Nerd Do Well (21 page)

The teachers’ strike became such an annoyance to the students of Brockworth Comprehensive (due mainly to us having to remain outside in the cold during breaks) that the pupils themselves decided to strike. One lunchtime, during a particularly snowy winter, a rumour went round the school that we were not going to return to lessons after break in protest at staff action. Sure enough, when the bell rang, a sizeable chunk of the school population remained on the tennis courts to some amusement from the staff. News of the demo spread to neighbouring schools and soon copycat protests were playing out across the area.

By day two, the local news companies were on the scene. However, by this time, a deep schism had split the protesters down the middle. The problem was mainly one of credibility, due to the ringleaders of the strike being those pupils least likely to take any interest in school whatsoever. The most disruptive, delinquent and apathetic pupils became suddenly politicised and passionate about student welfare, simply because it enabled then to legitimately skive.

It was hard to present a tenable manifesto to the staff and media when our main spokesperson was a notable glue sniffer and cat murderer. By the time the local correspondents started interviewing the children involved, the Brockworth Pupils’ Front had spawned a breakaway front, the sceptical and less militant Pupils’ Front of Brockworth, a group of students who agreed with the fundamental tenets of the original action but were quite cold, didn’t want to get into trouble and, if they were honest with themselves, wanted to get on with lessons because exams were coming up.

I was in the latter camp and admitted as much when the regional news show,
Points West
, interviewed me outside the school gates. Unfortunately, my blistering polemics were deemed too controversial for teatime television and instead they went with the more measured comments given by Mark Simpson, the boy standing next to me. Nevertheless, that evening I appeared on television for the very first time; not all of me, about 50 per cent if I remember correctly; but it was enough to qualify as an appearance – you can see my face just before I look sullenly at my eighties slip-on shoes and white socks, allowing my dirty-blond hair to fall into my eyes in case any girls were watching. By the time the ringleaders had nobly marched the four and a half miles to lay their protest at the Gloucestershire County Council building, securing another day away from the classrooms all in the name of fairness, everyone else was back indoors. It was quite exciting, although nowhere near as exciting as a camping trip to Biblins would have been, bummers in the woods or not.

Welsh Bicknor was intended as a bonding experience for the first-years at Brockworth Comprehensive. The school was a nexus for a number of junior schools in south-east Gloucester and the classes were only sporadically populated with familiar faces. So, in an effort to integrate us, we were taken away from the comfort of our families and delivered to a sort of manor house in the countryside, supervised by a couple of teachers and a number of sixth-form girls, one of whom I fell hopelessly in love with.

Laura was blonde and buxom and won my affection by holding my hand as we hiked to a place called Symonds Yat. She can’t have been older than sixteen but to me she seemed like a woman. She smelled fantastic and there was something exotic about her big chunky jumper, tight jeans and pixie boots. I stayed by her side for the entire trip and became her devoted fan.

As part of the last-night celebrations at Welsh Bicknor, the students put on a cabaret, a mixed bag of songs and poems and sketches. To impress Laura, I decided to draw on my experiences as a racist comic at the Salvation Army and class entertainer back at school, performing a stand-up comedy routine comprising observational material I had written myself. It was a concept I didn’t entirely understand, assuming the trick was simply to mention things that the audience could relate to. The jokes were mainly about children’s television programmes and relied on members of the audience being familiar enough with them to find the memory of them funny. For instance . . .

Do you remember
The Wombles
? They were pretty funny, weren’t they?

It didn’t occur to me to make any particular funny observations about them to qualify the set-up. Not quite grasping the notion of observational comedy at this point, I neglected the crucial process of developing a comic take on familiar reference. I didn’t use the touchstone of well-loved children’s entertainment to launch into an amusing analysis of sexual politics beneath Wimbledon Common then segue into some topical stuff about the difficulties of puberty. I’m sure the question of which Womble Madame Cholet was sleeping with would have brought the house down with the kids and teachers alike. Of course, what I should have done is step out in front of the assembled throng, lit a cigarette and said . . .

