Chris Martin
The first headmaster I ever knew at the Cathedral School, and a truly great man. Not only a hit with the pupils, but with the staff and parents as well. Despite an uncanny ability to do impressions of primitive man, he always had the respect of everyone, and you could never mess about in his classes.
Roy Collard Rather a complete contrast to Chris Martin, Roy Collard was possibly one of the most uninspiring heads in history, and a disagreement with the PTA resulted in his resignation, about which we were all delighted. He never engendered a feeling of leadership, and most of the staff were fairly uncomplimentary about him too. Mr. Collard was the man responsible for one of the most stupid ideas in school history: The One-Way system. More of that here.
Kevin Riley Short in stature, but big in ability, Kevin Riley was the deputy head and acting head after Roy resigned. He was later appointed to the post of head where he reigns supreme today. A man that everyone agreed was right for the position, he is eminently likeable, and removed the One Way system, which immediately earned him a generation of followers.
Christopher Fance Everyone's favourite teacher, the man known only as 'Schiz', due to his apparent dual personality. Latin lessons were never dull as long as you had a couple of irritants in the room for Mr. Fance to shout at. Watching him in action was a wondrous sight to behold; one minute we'd be having a perfectly pleasant lesson, the next he'd have spotted a pupil misbehaving and would launch into an amazing tirade, sending people out of the room just for being there. It got to the point where Tom and I were keeping a note of how often his favourite expressions would turn up. The best were:
Niall Hoskin One of my favourite teachers, who kept control with humour and likeability rather than fear. A great French teacher, who first coined an oft-used phrase of mine:
John Dabbs Known to his fans as 'Captain Caveman' due to his immense beard, Mr. Dabbs taught Geography in a truly interesting way. A very clever and entertaining man when in a good mood, he still couldn't pique my interest enough to ever like the subject. Nice try, though.
Greg Williams Welsh, and a vicious little bastard. This man came up with one of the most heinous punishments known to man: shading in every alternate square on a piece of graph paper. I've never forgiven him for that. However, it was all worth it when another class member asked him what masturbation was during a biology section of Combined Science. Never has anyone gone so red and been unable to speak for at least five minutes. Thus I felt I had indirectly exacted revenge. Especially as I hadn't done anything worth my punishment in the first place.
John Stephenson Possibly the only staff member who was regularly told his nickname (Beamer, due to his smile), and still didn't appear to catch on. Every class put Mr. Stephenson through hell, shouting abuse and generally causing havoc. It was a wonder he ever bothered turning up, as he very infrequently taught us any Physics. He even stupidly asked the headmaster to dit in on one lesson, in which we all (of course) behaved impeccably. Until the head left. However, he did play the lute extremely well, a talent that earned him ridicule, which was terribly unfair. Mr. Stephenson also introduced us to the safety video, and has the distinction of being the only teacher ever to threaten me with a prep chit for not doing my homework. Of course, he was such a fool that five minutes later he handed back the homework he didn't think I'd done.
Marie-Claude Quarin A teacher I quite liked, although few others did. She was a good French teacher, although being French would help in that. However, she did actually teach me the language pretty well. I think I got (and stayed) on her good side by being the only member of class to appear in one year's International Evening. More on this elsewhere. She was also the teacher who fell for the phone gag.
Danielle Houareau The adolescent's dream. There was always a rush in French lessons to sit at the end of a row, in order to see Miss Houareau's fantastic legs, often visible in a mini-skirt. I'd just like to point out that the main exponent of this was Ian Stone, a fact which has remained quiet for years.
Mlle Houareau usually inspired full attendance in class, partially due to her fine teaching ability, and also managed to gain a lot of volunteers for open days. I actually helped at one of these, which involved playing Monopoly in French for a morning. Of course, we only bothered using French when there were parents visiting the room.
Hugh Laverty The man with the obvious nickname. I couldn't stand dear old Hugh; he seemed to want to be a student more than the class did, and thus was extremely annoying. In fact, it was later discovered that Hugh had no qualifications for teaching whatsoever. We should have guessed.
Richard Lee A truly lovely man, again ruling by being a friendly, pleasant teacher and gaining everyone's respect. When Mr. Laverty got 'glandular fever' (a.k.a. got sacked), Mr. Lee returned from retirement to teach Chemistry again. He's been at the school ever since, and they're lucky to have him.
Peter Sanford Ah, yes, Mr. Sanford. One of the strangest men ever to teach at the school, who left amid rumours that he made a pass at one of the male students. Known as Penfold because of his similarity in appearance to the Dangermouse character, Mr. Sanford had an interesting theory about teaching Music i.e. as long as his counterpart taught something, he didn't have to bother. Hence, while we should have been learning composition for GCSE, we were actually watching The Two Ronnies or playing Consequences, which was invariably great fun. Not particularly educational though.
