When my maths teacher was introducing us to functions, she wrote f(x) on the blackboard and informed us that it was pronounced "f of x". I shared a desk with a boy called Scott, who thought she was telling a letter of the alphabet to "f. off".

He spent the next hour repeating "f of x! f off x!" - experimenting with the delicious phonetic closeness of the two words - and giggling helplessly into his own neck. No-one else laughed at all. We were 14, and most of us were quite accustomed to telling people, things and abstract concepts to fuck off.

Flashers and Proud. An organisation set up by a group of 13 year old girls with the sole purpose of lifting up their skirts or tops at random victims. If anyone complains, they are presented with a FAP membership card and told to 'deal with it'.

A word Darren Craig was once called by Gay Bill the geography teacher, during Bill's first explosive screaming fit. Bill had been a relatively harmless effeminate teacher till then but grew to rule by fear due to his mental Jekyll and Hyde turns. After the screaming fit he asked (somewhat facetiously in my opinion) if anyone had any questions. I put my hand up and asked what facetious meant, at which he got angry again. That is probably the bravest thing I have ever done.

As shouted by David W each time Miss Powell the student teacher turned around to write on the board. She wore tight cords and had a strange way of standing on tiptoes which meant she had a kind of reverse camel-toe effect.
Perhaps it was just the crotch seam of her cords.
Interestingly, she never commented or appeared to notice.

Unannounced assembly and every boy in the school herded into the hall, this sparked rumours as it was a mixed school. Almost every male teacher in the school is lining the sides of the hall looking most grim faced when the (acting) headmaster storms in and straight to his podium. He has the look of absolute fury in his eyes as he scans over 400+ bemused secondary school boys. He draws a deep breath, and speaks...
"Can anybody here tell me what faeces are?"
400+ mouths break into little grins as everybody shuffles nervously wondering where this impromptu stand-up act is heading.
"Faeces!!" he bellows at the top of voice "Shit! Crap! Stools! Poo! FAECES!!!!! What ever you care to call it somebody has made a mess on the floor of the toilets and used their faeces to write 'FUCK OFF!!!' on MY toilet wall!"
Needless to say we were all terrified to look up from the floor for fear of laughing whilst we told how the perpetrator would be caught and bought to bear over 'the most disgusting behaviour I have ever...etc etc'

Faeces soon became the new swear word when it was shouted at the top of one's voice in a half-arsed head master impression.

Sorry about the length, Chris Jennings

Dubious entry, for a dubious practice. We would all go in the boys bathroom at primary school (girls may have practised this... though it seems unliikely). Whoever felt brave would sit on the floor with their back to the wall, hold their breath for 30 seconds, close their eyes, and cross their arms over their chest, while tucking their knees up to their chest. At this point 3 or 4 remaining boys would push his chest (with shoulders, arms) as hard as they could for a 10 seconds or so. Lack of blood (and oxygen) to the brain was the result. Unconsciousness of the individual ensued.

Variants involved using the stone wall in the playground, and an excess of 6 or more people pushing on ones chest. This nameless act was swiftly outlawed, in fear of widespread braindamage. It was none-the-less the best thing we 10 year olds ever did. Apologies if it has been posted under another name. Or if any of the kids from this Nottinghamshire primary school are permanently damaged...

An oft discussed playground myth was that there were men out there with penises so huge that, should they happen to get a full-on boner, they would actually faint due to the redistribution of blood from the other parts of their body. In hindsight this seems unlikely, although I would be interested to hear if it were medically possible. Maybe the purpose was to make the more conventionally endowed feel a bit better about their pathetic maggots.

Not that I have a pathetic maggot. In fact, I do faint because mine's so huge. Don't know why I asked. Case closed.

A girl who sat near me in 11th grade English came into class one day, looking rather sweaty and pale. As the teacher read from Tom Sawyer, this girl began to moan low like a wounded animal. Suddenly, her eyes rolled up into her head, she barked like a seal and then passed out, her face slapping down on the desk in front of her. But as soon her head hit the desk, she let off a fart like a goddamned foghorn. A fart which smelt like death.

Fainting was a brief but common practice amongst 7 year olds in 1979. The would-be fainter and his assistant would stand by the playground wall. The fainter would breathe deeply in and out as fast as he could, whipping up a nice dizzy spell of hyperventilation. After 20 deep breaths, he forces out his final emormous gob of air, and just as he does so the assistant lunged and pressed his chest against the wall as hard as he could. God knows how it works, but the fainter will immediately conk out and collapse, usually falling slightly unconscious and no doubt nearly dying in the process. I've no doubt Michael Hutchence did something similar on his final night alive, only he got his cock out first.

Steven Theseby was an odd kid. At the age of seven we had no notion of homosexuality but we instinctively knew something was different about him... he was a Fairy.
During the summer holidays, his father took a hammer to his head while he slept. He claimed at his trial that he did it because he was scared of a Russian nuclear attack. He went to Broadmoor.
I don't recall ever talking about it but I think that, deep down, we all knew his father killed him because he was a 'fairy'.
After all, his older brother seemed normal and he didn't get murdered...

The inexplicable and incredibly funny typing error of a south wales history teacher which was inexplicably substituted for "Laissez-faire" in an A-level history class handout. This inexplicably caused such paralysing humour in the otherwise placid, go-getting, middle class CiW school students that the entire lesson had to be suspended and disciplinary action taken.

