school showering a rite of passage before. They were definitely very keen for us to do it. I think it really was about discipline. The school flexing its muscles. As several other men have remarked here, even my parents weren't seeing me naked by the age of eleven, but apparently some random stranger had the authority to do just that. School authority should not extend to forcing young people at an awkward age range to strip naked. At primary school I had two full medical exams which I still shudder at the memory of. At secondary I had to strip naked every week of term for five years. I still remember my first communal shower as one of the lowest experiences of my life. I actually went from being a conscientious kid to a truant for the only time in my life.

It is not as if communal nudity is some essential skill for men. Well, not unless you're a mafioso and you have power meetings in saunas or something. After school you will never have to get your parts out in front of another man again - well, not until the sad dictates of ageing make it expedient - which begs the question of why it is considered so essential for young people.

I got used to PE and showering. But I never came to accept it. And as soon as I was able to I walked away from it and from sports. So really it taught me nothing.

And, and I know I keep coming back to this: equal treatment. Girls have just as much entitlement to be challenged. It's funny that it always, always seems to be boys on the receiving end of these policies. Susan F seemed entirely oblivious to the latent sexism in her post, about when the girls complained of feelings of embarrassment their kit was changed, whereas when the boys complained they were ignored and made to get on with it.

I was in my twenties before I made the pleasant discovery that sometimes, just sometimes, sports can be fun. It was a lesson none of our PE teachers ever taught me. They never do seem to, do they?

Comment by: Callum on 21st April 2025 at 03:10

Hi Callum you describe the problems of the undersized shower room very well - I always found it degrading in the extreme when you knew that the teacher was standing there watching you. It is the unwanted close contact that is off-putting and as you say, you could never properly shower because there wasn't the room to do it. When I have a shower I take my time over it.

Regarding my Saturday lads - being at that time an unmarried bloke of forty, on really hot days, I used to get the work done in the yard at the back - my lads wore tee shirts at a minimum and I would have been very embarrassed if they had wanted to remove them, but I always kept the workroom very airy, so on hot but damp Saturdays they would still be comfortable. Funnily enough I once got a direct allegation on this forum as to why I only employed lads, and I once got an email which was even more explicit. You can never be too careful!.

In your case working for your dad, I don't think you need to feel bad about it, but yes you do look back and think could I have done things differently. I know I often have thoughts of that sort.

I wonder if school inspectors ever realise the difficulties pupils have to put up with. I mentioned a scene earlier from a film called Two Way Stretch, where a group of prison inspectors led by Beryl Reid visit a prison to inspect the facilities - the staff and the prisoners are already aware of it, but rewatching the scene, I do wonder if a school inspectors visit is similar?: Ms. Reid as Christine:


youtube.com/watch?v=1EfgHgdsm78

Comment by: Christine Sanderson on 20th April 2025 at 22:39


Christine, with all due respect, you seem to hold the teaching profession in too high regard - they would NEVER do wrong, and if they did (which of course in your mind they don't) you would immediately become Sherlock Holmes. In that case - and you have told us before, have you not? - that inspections are pre-arranged, so any problems or problematic teachers could be kept out of the way for the day (sick leave, anyone?) - how would you KNOW that the school and it's staff were Kosher?. If the inspectorate are so infallible, how do you explain (forgive me regular readers - trigger warning coming up!) the egregious Royal Liberty case which occurred years after I left a (different) school?. How do you explain the numerous cases that STILL come before the courts, where a practising teacher is bought before them on charges of behaving indecently with pupils? - and are more often than not found guilty. These cases are 90% male teachers, but there are a few cases where women teachers have been so charged and found guilty. I believe you also said that inspectors were not obliged to talk to students, so how can you be so certain that everything in the garden is lovely?. Even IF you got a pupil brave enough to bring up unsettling matters, I frankly feel that you would be biased. In this most recent message you let slip, again - perhaps unintentionally, that you are in favour of minimal kit and showering, as you cite yet again that "study" by Essex University. Any study or enquiry can be so arranged to get the result it's author wanted in the first place. Have you seen for example, those otiose TV adverts usually for "health and beauty" products for expensive creams where "95% of 82 users" constitute a scientific "study"?. They do, admittedly use very small graphics, no doubt out of embarrassment. We also know - thanks to a "study" - that eight out of ten cats preferred one brand of tinned cat meat over the others.

