We were told by our Latin teacher that a popular punishment in Roman times was to insert a fish into the rectum head first and pull it out. When pulled out the scales of the fish, which lay one way, would open out and cut the persons arsehole to flapping ribbons - to the extent that they bled to death. Nice. He also told us that a similair thing was done with radishes. When we questioned the realistic punishment value of inserting such an evidently small and friendly vegetable he explained that "radishes were different then, all big and spiny like a pineapple." This caused us to consider whether anything he actually said was true.

The substitute biology teacher was there for a mere week, and yet in that short space of time he told us that a) kangaroos have bifurcate penises b) sumo wrestlers can retract their testicles and c) a tribe in Borneo practised contraception by drilling a hole in the bases of their penises, stopping it up with clay, and then when it healed, putting a feather in. When they didn't want to get a Borneo woman pregnant, they would remove the feather. Sometimes I think this man became a substitute teacher just to travel the country telling unlikely penis anecdotes.