Help We’ve Gone Back To School | And William’s Shameful Secret

It's time to iron the white shirts and dust off the silk ties - William and Jordan are going back to school! The boys discuss how long a school tie should be, going to Saturday school, and why Jordan had to regularly forge his mum's signature. There's also a selection of school-based dilemmas to assist with, including having a crush at 16, and how to get a dodgy looking stain out of the crotch area. Want MORE Help I Sexted My Boss?: https://sextedmyboss.komi.io/ If you want to get involved you can email us mailto: [email protected]. You can follow us and DM on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sextedmyboss/ and TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@sextedmyboss, and watch the latest episode every Tuesday and Friday on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/SextedMyBoss. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  William and Jordan will be with you in just a moment, but first, here's one for your queue. Vicky Patterson has taken on a huge charity challenge, getting from Newcastle to London by kayak, bike and on foot. Now she's on her podcast Get a Grip with a proper, honest, blisters and all debrief. If you need a nudge to step outside your comfort zone, then this is the one for you. Once this episode's done, search Get a Grip and get it playing.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to Help I Sexted My Boss, the podcast where we help you navigate the challenges of modern day life, answering your 21st century questions and finding solutions to everyday dilemmas like, can you tell a posh bloke off for filming themselves in a restaurant? Or what should you do if what you thought was a shot was actually man porridge? And of course, what should you do if you've accidentally sexted your boss? But we're not your usual agony ants, are we? William Hanson, the UK's leading etiquette expert.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  No, we're not. Jordan North, Capital Radio presenter. I'm more A star pupil, you're more five star criminal. That's from Ben.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  They're getting worse, these.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Not producer Ben. But at least if you're going to be a criminal, be a five star criminal.

• 1:16Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  None of you are like four star criminal, five star.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  Before we do our toast today, we've got to say me and William are in our school uniforms.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  We're dressed as schoolboys, which I don't know how I feel like to.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  It's unusual for you.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  Blokes in their late thirties. Are we in our late 30s now?

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Well, I definitely now am, yes. You're normally dressed as a schoolgirl.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  So it makes a change for you to be a schoolboy.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  I don't know how I feel about it, but yeah, we're doing like a school special because everyone's back to school this week. I wanted to do it last week, but because William's posh and from a posh school, he was saying his school doesn't technically go back to the.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  I looked at my term dates for my alma mater.

• 1:58Speaker 00

  You were like.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  What?

• 2:00Speaker 00

  You were like all the officers' kids at school. They all used to like have 10 weeks' school holidays.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  We had nine, actually.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  Start a bit later. So we're doing like all things back to school today, as well as the usual bits as well.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Sometimes it's good to go back to, back to school, back to basics, regress.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  I've, I've got the fat tie. That meant you was cool.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Did it?

• 2:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. Year 11 has had this fat tie, you know, you had your fat tie and then you took the rest underneath.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Were you not told off?

• 2:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. You're like, you'd do it for like the start of the school, you'd walk in with it. And then as soon as, as soon as the teacher spotted you, they'd be like, oi, tie. And it had to be down to, I think it was four or five buttons. God, teachers.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Surely it should start where your trousers, stop where your trousers start.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Teachers hated where your top buttons were undone as well. You said top button.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Right. Well, there's yours. Oh gosh, I have made such a.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  I've got long sleeves here, but I weren't allowed long sleeves at school.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Were you in a short sleeve shirt?

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. My mum said she, she won't buy me long sleeves because she said they're hard to wash. So we had to have, we had to have long sleeves. And I was like one of only year 11s that had long sleeves because all lads had rolled up like this that was cool and all girls thought were fit. So I had short sleeves, like I worked for NASA, you know, in the 60s. And they're always short sleeves and like pencil ties. And my mum, I'm not getting your long sleeves. They get manky. They get mucky. They're hard to wash.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  She needs Marseille soap if she needs to get the stains off. Today's toast is from Charlotte and Winnie the dog. It goes to Zoe and Chris and Charlotte and Winnie say, can I please get a toast to my friends Zoe and Chris who are getting married at the end of September? They are the most amazing, funniest and caring people I have the pleasure of knowing, and they both deserve all the good things in the world. Plus they were the people who introduced me to your podcast and I've been a dedicated listener ever since. Well, Zoe and Chris have a lovely wedding day. This is to you.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  To Zoe and Chris.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  I hope it goes all without a hitch.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  Oh, that's good.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Lovely.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  Before we get on to all things back to school.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:53Speaker 00

  How was your birthday?