As everyone seems to be suggesting there are a number of frauds and liars on the board, let me say immediately that I have no doubt you are who you say you are, and you did the job you say you did, but I would also suggest that your bias was towards the school and the staff, not the pupils. In short, you saw what you wanted to see - or what the school WANTED you to see. The self satisfaction and air of infallibility shouts your authenticity. In that respect I am reminded of a scene in the Peter Sellars film "Two Way Stretch" where Beryl Reid and her team of prison inspectors visit an Establishment by prior arrangement, and well and truly get the wool pulled over their eyes!

You have to laugh or else you'd cry!. In doubting Steven's account, you are, in effect doubting mine too, as I bought the matter up, as I was speaking of lads like me and our fears at the time (and probably today if I were in school - at least knives were not bought into school in my time there). I can assure you it did happen, and if you or anybody else doesn't believe me, that is your problem. I was there for five years and you were not.


Comment by: Yours Truly on 20th April 2025 at 20:42



We might disagree politically YT, but we are both on the same wavelength here. I totally agree with you in everything you say here. I hope (I don't know for sure) that since BOTH recent governments have put pupils through the dreadful Catch 22 of being expected to stay on at school till they are 18, if they don't have a job to go to at 16 - they are not forced to take part in PE lessons post 16, and if they are, they are allowed to wear whatever they want to wear and if they don't want the indignity of mass showering, they just don't have to do it. It seems bizarre that lads of 16, some of them with beards or designer stubble (it's a wonder that schools haven't "banned" that too) are being treated as they would have been four years earlier. I was astonished when Danny C mentioned that rough treatment as a sixth former and I would never have tolerated it. Why should any pupil have to put up with being treated as if they were in a borstal or prison.


Comment by: Steven on 20th April 2025 at 16:06


I am sorry. Steven that I have - unwittingly - been the cause of your deciding to leave the board. I did point out to Mark last evening (20th April 5.02) that it had been I who had initially mentioned the problem, not you. I find it ironic that Mark calls for Mr. Hind to return to the board. He was forced off last year by the most disgraceful breach of trust. You can strongly disagree with another persons stance, without questioning their bona fides. Unfortunately - a bit like Christine's inspections, - people only see what they want to see - as T.S. Eliot wrote "humankind cannot bear too much reality"

A couple of points made by Alan have caught my eye here.

1. You mentioned cramming 33 of you into an undersized shower.

That sounds about right and just how I remember the end of most PE lessons at my secondary school. in the 1990;s. I'm 45 now. Everyone had to take a shower and they made sure of that. There was a certain short amount of time at the end of lessons when we had to get done by and this meant we all had to shower at the same time together as one whole class. The class was about 32 to 35 boys I'd say, and all of us were expected to be in that communal shower at the same time. Talk about feeling like sardines in a tin. There seemed little dignity in it, and very little room to move much of the time. My memory of standing in the school shower is knocking the people next to me or being knocked, shoulder to shoulder, elbows jabbing into each other and far too crowded, treading on each others toes accidentally and all that. All while being watched by a teacher close by who decided himself when we were ready to come out, we didn't choose. If you were one of the last boys undressed out of your PE kit there was a chance the teacher would be barking at you to get in the showers with everyone else and thinking to yourself there isn't room, where do I go exactly and trying to push in amongst all the exposed flesh. In such circumstances it was possible to stand in our school showers and actually struggle to get wet properly because you were not close enough to a shower head for a minute or so, a really awkward feeling that could make you feel really rather stupid. At times it was actually so crowded out that it was not easy to check many others out actually in the shower, that came when we got out. It's quite a shock to see an entire class of more than 30 stark naked at the same time when it first happens, and I'm generally confident as a rule.

