The lyrics from Inner City's hit single "Big Fun" could be redirected towards a child as they sit on their own, to throw a spotlight onto how popular they aren't.

"We don't really need a crowd to have a party," you'd reassure them. "Just a funky beat and you to get it started."

The onus would then be on them to get the party started. You can encourage them with other lyrics, including "It won't take a lot of thought for you to do it" and "I think you're ready, Freddie".

A second option is to tell them "you're having big fun" until a bubble of stifled emotion plops out of their nose.

Just a fairly shit – if charming - insult song; sung to the tune from the Pet Shop Boy's hit single 'Go West'.
Pascal, wrestles grizzly bears.
Pascal, in the open air.
Pascal, in his underwear.
Pascal, that's why we don't care.
If we were really so indifferent to Pascal’s habits, however, it’s odd that we spent so much time singing about how much we didn’t care.

Variation on the more commonly accepted and widely practiced self gratification pastime, masturbation. Could be Italian in origin.

According to Ste Roberts, the method involved boiling an amount of pasta (pasta type was not specified so presumably most shapes will suffice)until 'al dente', then transferring pasta to an empty jam jar, leaving the lid off but covering the top with a double layer of cling film into which a small slit is made.

Once pasta cools from very hot to quite warm, the pastabater's penis can be inserted into the jar of pasta, at which point the pastabating can begin in earnest.

Never actually tried this, however having actually written the process up, it sounds more plausible than it did 20 years ago.

Mr Boyd was banned from driving a car, after one too many tipsy-tours. This confined him to a scooter, and freed up the whole day for guilt-free drinking from a bottle he kept on his desk. This came to an end on the day that Nick Reid had a drink from his bottle.
Mr Boyd whipped around from the blackboard and yelled "Excuse me, I've already had my breakfast!"
We all sat there in silence, wondering what he was talking about. He then explained with the following: "If you're going to drink in my class, drink from a glass".
So, Nick asked if he could go and get a glass. "NO!" shouted Mr Boyd.
Cue five minutes of stunned silence. Mr Boyd just stood there, obviously livid by this point, and asked "What are you all looking at me for?"
"Because you're the teacher?" came the mousy reply from Joe Boyer. Pat then stormed out, allowing us a replacement teacher for the rest of the year.

Our English teacher's attempts to remonstrate with Edward were met with a long, protracted 'tut', followed by an exclamation that she was a 'blodclart'. When ask to repeat what he had said, she was also told that she was a 'bumbaclart', and told 'not to distress' him any longer.
The teacher then informed the young man that she was fully conversant with Jamaican patois, due to the fact that she had lived with a black guy for several years, and had him suspended for a week.
For those that don't know, my extensive research has revealed that a 'blodclart' is a 'used tampon', and that a 'bumbaclart' translates literally as an 'anal tampon'.
God, I feel SO babylon. - Mansh

Announced in 5th year that he was the dirtiest kid in the class because his name could be loosely rendered as follows: Fat Prick Screw Sac. At a time when such terms were hot currency, this lent him definite cachet. Patrick Cusack also told me leeringly one day that if you pulled your dick for long enough, white stuff would come out the end of it. Such a practice, he revealed, was called "mestempation", and furthermore he had done it himself. I thought this was the biggest load of bullshit I had ever heard in all my life. White stuff coming out the end of your dick? Chinny on, Patrick.

How could one person manage to be so feeble, yet so resilient? Patrick Seers is a paradox. The school's most prominent geek, he was the person that the regular geeks used as a cushion to reduce their own noise on the bully radar.

It was as heartbreaking as it was unstoppable. Patrick Seers. Bullied 8 hours a day, five days a week, for 5 years. Patrick Seers. Even the usual sympathetic types kind of gave in after two minutes of civil conversation, coming away with the sense that he did, somehow, deserve it. He played the euphonium.

He has also survived to become someone that exists, seems successful, and has - from limited Facebook snooping - developed a good circle of friends.

Just goes to show. It really does get better. And not just for the gay ones. For Patrick Seers.

Forgetting your kit would result in PE in your pants. If many forgot, then the hall would resemble a Blue Peter Romanian orphanage crossed with one of Jonathan King's less extreme fantasies.

This is a post-shower game invented by me and my brother. Straight after our shower, we would do a 'peacock parade' to our parents (and sometimes other adult guests) who were sitting in the living room next door. The 'peacock' effect comes from taking your towel and sticking one corner firmly between your bum cheeks and squeezing tight. Then you walk around on your tippie-toes with your head held proudly back. After a couple of laps, you go back in your room and everyone is going 'ooh isn't that funny'.
Occasionally however, in an effort to avoid the towel slipping out (from the friction of the carpet), which it sometimes did, I would stick the towel up my bum a bit too far, so that the corner went a bit brown. Then my brother would go and tell Mum and it would ruin the whole game.

A game for peanut allergy sufferers. The boy with the allergy puts his mouth at the end of the table. Other boys try to flick peanuts into his mouth. He is allowed to use a Coke bottle as a goalkeeper.

The pulling of a tie so that the knot is so small that it can only be undone with microscopic needles. A defence is to tie a two pence coin into the knot - although you may be called a jew or a gyppo if it is discovered that you keep two pees in secret hiding places.