• 3:54Speaker 01

  I had a lovely birthday. Thank you very much.

• 3:56Speaker 00

  Good.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  That's the windows done inside and out, back and front. Yes. That was my birthday present. That just coincidentally was the day that the window cleaner could, could come. So that's nice. They got the bird poo off my skylight because the last time I had the windows cleaned, literally the day later, a bird with diarrhoea on both skylights. Lovely.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  I don't think a bird with diarrhoea, I think birds just generally have loose stools anyway.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  You want to have a look at what my skylights look like?

• 4:21Speaker 00

  I think birds genuinely just to piss us off shit on the worst possible place. They never shit on the wall or they never shit on the roof.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Go to the loo. Like find a loo.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Like little bird, they shit on your car, they shit on your windscreen, they shit on your doors, they shit on your windows, they shit on your skylight. Yeah. Pigeons especially. They know what they're doing.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  They do.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Have you ever been shat on, like guys?

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have actually. I've got.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  By a bird or someone else?

• 4:50Speaker 00

  By a bird.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  What would you do if a bird shat on your windscreen? Break up with her?

• 4:56Speaker 00

  That's very good. William's jolly joking away there.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  That's Paul's, isn't it?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  It's not very 2026, is it?

• 5:03Speaker 00

  I know. I always watch and I'm not like, you know, I don't know what the word is, but sometimes I watch Fools and Horses, you know, I'll watch it every Saturday afternoon if I'm free. So you got yourself a new bird rudders? And part of me is like, oh, I'll get away with that now. But my dad still says it. Yeah, he's got a new bird. Anyway, yeah. So you had a good birthday. Did my card arrive?

• 5:23Speaker 01

  It did. Well, yes, your card and indeed assorted presents. You're very generous. So let me tell you what happened. My parents were over. In fact, I should just say, dressed in my school uniform, leaving the house today with my parents in the house was weird. It was a bit of a, it was a bit of a brain thing for them. They came down and they looked at me and they went.

• 5:40Speaker 00

  You didn't get on the tube like that, did you?

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:42Speaker 00

  Are you fucking joking?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Yes. And the train terminated at Paddington. So I've had to walk through mainline Paddington. There was a problem with the Elizabeth line, His Majesty's Elizabeth line. And so I had to, yeah.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  Can I just say, as a man in his late 30s.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:59Speaker 00

  It's like, I don't think you should be going out in public dressed as a schoolboy.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  I'm not dressed as a schoolboy. Well, no, but my school uniform, let's describe our school.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  You're dressed as a schoolboy.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  So I am in a navy blazer, which is not my school blazer. This one's bespoke. I'm in a white shirt, just a white shirt. I am in my silk reproduction school tie that I have sent off to have our polyester school ties, house ties reproduced in silk. It's a bit frayed at the edge because it's many years old. And I'm just in grey, grey slacks with a shoe. It has a, it has a whiff of schoolboy, but it.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  Can we stop saying schoolboy? It's freaking me out.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  You're the one who said it.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  But yeah, don't go, don't go dressed in public. Anyway, your mum and dad are with you today.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So when I came downstairs and they sort of looked at me and went, this is weird.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Did they take a picture of you on the front step?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  No, I did. I did. I'm an arse. Should we have like a photo of me with mental satchel first day at school?

