The Happiest Days of Your Life

Fond memories of school days from MMT in MK:

But in reminiscing fondly about my own experiences growing up going to a school with no uniform, I am suddenly struck by the memory of the only time someone in our class was ‘censored’ for their clothes.

There was a kid who came in one day wearing a Samantha Fox t-shirt – and this was Sam Fox in all her Page 3 glory, fully breastically nuded. Quite rightly, our “Shared Time” teacher ordered him to turn it inside-out for the remainder of the day – I’m not sure how he thought he was ever going to get away with that, even at Stantonbury.

It only strikes me now that this was a t-shirt in a child’s size (he wasn’t the tallest or broadest of 13 year olds), begging the questions a) who would buy / allow their kid to buy t-shirts like that, and b) who made them?  Page Three t-shirts for young ‘uns – for what better example of British life in 1988 could you ask?

 For the benefit of any younger readers, I should point out that "Samantha Fox" was a formerly popular geographical location, akin to Paris, Jordan or Silicone Valley.  For the benefit of older readers, do yourself a favour and get hold of a copy of The Happiest Days of Your Life. It's got Alastair Sim and Margaret Rutherford, not to mention Joyce Grenfell, as the insanely chipper Miss Gossage ('call me sauasage ... good egg, there's our croc!'). Lovely.

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Update: if I'd wanted to be a tedious pedant, I'd have taken issue with the phrase 'begs the question' which doesn't mean what many people seem to think it means, but I liked the rest of this post so much that I'm disinclined to quibble.