Tits and Bums and Masturbation...

Ah, the giddy days of Monty Python. Tits and Bums and masturbation and the Brand New Monty Python Bok (yes, 'Bok' and not 'Book'). Those giddy days back in 1973 were so well... giddy. 

So there I was a 16-year-old rugby-playing curly-haired Adonis, drinking in the pubs, chasing the girls, bending all the rules (rules are for fools) and winning the School Senior Arts prize. Of course, I deserved it, I was good at art despite getting stuck in Roger Dean mode for a while.

Anyway, I won the art prize, a book token. I'd won the junior prize a few years before, another book token, and that time I'd chosen a thin volume on Kadinsky and another on Dada (two smiles meet towards the child-wheel of my zeal the bloody baggage of creatures made flesh in physical legends-lives... Yeah, Tristan groovy, know what you mean mate). This time though, three years later I was in rebel mode so instead of some arty-farty book I decided upon The Brand New Monty Python Bok, which was (in my humble opinion) just as surreal as any book on Dada and much more thought-provoking (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

Sadly the headmaster of the school - Geoffrey 'Stosh' Goodall (Geoff to his stuck-up mates and 'SIR' to me) - didn't agree. He was one of those pseudo-intellectual, 'oh, I do love cubism and Picasso', down-nosing, brown-nosing, bring back National Service for the oiks, sixties-cool jazz club, smarmy, smiley, breeze around briskly in cap and gown, frowny, scowly, confidence killing arsehole types of headteachers. As you can see I wasn't a fan of him and I wasn't a fan of his, basically because I did everything a sixteen-year-old chap could do to undermine the outdated rules of the school (well, it was founded in 1559).

He once checked my satchel and found that I wasn't carrying around my prayer book and had scribbled all over the school rules in my prep-book. Well, not eating in the town was a ridiculous rule, did boiled sweets and apples count? He couldn't answer that one (kerching!), I got a month's Saturday detention for that one. I was the first to modify the school uniform so that it followed the rules but only just, and Stosh didn't approve of or even appreciate my white penny collar shirts, my slash-back black cotton blazer with contrasting white stitching, and my light grey turn-up baggies. He suspended me for that (not my only suspension) but couldn't and didn't try to stop me from wearing my new 'uniform'. I was one of 'the gang of three' who wrote and produced three issues of an alternative (and apparently subversive) school magazine entitled 'Ecstasy' before it was 'closed down' by order of 'The Management'. More Saturday detentions for that one, but at least I was a 'webel'.

Sadly, the year I won the Senior Art Prize the guest speaker was Lord Longford. Remember him? The anti-pornography, free Myra Hindley ('she's not so bad'), God-spouting, looney left Labour politician. Well, Stosh felt that my Monty Python Bok wasn't a good match with L.L., especially when Stosh took off the rather innocuous paper dustcover and found 'Tits and Bums' as the hardcover underneath and particularly as, when he flicked through the book, he 'came across' (tee-hee, f'nar) a full-page ad for masturbation starring a naked Graham Chapman ('who was a homosexual for God's sake!').

Anyway - long story short. I never did get to shake Loony Longford's hand or get to climb the stage to collect my Monty Python Bok to what would have been rapturous applause I'm sure. I did, however, get to kick my chair over and storm from the hall singing the Lumberjack Song at the top of my voice (I cut down trees, I skip and jump, I like to press wildflowers. I put on women's clothing and hang around in bars.) Happy, happy, days and even more detentions.

There's a bit of an ironic twist to this tale. Stosh's son Howard went on to write music for Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder, The Comic Strip Presents, and The Young Ones. He even played keyboards on TOTP dressed as a Womble. I don't know what Stosh thinks about outré comedy and art as a result of his son's escapades and I really don't care. He really was the worse kind of pompous, silly, arse in my opinion, so he taught me one thing - never to be anything like him. I was still good at art though.