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Can you do that when you get home?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Please?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  No, because I don't want my front door taken a photo of. I could come and do it with your front door.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  My front door.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  I'm not coming to your front door. Your back door.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  You don't have one, do you? You're looking hackneyed.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't. Just choose a random front door. Just walk down the street.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  That's unfair. On whoever's front door it is.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  Anyway, so they were there and the presents arrived.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Yes. So doorbell goes and it was, it was His Majesty's Raw Mail and in come, and it was a big, big slab, a big, big envelope that said Moon Pig. And I went, right, well I know who this is from. Opened it and it was a big thing of chocolate. No note. I went, well, it's Moon Pig and there's no note. I know who this is from. So I thought, oh, that's nice. He sent something lovely. Half an hour later, different branch of His Majesty's Raw Mail. Then comes a big envelope with a card, which is here. It's a lovely big massive card.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  Very classy, I must say.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  I always say the bigger the card, the more common. But this is lovely.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  Excuse me, that's a Wendy North special. Every birthday.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  And there is Wendy North. There's me as Wendy North.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  Can I just say, this is what my mum does. Every birthday and Christmas, she sends a Moon Pig with pictures on us. Usually she's got from the family WhatsApp group and she does the largest one. I think it's very lovely and classy.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Well, you picked some lovely, you picked some lovely pictures. You've got you and me backstage having our makeup done on tour, you and me dressed as different Kylie's. Gorgeous photo. Me dressed as your mother and me with a, with a Domino's pizza sitting on a bed in Sheffield.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  And then inside is you, your sort of thirst trap at the gym.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  That's your favourite picture of me. So I thought I'd put you in there.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  It's not necessarily my favourite picture. It's the one I laugh at the most. It's.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  I think this is a cool classy card.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  To William, beautiful handwriting. To William, wishing you a very happy birthday. Hope you have a great day and get lots and lots of presents, but most importantly, lots and lots of attention. Love you to bits, Jordan. Kiss, kiss. Which is very nice. So thank you. And then half an hour later, door goes again.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  There's a box of Moon Pig flowers. Now, Moon Pig, I don't want to tell you how to run your business, but why, can you not like send them all together?

• 9:02Speaker 00

  I was iffy about this. I were the flowers because usually if you're sending flowers, I've never done it with Moon Pig before, but I thought this is what I'll do. I'll send them with Moon Pig, see how it goes. Because if there's anyone that's going to be honest, it'll be you. Will he only go? Because the picture looked great.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Well, I've arranged them now.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  I've put them in a nice vase.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. Be honest, would, would you, could I send them again to other people?

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Your mum would love them.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  What's that meant to me?

• 9:32Speaker 01

  No, no, because they're nice. There are so many of them. They're like whites and sort of off whites and gerbres. Love. So no, I think I'd go for it.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  I think they're nice. And it was lovely. It was lovely to, it was lovely to receive your stems on my birthday.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  Fair enough.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  So thank you. Speaking of birthdays, I actually have a gift for you as well as you giving me a gift. I was meant to bring this in last week, but I forgot. This is a digital meat probe thermometer so that you never need to use that glass thing that's broken and that is manual.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  I had that for my chicken last night, actually.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Well, I'm not convinced it works darling. So this is, this is the best rated one on the internet.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  And you stick it in the meat.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  Shall we check it out? Ben, bend over.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a very sharp point.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  All right, thank you.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Pleasure.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  That's great. That'll be really, that'll come in handy.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Wasn't that expensive, but I do think you need a reliable meat thing, especially for chicken.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Beef, you can get away with it being a bit underdone, but for chicken, I want it to be.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  I had a medium rare burger in Spain. It was great. We can't get them here. You're not allowed, are you?

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Um, it depends if, uh, and I always ask when I'm ordering burgers, I go, am I allowed to ask if it's, can I have it medium? And if they say, oh, no, it has to be medium to well done. That means they didn't make the burger on site.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  Ah, okay.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  So you wouldn't want it anyway.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Did you ever, when you had your birthday, did that always mean you were in school or were you still on summer holidays?

• 10:59Speaker 01

  No, I was always on summer holidays. It was just at the end. So you'd have my birthday, we'd celebrate that with my friends, do the pasta making class that we did one year. Then we would go back to school.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  Lucky because that meant you avoided birthday beatings.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Well, not necessarily.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Remember, oh, they're dead. You'd just go on with two dead arms because if it were like your 13th birthday, you got 13 digs.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Because you were 14th of February, so yeah, that's always in term time.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  Sometimes it was half term, but sometimes term time. And you'd never, when I was, when I was at school, you'd never tell anyone it was your birthday. Because if people were going to your birthday, I know people who got egged and flowered on the birthday.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  There was, there was, there was a bad one for me one year. Well, I, I think I'd broken up with one of my girlfriends and it's.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  One of them? What were you at school?

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Player.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  Casanova.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  What can I say? Um.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  And you were how old?