I remember when the shower was empty, looking into it and wondering how such a small area could possibly have fitted thirty or more growing boys into it together at the same time. I wasn't an excessive phobic about my own or others imposed nudity but did find the style we were made to shower at school rather lacking in decorum and respect. So I can truly empathise with you being one of 33 lads forced into a very confined space with nothing on. Been there and done it and the memory is vivid on that one. That kind of active compulsion is no way to treat anyone of any age, adults as well, never mind youngsters early teens or younger.

2. Your comment about Saturday boys in your own business/going shirtless.

So my father owned a quite old fashioned hardware store in our High Street in Banbury, now run by another family member nowadays. In the mid 90's while still at school he used to employ me and pay me to do a Saturday job in the business and a couple of other boys I was at school with, mainly because he knew he could trust us. The shop was an old building, since renovated a bit more inside, but was very hot and stuffy in summer with no aircon and even with the windows open could be like this on still, humid days. I remember how I used to actually work in the back part of the shop mending small things and bikes with my shirt off many times over my first summer doing a Saturday job, I was just 15. I even used to think nothing of serving on the front desk shirtless too and nothing was said about it. One of the other Saturday boys with me did this too sometimes, feeling brave because I did so and was the owners son, so my voluntary shirtless was infectious and made him do it too. The summer I started doing the Saturday job was very hot and long, that was in 1995, and we got really quite used to it. I never felt self conscious doing this and meeting lots of people face to face. I got to a point where I no longer noticed I was working there shirtless at all. What's weird about that is I was never embarrassed at the time, but think back now and can't quite believe I did a Saturday job in the family business meeting public and kept my shirt right off for hours on end for weeks on end on non school days. I'm a touch embarrassed now though for some reason! Nobody at the time said anything about it and I was never told I should put something on when I did this, although I'm very fond of the time doing that. The confidence of youth I suppose, and one of my friends shared that. But although I had that easy confidence on a weekend Saturday job over summer it did not translate to school quite as easily as I've mentioned.

The school showering arrangements at my place would have tested the confidence of most of us I feel, as well as some of the quite bitchy sarcasm that our PE lessons were often laced with.

I did my own fair amount of school PE in the gym without a top on, mostly we wore a tee-shirt but we had to go shirtless when told to and that order came along quite often too. We were never allowed to go shirtless outside though, and there were many summer days outside when I would not have minded if we had been told to, and would have preferred it to a gym on a wet March morning when we could be told to go shirtless. There were also most certainly teachers who we had for PE who went with shirtless options quicker and easier than others.

I now have a 15 year old of my own and if I was running the old family business I'm not quite sure how I'd react if my own boy made the same decisions I did some 30 years ago on my Saturday job under my own father at the time. My own 15 year old has done some occasional shirtless PE but just the type where they split the class into shirts and skins for a while and then swap it about, mostly with indoor ball games I believe like basketball, something I did too.

I don't know whether we should make a big deal about any of this really, it's just what we're born with after all. If shirtless PE makes people think more about their looks and encourages them to be fitter then maybe that's not a bad thing, but does it? I was already active in my youth long before I had a shirtless PE lesson or took a shower at school, and had a trim healthy looking body. I just wish I'd kept out of the sun more as a teenager and covered up out of the UV rays. I did like sunbathing.

Hi Christine,

'I'd still be surprised if some teenage boys leaving at age sixteen had never done any PE with a bare chest once in a while.'

I never had to, not once in all my school years, primary or
secondary. And I am a generation and more older than young Jack there. In fact I'm probably not far off your own age. As I did indeed say, idiosyncrasies.

