Darren Carrington was fucking loopy, I swear. He used to insist on walking home with me and my mate, even though we both hated him, and would not speak to him all the way home. He would just walk along, listening silently to our conversation, and then leave us when our routes seperated. But this was only the start.
At the age of 14 or 15, he let it be known that he had joined the navy, and his given reason was that he wanted "to go and bomb pakies in Bosnia". Over the next few months we got running updates on his naval exploits - about how he had sworn aboard ship and been fined £10, how he had got angry and punched his captain in the eye, and as a result had had his hat taken away, and to top it all off, his commanding officer let him take HMS Belfast, one of the biggest ships in the fleet, into dock, but he had run it up on a sandbank, and would have to go back the next night to rescue it with a crane.
He would come into class with technical manuals for a Ford Capri, and a bag full of spanners. He laughed like gas coming out of a tap, a horrible whining groan of a laugh. He would say "I don't mind them niggers, but I just can't stand pakies." He was obsessed with Star Trek, but appeared to have never seen it.
He had 4 brothers - Wayne, Dan, Stu and Steve. Wayne was apparently "inside for welding a paki to a lamppost". When we asked him how he had defied the laws of physics by bonding skin and metal with a flame, he said that he hadn't actually bonded them, but had carried the poor fellow, still conscious, up the lamppost, tied a metal bar round him and welded that in place. Strangely enough, we still didn't believe him.

Speaking of Wayne, there was a morbidly fat, pigeon-toed boy in my year called Wayne. His older, bespectacled brother, similarly fat, was called Glenn (like the fat kid off Grange Hill). I can't hear those names now without thinking 'fat'. Did anyone else know any lithe, slim, fit Waynes or Glenns?

I know quite a few fit Waynes, but you're right about the Glenns. Every Glenn I know is short, fat, and wears glasses and roleplays.


For a moment, reading your submission, I thought "Roleplays" were a kind of shoe. Maybe they should be.

All Glenns are short, fat and wear glasses, and all Barry's are immeasurably overweight. Without fail. There are no exceptions, not even exceptions that prove the rule, except Glenn Madeiros and Barry McGuigan, and they're just the exceptions that prove the rule, and probably don't even exist.

Wayne Hemmingway(not the fashion dude)was too skinny to look after himself.For normal fun we would steal his stuff of him and destroy in front of his face,it was quite a spectatator sport.Best of all though was when four of us(all supposedly his"friends") each took hold off a limb and started pulling to loud cries of "pull,pull,pull Wayne apart.

a glenn...the geek who used to carry his bag with both straps over his shoulders when it was "cool" to carry it with the strap diagonal or just the one strap, when we indeed took the piss he give us the reason why..something to do with a disease that his great grandad had,no one ever listened that long!

I know of a Wayne who was slim and elegant but fucking ugly. He missed his maths GCSE exam to be at the birth of his first child.

In our primary school there was a tall lanky guy called Wayne who was nickmaned Plug (Bash Street Kids) due to his exceptionally narrow neck and big ears, and a kid called Glenn, who i will always remember for the day he laughed/choked at lunch and the strawberry milkshake he had been drinking squirted out of his nose and all down his front!
Now, all grown up, i know very 'normal' and nice Waynes and Glenns, therefore maybe once they hit puberty nature takes ahold and sorts them out?!

My younger brother vaguely knew a Glenn who was not fat, nor did he wear glasses. I didn't personally know the boy that well, but last I heard, he was having an affair with his best friend's father.

Actually, the special needs teacher at our school (Mr. Williams, I think) was called Glenn and he was neither short or fat. He did wear glasses, though. And bow ties.

I don't know anyone called Barry, so I couldn't comment there.

What about Barry Chuckle, off that inane kids TV program. He was pretty thin.

barry was the HOTTEST guy in our class and ALL the girls fancied him. Unfortunately he was a weird bastard with mental problems. I'll always remember his sketches...running around the classroom screaming 'I'm a chicken,I'm a chicken!' while all the desperate-to-impress girls laughed hysterically....and check out pussy furball..