Do you remember
The Wombles
? They were funny, weren’t they? Which one do you think was fucking Madame Cholet? Anybody? I mean, I’m just going by personal appearance here but surely Tomsk has got the biggest penis. He’s all muscles and confidence, isn’t he? Sure he’s a little slow but then what does that matter when you’re packing trouser grams. Am I right, ladies?

Mind you, as an unintelligent bodybuilder, chances are he’s using anabolic steroids, in which case (wiggles little finger) knob tax!

Could be Tobermory, I suppose. He has a porn-star moustache and a backless apron. He does seem to put a lot of his energy into making stuff, though. Maybe he lost his balls in a workshop accident involving a lathe and a tin can.

It sure as shit isn’t Great Uncle Bulgaria; I mean, he was probably an absolute fuck machine in his day but the dude is never out of his slippers.

I don’t think it can be Bungo because no one gets laid wearing tweed and it definitely isn’t Orinoco because he is clearly gay. Come on, the big hat, the way he wears his scarf over the shoulder, just off the neck? He has way too much style to be straight.

Which means it can only be Wellington. Who’d have thought that little pipsqueak would be capable of boning such a hot French chick? I’m amazed. Actually, I’m not, it’s always the nerdy-looking guy who whips his pants off in the changing rooms to reveal what appears to be a German sausage in a bird’s nest. I see it all the time in the showers after rugby. One week the guy next to you is a fly half, a week later he’s a prop forward. Not that I’m looking . . . oh, who am I kidding? Of course I’m looking. It’s like a vintage-car rally in the boys’ changing room. Everyone’s checking out each other’s junk and pretending not to be impressed.

It just seems to me the change happens so quickly. But when? I’d like to know, because right now mine still looks like something you’d find on top of a seafood cocktail (close your ears, Laura). Do you wake up in the morning like David Banner in the woods, to discover your shredded pants next to you? I mean, puberty’s insane, isn’t it? Am I right, guys? Girls, I can’t speak for you, I’ve never even seen a vagina. Well, I have but it was about five years ago and I don’t really want to get into that now. Which is coincidentally what I said at the time . . .

What I mean is, I don’t get to see what goes on in the girls’ changing room. Not since they blocked up that hole in the boiler-room wall. I’m kidding, I’m kidding . . . It’s still there!

Waiting for puberty is like waiting for the postman to bring you something fun. Every morning you leap out of bed and check if it’s there, only to be disappointed. Difference is, it’s not the
Incredible Hulk Weekly
you’re waiting for, it’s body hair, a deeper voice and a hairy little monster, and no, I’m not still talking about the Wombles.

You’ve been a great audience, thanks so much for listening, we’ve got a great show lined up for you this afternoon. Next up, Erica and Meredith will be singing ‘Frère Jacques’.

I’ve been Simon Pegg, thanks for listening . . . goodnight!

Mr Calway would have removed me from the makeshift stage and exacted swift justice before I’d even got into the stuff about Tomsk’s tiny cock, and he read the
Guardian
(Mr Calway, not Tomsk. Tomsk would probably have read a tabloid. I should tour this stuff round schools, it’s golden!).

Despite the lack of any substance, my nostalgia routine played well with my peers, probably due to the cocksure delivery and the fact that the mere mention of Wombles brings a smile to anyone’s face. In fact, we were so pleased with our little revue, we decided to transfer it to the sports hall where it would be performed for the rest of the school.

The Monday after we returned from the wilds of Welsh Bicknor, all bonded and different as if from combat, the school assembled in two shifts to witness our variety show. First up were the second- and third-years (or Years 8 and 9 as I believe they are called now). This was what comics often refer to as a ‘tough crowd’. The second-years had just advanced into a position of power, having spent an entire year as the most vulnerable and disrespected group in the school’s social infrastructure. It’s the way of every school and no doubt always will be. No longer the weakest in (micro)society, the newly promoted second-years, empowered by their status, replicate the disdain heaped upon them as first-years and inflict it on those who have replaced them.