Boys of that age group are just as sensitive as girls, although it is all too easy to miss it since their natural instinct is to mask their insecurities with bravado. The net result is that boys generally just get treated worse than girls do because they are seen as an adversarial species. You will never find any school anywhere where girls are made to do PE in the equivalent of bikinis while the boys are allowed tracksuit bottoms and tops. But Danny C can tell you how the opposite side of the coin was enforced. With any issue regarding personal dignity it was and is always boys on the receiving end.

I'm not sure teachers should possess the liberty to place young people in a position in which they feel uncomfortable with regards to the displacement of clothing. Children and young people are entitled to preserve a sense of personal dignity and this should not be within the remit of their teacher to violate. As I have said before, PE kit should be optional and up to the individual.

You praise Jack for his 'mature' approach. What you mean is that he was okay with doing PE barechested. One of the very last sacred cows in British society is the innate prejudices of women. We are simply not to acknowledge them. But they do exist. Women are just as prone to lazy gender prejudices as men. And if nobody else will flag this up I will.

Comment by: Christine Sanderson on 20th April 2025 at 22:39

Good substantive post there Christine, rapid reply for you!

I wonder if Nathan Hind is still reading this? If so, an update would be kind of interesting.

Thanks for your reply Alan, I think I was right though.

I don't think a teacher has been driven off this forum.

I have crammed a lot of the past week or two's messages here this evening and I was almost immediately sceptical of some of the tone and explanation given by Steven, long before the stage when others reacted to the perceived inappropriate content.

I know a lot of teachers of varying subjects, including physical education, and have known many others over the years, socially and professionally as part of my job before I was a school inspector, during my time as one and continuing into my retirement over the past few years now.

I would like to reassure those of you who have already commented and others who may be thinking similar, that no teachers of any subject I have ever encountered would be expected to talk like that and never have done, if they did start talking like that about pupils then for me alarm bells would quietly ring. A PE teacher would never be encouraged or expected to discuss any kind of erectile issue with a pupil at school under any circumstances, full stop. This is not a grey area, it's quite black and white.

As a school inspector with many years, many teachers and many schools behind me, you get an easy sense when someone is trying to pretend in that job or to make things appear different to the reality. It's quite the same here actually, so when someone such as Steven has come along who could spin a good yarn there was something not feeling quite correct as I continued to read. I'm pleased to see that the forum has proved mature enough for many to take such a person to task. Because Steven, if you were a real teacher and you were doing the thing you stated then you were not behaving in a manner appropriate for your professional status and it's as simple as that. I will leave it at that.

Teachers are at liberty to decide in PE how the pupils should dress, and there is no rule I know of even in 2025 that states they may not ask or even instruct their pupils to remove shirts for PE and be a bare chest. That is largely up to what Yours Truly called the idiosyncrasies if any given school and its leaders. I was interested to read your comments Jack and admire your mature approach, it did not surprise me one bit what you said as there will be places where such requirements have not been asked for many years while others where the requirement, either voluntary or mandatory to some extent will still persist. I'd still be surprised if some teenage boys leaving at age sixteen had never done any PE with a bare chest once in a while. Often as I have said before, schools that ask this of pupils and especially ones that promote showering after their PE tend to be those with higher PE achievements and grades, that is factually accurate as of studies within recent years.

Happy Easter.

Hi Alan,

Schools all have their individual idiosyncrasies. What goes on at one school may well be unknown at another. At my primary school we had to endure full medical exams (or the boys did anyway, I think it was less invasive for the girls) whereas I discovered at secondary school that other kids my age hadn't had to undergo them at all. Other posters here have mentioned having to shower from the age of eight whereas we didn't have to get to grips with that particular trial until age eleven at secondary school. For this reason I can easily believe what Jack says.