Jeanette Marr We put Mrs. Marr through hell, mainly because she was the one teaching us Music, unlike Mr. Sanford. All students rebel against being taught anything. Unfortunately, the music department was equipped with electric keyboards which had one of the most irritating demonstrations of its abilites ever invented. Basically, it played Billy Joel's Just The Way You Are across the various instruments programmed into its memory. Of course, when we should have been composing we were instead unplugging our headphones and trying to synchronise all our keyboards to play the demo simultaneously. Which may be why our compositions were rubbish. Well, mine were.
I'll always remember Mrs. Marr for telling me I had a "very dry" sense of humour. I have kept it intact all these years in her honour; after all, at least she tried to teach me how to compose despite the fact I was never going to be any good at it.
Iain Donald Both the previous music teachers left at the same time, and Mr. Donald became the new head of music. This was the type of man we'd needed for ages, and he was astonished to see how far we'd come under Mr. Sanford's regime: not far. It became Mr. Donald's task to get us through GCSE Music, and he succeeded admirably. My mark of C, as compared to that of the rest of the class (A or B) was not his fault; it was my total musical inability. I'd only taken it in the first place because I thought it would be a good laugh; I should have known better.
Ian Ball The other replacement Music teacher, Mr. Ball was also an incredibly good Cathedral organist, although he did surprise everyone one Speech Day by playing out with 'The Liberty Bell', a.k.a. the theme tune to 'Monty Python's Flying Circus'. Still, at least it woke everyone up after another dull year's presentations. In fact, as far as I'm aware, Mr. Ball (who left to become solely Cathedral organist) is still there.
Peter Bond Certainly not James Bond. Although he was a competent Latin teacher, Mr. Bond never had great flair in teaching, he just turned up and did it. However, he was a superb Cathedralian (the school magazine) editor. Especially as he printed some of my articles.
Peter Davies A man who experienced the death of his wife in a car accident, but still carried on teaching, which you had to admire him for. He was known as 'Dopey' due to his slow, lugubrious English teaching style, but he was far from it, posessing an incredibly sharp intelligence with the ability to turn out some choice one-liners whenever necessary. His most memorable joke was when a member of the class had been hijacked by an attractive young woman to sort out some problems backstage. Russell Matcham Yes, the great man himself. Possibly one of the most mocked teachers in the school, and one of the weirdest. Many believed he was gay, but it could never be proven. He did admittedly teach well, but always had favourites. In the 6th Form, there was a specific group of people who seemed to be in English lessons purely to answer all the questions when asked by Scratch (as he was known). Even doing the play of Nicholas Nickleby, however well the rest of us acted, there were only ever a few people singled out for acting praise. Also the only person in the English class who believed it was funny to refer to me as 'Spragghetti'. Ho ho.
Paul Kennedy Possibly the best teacher the school ever had while I was there, and he left after my first year. Encouraging, friendly, creator of the Robin Reliant Shrine, and I was teacher's pet in his lessons, which couldn't be a bad thing.
James Baker The second-best teacher throughout my tenure, Mr. Baker is the only man able to make Maths fun. Placed in the top set for the subject (due to a fluke of good performance never to be repeated), I was really enjoying myself in Mr. Baker's classes until I performed an exam to my usual standard and got demoted to a lower group. Still, he was a useful addition to the Young Enterprise group (when he turned up).
David Coxon Yeearrrgh! Spud, as he is known due to being separated at birth from a potato, was probably the worst teacher I ever encountered. I was in his form, his Maths set, and my god did I hate him. Never able to say anything nice, picking on people, making you feel pathetic; all of these were his trademarks. I was extremely glad to finally get out of his way.
John Brigden Almost as bad as Mr. Coxon, I never got on with Mr. Brigden due to a fundamental difference of opinion between us: he thought sport was great and I didn't. Of course, being a P.E. teacher, he was obliged to say that. Sadly, he believed it. Mr. Brigden also taught English, although most of us are still unsure why. He was quite good at the poetry aspect, but somehow he didn't strike you as a man heavily into Shakespeare, unless it was a bit involving Rugby, one of his favourite sports.
I've never forgiven him for the sheer embarassment of one P.E. lesson; Tom was demonstrating his muscles in the gym and daring me to show off mine, and the second I gave in and did, Mr. Brigden turned round and said, "Stop showing off, Spragg". I've never quite forgiven either of them for that one. Mr. Brigden was also something of a sadist, sending us out in the coldest of weather to run round the block in practice for the yearly cross-country run, another event I tried my best to avoid. For a list of these, see here.
