Barry Beelzebub – The Devil’s Advocate
A weekly column reproduced from the Bristol Evening Post

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I am outraged to hear that a woodwork teacher from Devon is being investigated after complaints of cruelty to pupils.

His alleged offence? He dragged a recalcitrant child across the room by his hair and stuck his head in a vice. Marvellous stuff. Just the discipline we need in our schools.

Unfortunately the child, who had been talking in class, managed to escape just as the vice was being tightened. I suppose the poor teacher will now be dragged through the courts and then ritually burnt at the stake on a pyre of unsold Guardians.

I shudder to think what the European Court of Human Rights would have made of the teachers at my inner city grammar school all those years ago. We didn’t so much have discipline as hand-to-hand combat.

Our geography teacher, Mr Bradbury, had perfected a sideboard tweak could bring tears to the eyes of the biggest skinhead, while Mr Lewis (Maths and Physics) could take the fag end out of a fourth-former’s mouth with a blackboard duster at 30 yards.

Worst of all was a malevolent midget of a gym master, unaffectionately known as “Nunky”. Offend this balding ball of spite and you’d end up hung from the wall bars like the little men with beards who frequent cartoon dungeons.

I suppose spending their formative years strangling Japs gave them a robust perspective when it came to keeping unruly teenagers in order. One needs only to glance at that Platt boy from Coronation Street to bemoan their passing.

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If Britney Spears married Bryan Ferry, she’d then become Britney Ferry. I just thought you’d like to know that.

The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this newspaper, of the five who didn’t make it into the Popstars band, of the colour blind wino who designed the new NuLabour logo, or of anyone who thinks it’s racist to point out that doing favours for rich cronies is part of Asian culture. Bye, bye, Mr Vaz.

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