At least he won't have to do PE anymore in the sixth form. I absolutely agree with you that schools have no right to subject young adults to such an indignity. I think what Danny C and his classmates were subjected to - PE in sixth form not only stripped off to nothing but shorts but also in the presence of girls their own age - was frankly disgusting. As I posted before I remember two sixth-form girls at my school getting hollered by my rowdy Maths class as they passed by in their PE kit, and thinking even then how shameful it was that they had been put in that position. As sixteen-year-olds they should never had to put on a PE kit again unless it was through their own free choice.
(And yes, I do realise that if they had gone out to work instead they might well have been experiencing the same and worse treatment from older male colleagues. But it doesn't change the fact that schools should set the example.)

I saw no reason to think Steven was anything but genuine and I think it's sad that yet another teacher has been driven off this forum.

Comment by: Mark on 20th April 2025 at 13:40



Regarding Jack, Mark, you might well be right. The impression I got from Jack's original post was something to the effect that he had to start the regime when he was 11 and still had to do it to this day, and they had been told that was compulsory. I hope you are right and I am wrong, it was just my impression, which was why so I was so sceptical, which is why I apologized when he came back at the weekend., and confirmed it. I also remember when Danny C said that they still had to do barechested P.E in sixth form, and the subject was compulsory - bugger that for a game of soldiers. I do honestly think they have no right to dictate to what are, in effect, young men, not boys. Danny, like us, were around back then. I am really astonished they can still be like that in Jack' school today. Just wait till (if) the voting age is reduced to 16. I hope lads and girls will realise then that they have some sort of say, and a voice..

On the question of Steven, to be fair I had already mentioned that teenage problem that didn't happen to me.but did happen to some lads in my class, as another good reason for allowing tops to be worn , and the way my P.E. teacher would humiliate lads it did happen to. If you have read what I have written about him in the past, you will know of his "problems" - one he couldn't help, I appreciate that now, but the other (the bottle) he could have., and it was, I think, quite common for teachers to use barrack room language, especially in an all boys school in East London, especially older teachers, as all of ours were. Steven as a younger teacher from the same era at least seemed to treat his pupils rather more gently.

I suspect both Jack and Steven are who they say they are. They are certainly more believable than the old gent who a few years ago, in one of the coldest wettest December's in recent years (it was even cold here in the South East), told us three weeks running that he had been out on a bare-chested run, passed a school playing field (where the pupils were also bare chested) and each week struck up a conversation with the P.E. master. In this day and age if you did it once, I imagine the police would be called , but three!. That was fetishism with a capital F, and frankly a transparent lie. There is no way I would hang around a school.

I don't know about you Mark, I am just grateful that those days are long in the past for me.

In response to all the comments directed against me, I would like to point out that it was Alan who brought up the topic to which I responded. Even then, I already had a bad feeling about how it might be received. I should have listened to my instincts and left it alone. Clearly, some people here believe it's appropriate to judge events from 40 years ago by today's standards—and to do so with little tolerance for differing views. I’ll step away from this forum now and leave you to continue criticizing other contributors.

I'll admit that Steven talks a good occupation and I would have thought little of it, but when you start veering off into what can only be described as mildly sexualised talk regarding children then of course that illuminates things a hell of a lot. I've no idea what Steven's occupation is or was, just because he's now talking inappropriate stuff doesn't mean he wasn't a teacher but I no longer believe the content he's provided either.

I'm sorry Alan but you cannot cite the 45 years ago argument, things may have been different and I should know as I was about then just like you, but I know full well that no PE teacher would have dared make reference to anyone in class becoming aroused, like was said previously it would have been ignored. I don't remember a single boy prancing around our gym in that state do you, or more openly and obviously in the showers either come to think of it where something would be clear.

I don't know whether a fear of getting an involuntary arousal in and around the showers was a fear for anyone else here but I can honestly say that such a thought never crossed my mind my entire school time and the hundreds of showers I must have taken, never mind in gym PE itself.

I felt a total sense of incredulity when Steven said he didn't like to draw attention to a pupil he noticed with an erection but then went on to say he made a big deal of it anyway with calling them aside and making them sit the lesson out for a few minutes. That is completely making a big issue of something. If a teacher did that a few times we all know that kids in school would get to understand what was going on and start making private jokes among themselves. Kids are not dumb like that.

