I have been fortunate enough to have had two Latin teachers at secondary school. Both were quite, quite mad, and via extrapolation I have concluded that being clinically insane is a prerequisite for teaching schoolboys the classics.

For my first year I had a fairly old but otherwise physically normal man possessing a fixation on dogs, the British TV show Animal Hospital and classical comedies. He looked startlingly like a non-murderous version of Doctor Shipman.

The other teacher is a wild cross between William Hague, Kelsey Grammer and Steve Ballmer with startling taste in clothes and shirts which compulsively expose his navel. Is easily sucked into prurient discussions, sometimes initiating them himself through use of personal cliches, the most common of which is "As the actress said to the bishop.", frequently appended to any vaguely unusual statement. We keep count of the number of times he says this per lesson. He was once witnessed reading a copy of the Daily Sport and, when wound up, says the word "arse" repeatedly without hesitation.

Leopold Bloom, we'd like to ask you to be PL's resident egghead. We will call you "Professor" and imagine all your posts to come from a supple leather armchair. (Like Roald Dahl in Tales of the Unexpected.) This is based purely on you having latin lessons and being called "Leopold Bloom". Nothing else. Your job will be to bring a level of class to the site, and to make occasional, ribald double entendres. Hope this is ok with you.

I'd gladly do so, Susan, but I keep forgetting my damn password.

Playground Law in a nutshell, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Such was our latin teachers love of classical civilization, he used his pupils in an attempt to re-create Ancient Rome in his class.
He got us to dress up in togas (using the long red velvet classroom curtains), and then "show me how you recline like a Roman" - in other words, get 13 year-olds to dress in a suspect way and then lay on a desk in front of him for his approval.
Ok, so we weren't brutally sodomised or even forced to whack him off, but it was all a bit odd, no ?

My first year Latin teacher Trendy Wendy once substituted in a PE lesson and took us swimming. The pre-pubescent tension was palpable as we waited for her to leave the changing room because, even though she was not fit, none of us had never seen a female teacher in a swimming cossy before. When she emerged, the gasps were audible, though not because she was a vision of loveliness.

Instead, we were confronted with the sight of what appeared to be a large spider trying to escape from under the material of her costume between her legs. No-one heard a single word that she said, as to a boy we stood in dazed silence, staring at her curly clock springs.