During English, Mr. Shaw was distracted from teaching us Shakespeare long enough to tell us about his fierce hatred of all rodent-kind, particularly squirrels. "Little plague-rats with fluffy tails," he proclaimed darkly. The next day, Kristin brought in a somewhat larger-than-life plastic facsimile of a squirrel, which was immediately christened Roadkill, and given pride of place at the front of the classroom. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Shaw instituted the practice of leaving small gifts (pencils, jewellery, money, sweets etc.) on Roadkill's 'altar', which was mandatory before every test 'if we wanted a good grade'. Songs and psalms were soon to follow. So whenever anyone tells me a depressing anecdote, I can usually top it with 'my English teacher forced me to worship a squirrel.'

How Mr Shaw got from hating squirrels to worshipping the infernal beasts as his masters will presumably never be known - Conor

Roy Bird was a fat, ugly smelly kid in our year, who defied all convention by not being treated with disgust. In fact, we was almost popular.
It was considered to be an honour if you were chosen to be Roy Bird's special helper. At dinner time, he would randomly select an individual from the group clamoured around him, by method of getting another group member to spin around, eyes closed and point to a person.
The winner got to accompany Roy in tasks such as aggravating the school retard, and collecting cigarette nubs from behind the 6th form block.
(Out of interest, Google Roy Bird, and you get... gasp! It's Fred West! A bit.)

Remember also that the phrase biggest gob can easily be replaced with many other choice expressions. Might I suggest biggest fattest anus? Or perhaps, shittiest knickered pikey?

What you did was, you sneaked up behind someone and, with one hand over your mouth, held the other over the person's head and counted silently to yourself. If and when the person noticed, they had to cover their own mouth, whereupon you would shout "[Victim's name] has [whatever number you had managed to count to, or alternatively a completely made up number] boyfriends!"

There was a variation where you held two crooked fingers over your mouth, and your victim had to do the same, and woe betide them if they got it mixed up... Woe betide indeed.

Also a bubble forming in a trough full of spunk, because ill-mannered children are blowing into it through straws.

The form of Satanism which consists of nothing more than memorizing the Lord's Prayer backwards and drawing pentagrams on our New English Bibles.

Also an Indian restaurant in Manchester. "Eating at the Gaylord" was far too tempting a euphemism for oral sex to be kept to oneself.

Whenever a policeman comes to school (either to talk to you about careers and shit, or to arrest someone, depending on the calibre of your school), it is customary to point them out to a ginger, exclaiming "Ooh, someone hasn't paid their ginger tax!"

The ginger in question is then expected to reply "Damn, I knew I forgot something", and then spend the rest of the day in hiding. If he doesn't do this, you may hit him.

The residential home of choice for pupils studying Community Studies between 1980-87. Once weekly visits included pupils interviewing residents, helping the staff and writing a weekly report. This culminated in the pupils coming back to Merry Hill House at the end of the school year to give presentations to the staff and residents.
One girl did a talk on 'lovely old Elspeth and her fondness for peppermint creams' Barry Rush did a song written for the residents which warmed the hearts of everyone. Then Roy Bird presented us with his highly complicated, mathematical graph of the most common causes of death amongst residents and even predicted at what age the remaining residents would die and of what cause.
Our school was subsequently banned from sending pupils to the MMH.

Birmingham also has the delightfully named places of Camp Hill, Lickey End, Acocks Green and Shaftmoor Lane. Hours of fun.

Town planners do it deliberately you know. Rude-sounding place names are what made this country the Great Britain that it is. Ah, I can almost hear the sound of a suggestively brassy trombone and Esther Ranzen chuckling her way through a link to a piece on cot death. Nostalgia!