I can well believe Steven would be a bare chest fanatic PE teacher, so many of us on this discussion seem to have had them, even it seems do some today like Jack. But like the others have said here, the erection line was the tripwire that made the accounts no longer believable.

If I'd had a teacher at school who I knew was looking at my shorts in the lesson like that and pulled me aside because I had an involuntary arousal, or so he thought, no matter how discreet he thought he was being I would have been horrified and very upset by such behaviour and probably very angry at him doing that to me, not seen it as an act of kindness to save me some kind of perceived humiliation. The humiliation would be the teacher acting like that.

By the way Alan, and maybe Jack will confirm this another day if he comes back, I don't think Jack was saying he was doing total across the board shirtless PE was he, every lesson, at least indoors anyway. Wasn't it more like just regularly over the past five years, rather than 'full time' as I think you said it.

A permanent shirtless gym situation would be extraordinary I think nowadays, even the much maligned Nathan Hind only did his PE classes bare chested every now and again, but regularly, but not permanently. Doing shirtless PE for the last 5 years doesn't literally have to mean every class indoors was that way.

Comment by: Andrew on 19th April 2025 at 22:55



One thing I have learned on this forum over the years, Andrew, is that so many of us (including myself) tend to apply today's values to 45 years ago. I have to admit that when Jack came on a couple of weeks ago, I frankly didn't believe him, but since he replied again a day or two ago, I think he is authentic. If somebody had told me a couple of months ago that lads were being forced into minimal kit on a full time basis in their lessons in 2025 I wouldn't have believed it, but now - well, the fact that Jack isn't a one time poster, I do. I don't agree with his assertion that ALL the lads in his class are totally happy. He comes over as an extremely confident student, and the less confident are not going to confide their fears to him. There have been many instances in the past where people have visited once, said something outlandish and have never returned. I do question them, but when they engage, as he did, you take them on trust.

Steven was working in the business at a time when this (to, me) humiliating treatment was regarded as the norm, and the subject he was discussing yesterday was something that occurred in many classes, and the teachers must have been aware of it - ours was, and I have told you how he used to respond. I have no reason to think he was a fantasist. He seemed, given the constraints of the time, a reasonable man. That is not to say I approve of the methods used. You know my views - nobody should be forced to do anything they don't want to do - within reason. Clearly if a lad doesn't want to learn to write or read, some pressure has to be bought to bear for his own good, but to me, if a lad who is uncomfortable not wearing a top, it is not going to change the course of history, or increase our chances of gold at the Olympics if he wears a shirt. Similarly with showers, if it really is a great problem, especially if it is a class at the end of the school day, is it essential?. You would hope he would get showered when he gets home - he is highly unlikely to stink the bus out on the way there.

What I am trying to say is this - I hope the board is not going back to the Wild West days of four or five years ago when everyone was disbelieved, and some people were bullied off the board. Terry mentioned Mr. Hind, who was forced out by the most disgusting and underhand method. I didn't agree with him, and we had some robust exchanges on the board and ONLY on the board, somebody, however, discovered the school he worked at and made a complaint to them. I was at one time accused of being six different posters, and somebody, because I happened to mention I used to employ Saturday lads in the early days of my business, suggested in terms I was employing them for an immoral purpose. The truth is, that in those early days, I used to cannibalise old equipment for electronic parts, and the equipment was often in rusty old metal containers, that often contained spiders. I used to post out orders on Saturday mornings (remember the days when Royal Mail was reliable and not a plaything of a Czech billionaire?) and some of the parcels were heavy. Therefore only lads were interested in doing the work. One of them by the way, became so interested in the subject he went on to study electronic engineering at college. No girls replied to my advert back in 2009, if one had I would have given her a chance. I had my Saturday help till about 2016 when it was clear the nature of the business needed to change to keep afloat.