There was a brief craze in the final year of my primary school for mousetrap-type contraptions disguised as chewing gum. When you went to take a piece, a bit of metal snapped down hard on your unsuspecting finger. Hilarious!
At the age of eleven or twelve, my fingers were still quite wee (still are) and it REALLY BLOODY HURT. By the way.

One boring day in the grey and brown surroundings of my secondary education a fake hand appeared. We decided to try it out on one of the brothers (Jesuit in training) and placed it on his chair. He came into the room and did not sit down. He did not look in the direction of his desk or chair for 20 minutes. The tension was electric. When he eventually looked down and saw the hand/part of bloody arm (not particularly well rendered - standard joke-shop fayre) his face went a dead off-white and he squealed "Eeee! What have you little bastards done!" - we were all simultaneously stunned and delighted, expressing it in the only way we knew how... Whooping, hollering and laughing. When our mentor realised what was going on he turned a shade of red which, to my sincere regret, I have not seen anywhere since.

You may advise that For Coughs and Colds, Take Lemsip. You've just said Fuck Off you see. You might also want to suggest at the start of the lesson that you wish to have a Maths Debate.

Consequence-free rudeness. Extending the ring finger, or making V-signs with the middle and ring fingers, will cause initial shock and offence, but when it is pointed out which fingers you are using, the parent or teacher will find themselves impotent in the face of your devilish wit. That's how it's supposed to work, at least.

As a ten year old, mid Falklands crisis, I piped up that I thought they jolly well belonged to the Argentines anyway.

Beware passing off the opinions of hip left wing parents in the midst of Tory deathgrip.

During a church service (for charity) hosted by my school. our music teacher one Mr o'mahony had been the one organising it all. As relatively funny as he was, he couldnt stop mocking me and two other friends in someway or another each lesson. during the rehearsel we all said at the same time, ' i bet he falls over at some point'
Sure enough as all the year 9's walked majestically through the church holding lit candles we saw his head bob up and down then down and down in a smooth arc. He had tripped over the stairs which he claimed he forgot where there, but lets just face it. he's just clumsy

Not a good idea in the presence of others, as they will all invariably start chanting "She fell over!" and push you over again, in a nearby patch of mud where possible. Falling over is an even worse thing to do in the lunch hall, where falling over can result in your lunch being tipped all over the floor and three hundred children laughing at you simultaneously. The headmaster will invariably choose this moment to walk in and randomly give a table of laughing boys detention as you run off crying. (You may recognise the voice of experience in this.)

Playground Australia Special!

A schoolroom version of the game show "Wheel of Fortune", also called "Duster Roulette".

On any hot summer day in Australia, the ceiling fans in each room will be running at the highest possible level. When the teacher leaves the room, a student in the front row dashes to the blackboard, picks up the board duster (which should be one of those big old wooden ones, not these modern foam versions which are, frankly, shit), screams "Fan of Fortune!" and then throws the duster into the fan.

A number of outcomes can occur:
1. The miracle of the duster passing through the fan untouched.
2. The fan smashes the duster in a sideways motion, sending chalk dust all over the room.
3. The fan hits the duster and propels it downwards on to someone's head. Hard.

Naturally, (3) is the best outcome. I still recall with fondness the moment when Patrick Dwyer - the fat-ginger-freckly-twat - got hit by the duster above the eye, splitting his eyebrow and spilling claret. Fantastic.

At the Bungay Town Fete, two kids dressed up as Klansmen and, I shit you absolutely not at all in the slightest, won second prize in the fancy dress contest. They lost to a kid dressed as a womble. The story amuses me so much because the fact that they came second almost suggests that the judges knew what a good Klan outfit looked like, and knew that Cobby and Jaff had missed some important gilding around the cuffs. Or something

The 'fanny banjo' (famously accompanying the willy orchestra) was abbreviated and concatenated to 'fanjo'. Playing 'Air Fanjo' was identical to playing air banjo, but with the strumming hand slightly lower than usual.

An incredible ability discovered by probably the best looking girl ever to grace our High School. She took to performing her talent during assembly, much to the surprise and delight of the remainder of upper school. After a while she appeared to have developed the capability of producing an inward 'sucking' noise to accompany the outward 'farting' noise, the only way I can describe this sublime sound is to have you imagine someone rhythmically thrusting a plunger in and out of a small bucket full of custard. She received such admiration for her expertise that before long several other girls had mysteriously discovered they shared her talent, producing sporadic low pitched squelching noises across the lecture theatre every other day. The final result culminated in daily renditions of the 'Fanny Farting Frog Chorus' that lasted for weeks, causing utter disruption and chaos. Fabulous.

I have since discovered many girls can perform this amazing bodily function, but for some inexplicable reason, don’t.

A liar. As is, "Psst! Wanna buy some fannies?". Unknown origin.

A girl - let's call her TS-B, made the error in secondary school of declaring to everyone that she had shagged Tom Cruise. We told her she was lying, but she wouldn't confess - so it was her own fault that her sexual appetite had a kind of open season declared on it. She started it.

"She put a hamster in her vag face first and it suffocated."

"She put stick insects up her fanny. They all died."

Inevitable first word after walking into any room in a Fonz-style way. Both hands were held out to the side, palms down, to hush the adoring crowds, and a gentle nodding gesture of recognition was made by the protagonist.