• 11:49Speaker 02

  This is so weird. I'll, I'll go back to that story, but I bumped into one of my ex-girlfriends in the cafe downstairs the other week. She was in the area to pick up her wedding ring.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  Wow, it could have been me.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  It could have been me. Um, but there was one birthday in particular where I think in the aftermath of this sort of fairly significant moment in the friendship group that I, like innocently had been like, this isn't right for me. I'm on to the next one. I got a particularly bad round of birthday beatings.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  That's not nice. Did you have that at your school?

• 12:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  No?

• 12:21Speaker 01

  No one, no one got beaten.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  Talk, talk to me because we, we've talked about it now and then, but tell me about William Hanson at school. Did you have a nickname? What was your nickname?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I had a, well, I think we've said this before. I was, um, uh, Bacon.

• 12:34Speaker 00

  Yes. Why was that again?

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Because Adam, my friend, basically, we were talking about breakfast the next day and instead of saying William, he had breakfast on the mind and said, are you going to breakfast tomorrow? Bacon.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  And then my brother's nickname was Egg, so we were Bacon and Egg.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Great.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  And then my parents became known as Chips and Beans. Yeah, public school humour.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, very much.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  But Jay, my brother is still referred to as Egg by certain friends. Uh, only really Adam now still calls me Bacon.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  I didn't know about Chips and Beans.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Did you not?

• 13:03Speaker 02

  No.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  No, Bacon, Egg, Chips and Beans.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Couple more questions as we're back to school and people.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Did you have a nickname at school?

• 13:08Speaker 00

  Yes, it was Dingle.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, yes, yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Burnley. Um, what was your bag and what was your pencil case?

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Uh, I did have a briefcase at the end of prep school.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  You were literally well from the in-betweeners, weren't you?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Uh, briefly, but then after that, I mean, I think I did have a rucksack, but then I, I don't know then what I had.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  All the year sevens looked like tortoise sauce, didn't they? Turtles.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Turtle, yeah.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  The blazers tube. Did you not have a Pepsi Max pencil case? I had that. I had that for two years and it was.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  I think I had a Smythson one.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  You didn't have a Smythson pencil case? What was that about? A grand?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  No, don't be stupid.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  Smythson, did you, so I had a pull string bag. Do you remember like a, so yeah, this was.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  We had that, that was our PE bag when we were.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no. So you had your pull string bag for your books, which is like a Nike Adidas one. Then you had a JD pull string bag for your PE kit that went over one shoulder and you were, this was like 2005, six. You were cool. I've got some pictures of me in school, actually. I'll, I'll, we'll get them up on the carousel.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Ours, ours was always go to WH Smith's and like pray for your, for your mum to get you a new pencil case.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Sometimes you'd get given one, often you wouldn't.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Did you fancy any teachers?

• 14:16Speaker 01

  No, actually.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  No, I didn't either. No.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  What?

• 14:19Speaker 00

  No, I didn't fancy any teachers. Everyone fancied, everyone fancied Miss Crank. In fact, I think my dad did it, uh.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  What, what was that?

• 14:28Speaker 00

  I think my mum and dad had an argument at, um, parents' evening because my, I remember getting in the car and me, me, my dad weren't even bothered, ate at parents' evening. He went, she were all right, that Miss Crank. And I went, what's that meant to me? I noticed that most chatter you've been in all of them.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  What, and for those of us who didn't know Miss Crank, describe Miss Crank.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Oh, she's my favourite.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  What subject?

• 14:48Speaker 00

  Uh, so I had, I had three favourite teachers. I had, uh, Miss Crank, Miss Wilson and, uh, my form tutor, Miss, uh, Scott.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Okay, but Miss Crank, how did she look?

• 14:58Speaker 00

  ICT.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. And look back now.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  And obviously you're, you're so good with tech now.

• 15:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, look, look back now. She was probably really young because she's still there now.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Miss Crank taught you how to get Chrome onto your laptop?

• 15:10Speaker 00

  So, yeah, uh.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  That is, that is a mad realisation. Like, obviously, like, I've got friends who were teachers and it's like, they were literally 21.

• 15:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's mad. They were like, and at the time you're fully well out. Miss Scott, bless her, our form tutor.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  Think of this, she had all the noofs in her class.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. So all my brothers and stuff, my mum, my mum, one of them that were in every other week. She used to come in and go, right, which one is it this time?