These days equipment is smaller, I don't cannibalise any longer (no profit in it) and I have gone on to specialize and I don't need help with packing and posting (I use courier companies these days, they are cheaper and more reliable).

Years ago there were some clearly fetishistic postings (Jockstraps was one where it seemed everyone was vying to tell the most unlikely stories about the age they discovered them). Those days, happily, have passed. I don't see anything fetishistic in Steven's postings (or Jack's) therefore I have no reason to doubt what they say is true. I might not agree, but I tend now to take people at their word. Perhaps that is some sort of good progress in my personality.

Comment by: Andrew on 19th April 2025 at 22:55

Rather regrettably and having re-read back everything I have drawn much the same conclusion as you have Andrew and for the same reason. I call fake teacher on Steven, easily so.

Real teachers do not come onto message boards and start talking about their former pupils physical sexual stirrings and a real teacher would just completely ignore such things. We all know that, I hope.

OK Steven, cut the claptrap please.

The moment you started talking about schoolboys erect penises down their shorts in PE lessons was the moment I fully understood you are not an authentic PE teacher but a fantasist.

No teacher talks that way. I urge others to consider that, including those here who have really worked in education.

Nice try Steven.

Steven is managing to sound all very reasonable here and thoughtful about his application of the bare chested shirtless rule in school PE at a school he is employed at. But actually there is nothing reasonable about it and it appears to me to mask a quite draconian mentality on a number of levels, not least discipline and keeping order. Because although you're denying that the loss of a top in PE should be seen as a punishment, you are admitting using it as a sanction to get a certain result, and to many people a sanction equals a punishment of sorts.

Jack that's interesting to hear again from you that you've been at a school bang up to date over the last five years and have been doing your own PE lessons shirtless a lot. There have been a few people over the past year or two come along and say they've done so, and there was the chap who saw some shirtless running a number of times out of a school in an area he drove a delivery van in. While going 'skins' is probably less than it used to be there is obviously a lot of this still taking place. Nathan Hind for instance was here saying the same at his school, another PE teacher once posting here until a year back. He always sounded reasonable too, even took a vote and found out that three quarters of his pupils didn't mind going bare chests for PE when told to, and the other quarter of them had to accept it and did so according to him. Well I suppose that was democracy. I'm pleased that doing five years of shirtless PE in your school gym has left you fairly positive Jack and you are fine with your appearance shirtless. That is good news, and good to know you think you have a fit class. You did sound like you were pleased you would not be doing much more of it though.

I bet you didn't do any shirtless cross countries like I once had to though in some quite nippy fresh air. Now that's when some of us really earned our shirtless bare chested 'going skins' mettle.

Comment by: Steven on 19th April 2025 at 04:02



Thanks for your reply Steven. I am sure that you are totally different to our old P.E. teacher, - in every respect (I have said in the past some of what he got up to, so I don't intend repeating it here - luckily I wasn't his type), and you come across as a very reasonable man. If our teacher found one of the lads he didn't like with that difficult teenage situation (and the great majority of them he disliked) he would yell out "all stand still we'll wait for a few minutes till Smith cools off" - clearly to the great embarrassment of the lad concerned. I was very grateful I was never in that position. I think one of the other horrible aspects of our situation was that we all had to have white shorts - perhaps if they had been black or dark blue you wouldn't have felt quite so exposed. White always feels more transparent under lighting. Clearly though you were much more understanding and were not a bully, which ours most certainly was. I suppose it is somewhat like your first experience with a dentist - if he is unsympathetic it can put people off going for years. Happily I never had that problem because I had a calm and friendly dentist, but I have known people who would not go to a dentist - that's the way I have always been with sports clubs and centres all my life.

Who knows, if you had been my teacher I might not have felt so scared all the time, but the constant bellowing of your surname (I don't think he knew many of our first names), the sarcasm, the aggression (and my guilty secret) honestly made it the worst time of my life, - as you say you felt you were in a borstal or a military situation. I never felt so nervous about anything else in my life - not even the first time I took a trumpet solo in front of an audience.