This would actually later backfire on me in a karmic fashion once I had made it to the heady heights of the second-year, when I selected the wrong whelp to push around in the corridor. While lined up outside a classroom, a caterpillar of sheepish-looking first-years filed past us, clearly worried and uncomfortable, much to our smug, old-hand amusement. I singled out one skinny little candidate and shoved him against the wall as he shuffled past. He resisted me slightly, which I didn’t expect. First-years were supposed to automatically kowtow to their superiors – it was the law of the blackboard jungle and resistance was rare. I laughed it off and just about hung on to my dignity as my victim stalked away, scowling.

Over the next few years, puberty hit this boy like a freight train. He literally doubled in size, and not just in terms of height. A time-lapse film of his physical development over just twelve months would have been a ghastly spectacle, reminiscent of Jekyll and Hyde. He became muscular, almost misshapen, and sprouted so much hair, it looked as though he had been covered in glue and rolled in the dog basket. Even more worryingly, he grew in status. He became one of the hardest boys in the school.

It was only a matter of time before my former victim decided to act out his revenge on his one-time tormentor. It started quietly enough in the corridors between lessons, where he would often go out of his way to shoulder me into the wall, pretending he hadn’t seen me but making it very obvious that it had been intentional. His recollection of my unprovoked shove had not been lost amid the swelling folds of his brain as I had hoped. I was clearly being dished up a revenge that, after three years, was still being served ice cold.

The shoves soon became more and more frequent and I began to plan my passage between classrooms specifically to avoid him. In the end, he exacted his final vengeance under the fabricated pretext that I was hanging around with his girlfriend. It’s true, I was friendly with the older girl he was dating, but there was nothing going on. I had hoped her friendship might have eased the tension between Bigfoot and me, but in the end it was used as an excuse for violence.

I was sat in the cloak bay at lunchtime with a couple of friends when he rounded the corner, immediately cutting off my escape from the cul-de-sac of hooks in which I had trapped myself. He asked me if I had been having it away with his missus, to which I responded in a panicky negative. He then walloped me, rebounding my skull off the wall behind me. I remember feeling a vague sense of disappointment that he had initiated his assault with such a flimsy accusation, even as his fist slammed into my forehead. A furtive little henchman encouraged his boss to finish me off, but the big kid said it was pointless because I wouldn’t fight back. He was absolutely right, there was no way I was going to enter into physical combat with this behemoth – it would have been suicide.

I’d only had one fight before and that was when I was nine, with the boy who turned out to be my second cousin, and it had thoroughly traumatised me. I had called him out after a dispute over a game of rounders and met him on ‘the green’ after school. During the scrappy struggle, it occurred to me that we weren’t just trading blows in some noble pugilistic ceremony, this boy was actually trying to hurt me, any way he could. My eyes filled with tears at the sudden horror of it all and I called a halt to proceedings, conceding defeat.

He was tougher than me, from a more physically oppressive background (his mother had once punched the headmaster), so he was more equipped to deal with the situation, although I think he was as relieved as me to see the skirmish end. Four years later, there was no way I was about to reprise the experience with somebody twice my size, so my long-time persecutor stalked off scowling, leaving me humiliated but relieved that it was over. He met me outside a classroom later that afternoon and asked if I was going to report him. I mustered up courage enough to say ‘no’, even managing to add a grumpy disdain, although in truth I just wanted the trouble to end.

A few months later he got into an altercation with Martin (the other school nutter) about who was the hardest in the school and found himself on the end of a punch so forceful, it dislodged his eyeball. I experienced only a glimmer of
Schadenfreude
. Eventually, relations between us thawed, although we never became friends. I was walking towards the sports hall in my fifth year and felt a hockey stick slide between my legs, threatening to pull back against my plums. I spun round with a tremendous ‘fuck off’ and found myself face to face with my old enemy. He laughed and didn’t take offence. By the time I left Brockworth Comprehensive, we had even exchanged semi cordialities, something of a relief, since the threat of his physical presence had never fully gone away.