• 15:34Speaker 01

  But describe Miss Crank. Why did, why did your dad fancy her?

• 15:38Speaker 00

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  How old, how old was Miss Crank roughly, do you think?

• 15:42Speaker 00

  Probably then late twenties, early thirties.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Okay. So what now will be?

• 15:46Speaker 00

  I don't, yeah. I've still speak to her now. She was, I did a special, a series with her recently. She's, she's great.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  What was your?

• 15:53Speaker 01

  And she was Miss Crank, not Mrs Crank?

• 15:54Speaker 00

  Everyone was just Miss, even if it was.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  What?

• 15:56Speaker 00

  Even if it was Mrs Wilson, you'd say Miss Wilson, Miss Scott. We just did in our school. We just missed.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Very straight school. No, no, no, no.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  No, we used the right honorifics.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  What was your favourite subject?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  English.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, mine too.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  And media studies.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  We didn't do media studies, no. We did Latin.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Um, did you have a planner, school planner that your mum had to sign every week?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  No one had to sign it. We had the Blue Book and a prep, a homework diary, prep diary.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  Okay. Because my planner, I'm not, even now, if I was a horrible person and wanted to get money off my parents, I can forge my mum's signature. So good. Because obviously your planner would say when you had detentions and you had to have it signed. So I just used to do my.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Oh, so she would never know.

• 16:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I just used to do my mum's signature myself.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  And did she sign it Wendy with a Y or Wendy with an I?

• 16:43Speaker 00

  It was Wendy, it was just a W. I'm not going to give her a signature. Okay. But yeah, I can still, do you know what? I could probably still do my mum's signature.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Do it for me. We won't, we won't show this.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  This is mad. I can still remember it. And I always remember how she did her R's.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Oh, she has a little heart.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  A kiss. Um, did you ever have a detention?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  You, oh my God, you never had. You know Katie, Fissel and Katie?

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. She had one detention in school and she still bugs her now.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  I had them.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  I think I came close, but I didn't get one.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  I remember my dad taking me to Blockbuster because I didn't have a detention one week in school. So as a reward, they took me to Blockbuster and I could get any film I wanted.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. You never had any detentions?

• 17:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Um, no, we had a, we had a little sort of, how big was your planner?

• 17:30Speaker 00

  Like an A four.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Oh, A four. Oh, no.

• 17:33Speaker 00

  A five.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Hours was like, you know, the size of a passport, basically. And it was a week across a page and you'd write.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  What? That's so.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  How many times, did you ever, yeah, you didn't have to get a signature?

• 17:43Speaker 01

  One per term.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Did you ever have to write your parents' signature?

• 17:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, all the time.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  No, I didn't at all. We had to, if I was then going to be off games, I'd have had to get an off games note from my parents or from the house.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  Was that PE?

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Uh, no, that was sport. So that PE was like an academic subject, sport. And then everyone on, I think it was on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, you did sport in the afternoon.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  And September going back in PE was always cross-country, weren't it?

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Well, we, yes, we did what were called the pens, um, the long pen, the medium pen and the short pen. I hated it. I think I did it one year. Yeah. But for some reason they were called pens. Only happened once a, once a year. Hated it.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Worst subjects?

• 18:23Speaker 00

  French.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Oh no, maths.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Were we?

• 18:26Speaker 00

  Uh, I, yeah, I were rubbish at maths. Yeah. I was in bottom set and then I got bumped up from my GCSEs to set four, which I went much better. And then I had to go down again.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  What was the school?

• 18:39Speaker 02

  You had five sets?

• 18:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. Is that not normal?

• 18:42Speaker 02

  We had four.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Oh, we had five.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  How many sets did you have?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Uh, for each, were you streamed, were you streamed per subject or just generally?

• 18:50Speaker 00

  Per subject?

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, fine. Oh, well, I was in maths set seven, which was the bottom set. And then I went up.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  Set seven?

• 18:56Speaker 01

  I was, I'm terrible at maths. I know.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  But there can't have been that many people at your school.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Set seven?