Trevor White Known affectionately as Rev Trev, Mr. White has to be one of the nicest men in the world, and extremely good at teaching Religious Studies to those who are interested. Early in my Cathedral School life, he had problems controlling the class, but once it thinned to those who actually wanted to do the subject, he was in his element. Great fun, interesting, and able to put across any idea in a way everyone can understand, Mr. White has recently been promoted to deputy headmaster. And not before time. Admittedly his softness meant our mid-lesson five minute breaks usually lasted at least ten minutes, but it never stopped us learning what we needed to know. The only class where you could do something else while Mr. White was talking and still keep up with the lesson.
Eric Blackman Another Games teacher, another Welshman, and another man passionate about rugby. Luckily, Mr. Blackman never seemed to have the full complement of brain cells, making him incredibly easy to fool.
David Ogden My first form tutor, who was another deeply strange man. His history lessons usually consisted of very clever jokes which very few people understood and rewrites of historical events. Another man who despite his efforts managed to put me off history. Not that I was keen on it to start with.
If you like, you can now move on to:
Best friends and worst enemies
Of course, if you're just going to complain about grammar, you can go back to the beginning.
"Stop that inane grinning, boy."
"Send the Belfield creature back in."
"Oh, for God's sake..."
and the one we all feared:
"Now we're just going to have to go back to the beginning, aren't we?"
If it hadn't been for the fact that we had to do every translation at least six times due to disruption and having to restart, even if we were near the end, we could have finished the course in half the time.
Of course, when in a good mood, lessons also got disrupted by Mr. Fance wanting to know the latest cricket scores on his in-class television, or if he felt we deserved an episode of 'Up Pompeii'. Incidentally, he also does a mean 'YMCA', as seen on the Israel trip.
"We laughed till the tears ran down our legs," as a sarcastic riposte to a very poor joke.
When the sixth form French set decided how amusing it would be to make a very poor attempt at hiding in a tiny room, Mr. Hoskin would always play along with "Where could they have gone?" until someone gave us away by giggling. However, if someone was off ill, we could waste at least half a lesson while he tried to find someone who was never even there.
Mr. Donald was also the man who convinced me to rejoin the school choir; I'd joined early but left when my voice broke and never returned. Choir was one of the best elements of my school social life; tremendously entertaining when you're with friends who want to ass around as much as you.
The choir always had problems with the treble line, so the older members would often sing falsetto (when we weren't singing bass) to boost their power and confidence. You could tell from his expression that Mr. Donald was never sure where the incresed power was coming from.
Mr. Donald also invented hymn practice in assemblies to improve the school's singing. And it worked.
For more about the choir, see the entries for my friends Simon Parris and Chris Barrett.
Mr. Ball's music lessons were incredible, usually consisting of shutting the curtains, turning the lights out and making us sit totally quiet and still and listen to an incredible variety of pieces. I still use a track he played to us, 'Six Pianos', for 'chilling out'. It's a great stress reliever.
Going to investigate, Mr. Davies returned in a dishevelled state and told us he wouldn't be interrupting them again.
Despite never choosing me for a school play until I was about to leave, he was a great director (or co-director), responsible for many great productions. He also got me to read a lot of the plays we studied in class, partially due to repeated requests from other class members. It was the only thing everyone ever seemed to appreciate me for.
Quite why Russ stood out among the other teachers, we may never know; he was just so odd he always demanded your attention; the way he straddled chairs, read Chaucer, overacted Shakespeare, and his worrying fascination for rugby all added up to one strange bloke...
He even taught me computer studies, which I saw as an excuse to fiddle with the screensavers on some of the computers and change them to more interesting things than 'Welcome to Bristol Cathedral School'.
The best aspect was writing essays, when copying your notes word for word always got you a good mark, when you were basically handing in Mr. White's work with slight alterations.
Mr. Blackman was also an R.S. teacher. The room usually used for this had a fire escape door leading outside, which some students seemed to think was a great excuse to put people outside and see if Mr. Blackman noticed. Sometimes it could take as long as ten minutes. He also used to refer to those who misbehaved as "like children in a kindergarten", which cropped up so often it usually got a cheer when he said it.
Returning to games, Mr. Blackman had the happy responsibility of taking me for football, which I hated. Working in tandem with Tom, Martin and Chris (although Tom, fool that he was, liked football), we always asked if we could just run around the fields instead of playing the game. Mr. Blackman usually agreed, so we would run round the fields once, sneak into the changing rooms for a few rounds of cards, then head out for another brief run while we were within his eyesight. We always slowed down once we were out of eyeshot. And he never caught on that it seemed to take us about half an hour to do a run that should normally have taken about half that time.
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