I certainly agree with you it is the attitude and the personality of the teacher that can make lessons either a humiliation or something more pleasurable (not unlike band leaders - a few of whom can be martinets).

I still feel the "no pants" rule, certainly for boys post 14 was entirely wrong from a practical point of view - it would have been an easy matter to have bought along a second pair and changed into them afterwards.

Jack, would you say it's the "being shirtless", or (more) the "being told to be shirtless", that is/was "difficult"?

Hope your GCSEs go well!

Comment by: Jack on 18th April 2025 at 22:38



Sorry Jack I was the bloke who doubted you - I apologise for that, but you must go to a VERY old-fashioned school. I have a neighbour who has a son about your age, and she often takes in parcels for me if I am out at an auction or doing an on-site repair, if something breaks down not long after it has been sold, and I return the compliment for her when she is out. She is always telling me about the amount of stuff she has to buy him for school (she is a single parent) - track suits, different coloured tee shirts etc and he is always outgrowing them. She and other parents take part in a scheme where they exchange items, and when the students leave school they donate their old kit to the scheme. He goes to a comprehensive, like yourself.

It is as well you don't mind it, but I bet there are some of your fellow pupils who do, but of course you wouldn't know because they would be unlikely to tell you. Good luck with your exams,


Comment by: Neil on 18th April 2025 at 20:56



"...A strange rule, that meant full nudity before and after PE was unavoidable. One or two boys lapped it up of course they did. There's always a few who are too confident for their own good at that age......"

"....I'm genuinely keen to know how being an emerging gay teen at school in such situations where barechested PE and communal showers were unavoidable affected you and how you thought...."


I can only speak for myself, Neil, of course. I was a very reluctant homosexual (still am if I am honest) but I knew when I was 9 or 10. I didn't understand the word then of course - I was nothing like the mincing "Mr. Humphries", but I remember finding every opportunity I could to see a neighbour who lived a couple of doors away, and how smart and attractive he always looked. One of the problems at school was that, until you were 11, you didn't have "P.E. Kit" per se' - usually you just took your jacket off and kicked a ball round the school yard and did those rather pointless running on the spot exercises, which bored the teacher as much as it did me, then you got to 11 and suddenly there you were, wearing just shorts, being yelled at, then being forced into an undersized shower room all 33 of you (there were 33 in my class). Having to stand there waiting your turn without even a towel It is the worst possible age to introduce that sort of kit. In retrospect it would probably have been better if they had started that requirement at 5, then you would have been used to it - but like you, I never saw the point of the "no underpants" rule. It seemed - and seems, if it still goes on - kinky in the extreme. Our P.E. teacher was a homosexual and I thought at the start that it was another of his perversions, but clearly it seems it was almost universal. It is bloody uncomfortable by the time you get to 15/16, and the idiots who mandate such things must know that..

My discomfiture was that not only did you have to see other lads naked or near naked, but you had to touch each other in partnered exercise. As I have said before I was always too scared and feeling sick for any physical manifestation, but there was always the fear that it could happen. I feared being found out (and what the consequences would have been if I had been) - it is all very well for schools to say it is a safe place where "bullying is not tolerated"(ours to be fair, never gave such a promise - perhaps scared of the Trades Description Act!), but they could always "get you" away from school - at the bus stop, on the bus etc. There was always the self-loathing, and I have always considered it akin to putting an alcoholic in a brewery.

It is a feeling that never leaves you, and today, after 40 years I can still remember it and feel nauseous when doing so - the lads who loved showing themselves off by displaying themselves, and when they did it near me, were they trying to catch me out? - that is the sort of feeling you got, and the the acrid smell of Brut (a smell that always makes me feel sick, though thankfully not many men use it these days). Since the day I left school I have never visited a sports centre or gone to a swimming pool because it reminds me of those appalling years.