A simple trick, and something of a once only event, the Pen Fifteen Club was used on every new kid at my school. Ask them if they want to join your club. Tell the new kid that all the cool kids are in the club. They will always want to join. At which time you take the industrial size permanent black marker and ask the victim to hold out their right hand. Then, very slowly, deliberately and neatly, write a huge PEN15. Because you did it on their right hand, the teacher will always see the PEN15. And the victim will not squeal.

If a boy asks to borrow your pencil sharpener, on no account give it to him, it means you want to have sex with him.
Conversely, never borrow a pencil off a boy, as this also means you want to have sex with him. A rubber is alright, as long as it is scented. But scented rubbers are gay, so it's not alright, because that means you want to have sex with him.

Urban Myth. Young man, overcome with stress, puts a pencil up either nostril during an exam and brings his head down on the desk. The pencils go into his brain, killing him instantly.

The rumour that everyone in the room gets compensated for their mental trauma by getting a free A* means that most people have the vague, unspoken idea that witnessing a suicide would be fucking brilliant.

A more controlled version of "pencil fencing" (qv). At primary school, someone said that if you poked your skin with a sharp pencil, a bit of the lead (ie. graphite) would be left behind under your skin, which (as far as we knew) was a real tattoo. We all tried it, but, speaking personally, any marks that were made just washed off. Easily.

In the second year of my primary school, we were all given standard edition chunky pencils, which came in red, yellow, green or blue.

Although the teacher thought she was assigning pencils at random, little did she know that she was actually defining our social status for the rest of the term.

Red, red, wet the bed
Blue, blue, smells of poo
Green, green, parasheen (a totally made up word which sounded like it should mean something cool)
Yellow was casually skirted around cos no-one could think of anything that rhymed with it.

The special 'parasheen' status was a blessing, but the glory could be short lived. An owner of a green pencil could be given a red or blue pencil in the next school term, bringing them back down to earth to join the common folk.

Those on the bottom of the social pile were known to try and colour their pencils in with felt tips, but this only resulted in green palms and being called David Bellamy.

A more elaborate and good-natured version of simply scrawling a cock on your neighbour's work. Cut a corner segment of blank paper and add your crudely-drawn phallus. When your classmate's back is turned, place your corner of paper over the corner of his work, with a carefully-placed ruler hiding the join. After your friend has noticed the ruination of his work and let fly with a suitable outraged outburst, you can slide the paper away and reveal that it was all a joke. Relief generally diffuses anger, and a jolly good laugh is had by all.

Erato, The Creature From The Pit, is the Dr Who Penis Monster par excellence - just penis-like enough so that it's unmistakably a massive penis, and just green horror-blob enough so that children could say "why are you laughing, mummy? And why have your fingertips risen to your nipples?"

Here, see for yourself - to the tune of The Spanish Flea.

Something the hard lads at school devoted much time and effort to achieve. By vigorously rubbing the skin on the back of your hand with a two pence piece (tails down was best) you could friction-burn away the top few layers of skin. When repeated enough times this would lead to a much-admired thick brown scab about a cm wide and up to an inch long. One of the more unhinged hard knocks at my school had perfected this art to such a degree that both his lower forearms came to resemble Tony the Tiger's hind legs ... At the time it made no sense either.

The incomprehensible way in which Mark Lewis used to pronounce 'penis', and the sole reason that we used to look forward to Geography lessons*. Mark would sit in front of us and mutter it to himself constantly throughout the lesson. Sometimes he included someone's name as an afterthought, but we liked it best when he attached it to a type of stream-bed erosion or the name of a country whose main export goods were being discussed.
* Apart from "Windy" Miller the teacher and his extravagant pigeon strut.

A construction devised and built by our physics teacher, Mr Ward, out of a cardboard box, with a large paper speech bubble reading "Yes Mr Ward!".
Our physics teacher would ask it questions like "Will you pass your exams?", and then answer himself in a high pitched voice, saying "Yes Mr Ward!", while jiggling the cardboard box with his hand.
One story that proves that the insanity of teachers isn't always entertaining.

All the girls of a certain age got these party bags. We also got to see a film about Becoming A Woman.
It pissed the boys off no end, as they didn't get any bag for needing a shave, or having a wank.
We would, as consolation, share our tampons with them, so we could all play wet the tampon with liquid soap and throw it at the ceiling.
Tampons remained stuck to the ceiling when I left, two years later.

My old school still sends me its twice-yearly magazine, and in it I recently read that Mr Sheldon is retiring. That's the Mr Sheldon who formerly gloried in the title Master of the Lower School at the risible Eton-wannabe institution I had the misfortune to attend for six years. In an interview for the magazine, Mr Sheldon said that he'd enjoyed his career, but the one thing he could never bring himself to enjoy was having to administer corporal punishment.

So that'll be why he used to make you spread your legs apart, bend over on his plush red leather chair, and wait, arse up, for long agonising minutes while he stood in the corner where he kept his quiver of canes, selecting one cane after the other, flexing it between his meaty fingers and swishing it through the air a few times to test its suitability for the melancholy duty it was about to perform. He was punishing HIMSELF more than anyone else. And his distaste would be clearly evident afterwards, in the way he'd stand there puffing and blowing, sweaty and claret-faced, agitated out of all proportion to the physical extertion involved in botty-whacking a small boy a few times. It was because he HATED it.

1. The teacher's pet can be fisted (punched) in break time. 2. After school, you may decide to fist your cat. Or dog.

Obscure allusion to homosexuality. The idea is that you go to Albert Square market to buy bananas from Pete Beal, and put them in a bowl. Instead of eating them, however, you put them up your arse.