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:02Speaker 00

  Oh my God, I'm in set five and I'll have to have a fucking, in jail now. Set seven. Set seven, you absolute thicker.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  I was terrible. I went to set six.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Sorry if anybody's in, like, I was in bottom sets, but I, I didn't expect that from you. Sorry.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  I was in top set for everything else, but for, or second to top, latterly.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  I was in set two for English.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Way, very good. Um. But yeah, no maths, set six, latterly, science, I can't, things I can't remember. It's like when people say to you now, what did you get for your GCSEs? I literally cannot remember.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  Oh, I can.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Sorry to any, sorry to anyone doing their GCSEs now or about to do them. I know it's the most important thing in your life at the moment. Just when you're an adult, nobody cares.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  I got, uh.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  I'm just about to tell you that.

• 19:46Speaker 00

  I never got any As. I got two Bs, mainly Cs and an E.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  I can't even remember.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  I think I got a U actually. I hated maths, so being the knob that I was when I was 16, I just didn't fill in the second part paper.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  What?

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, I should not have gone.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  What was the school lunch like at yours?

• 20:03Speaker 00

  Um, at school, yeah, so we had, it depends, some weeks you were first to go in dinner. And then others you had to wait around 20 minutes whilst the first lot went in, which was always annoying. So it depends what year you was in, do you remember? So you'd be starving just waiting around in, uh, in yard. Uh, but I loved dinners, I had them both buttoned up, I had Julie on one side and Val on the other. I can still remember the names. And I'd go up to Julie and we had garlic bread, chips and gravy. It was like a soft garlic bread, it was great.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Why were you eating my father?

• 20:33Speaker 00

  Um, and then we would, uh, eat it and then I'd go up and get seconds.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, but yeah, it was all right. Sometimes get a Jackie potato and then Jamie Oliver came in and messed it up for everyone, didn't he?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  I don't think he messed it up, I think he made it a lot better.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  No, no, no, Turkey Twizzlers never did me any harm, that's all I'm gonna say.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Now look at you now.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  Exactly. What about you, what were your dinners like?

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Uh, lunch, well, we did have dinner because it was boarding school. Um, we had lunch, uh, breakfast lunch and dinner. And I can't really remember what we had, I didn't love it. I often didn't go to lunch. Um, no.

• 21:06Speaker 00

  What?

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Didn't really go to lunch, we'd go to breakfast.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  You had breakfast?

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, we didn't do packed lunch and then dinner, dinner was quite nice, you know, curries, cottage pie, that sort of thing.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  How posh were your school?

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Chicken keevs, as we now call them.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  What, you had chicken keevs?

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had the catering department, so it was different.

• 21:27Speaker 00

  I remember once they served sausage and mash and it got round the school like wildfire. We were buzzing. They just, I think they had some sausages left over and determined they'd some smash. And everyone were just like, they got sausage and mash, it was great.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  And what was it, what was a day like, what was, at what time did you start, what time did you finish?

• 21:44Speaker 00

  Can't remember, I think it was, I think it was like 10 to nine, you had to be in for form, finish for three.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  But how, what was registrat, when did you have registration?

• 21:51Speaker 00

  Form.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Oh, form, that's what you called it?

• 21:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's being formed.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  I thought you meant you had to be in the.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  You had to be in form for 10 to nine and that was 10 minutes. Or was that assembly? And then I think about nine, I actually can't remember, and then nine, but I remember you finished about, I think we finished at 20 past three.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Gosh.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  We're going to period eight by then. Uh, we had chapel at eight thirty, which was the assembly, but that was the biggest thing. So we'd have a 20 minute service of prayer.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  Every morning you had to pray to God.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yes, and then on, on Saturday, we had congers.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  Saturday?

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  Did you go to school on Saturday as well? What Saturday, what time on Saturday?

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Same times, in for congers, which was congregational practice, shortened to congers because it's public school.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  You did the conga at school?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Oh, I wish we did, it would be more fun. Congers, C O N G E R S. So you did hymn practice, so you'd do three or four hymns and you'd practise the hymns. And then you'd go into lessons and then we'd finish Saturday school about one. And then latterly, that's when I'd go home, uh, or if you did sport, you then did sport.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  I'm so glad I was working class, genuinely. I couldn't think of all the worst, going to school on a Saturday.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  And then we had, on then three Sundays, a term, we had chapel on the Sunday. So we had to go in again on a Sunday and that was an hour.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  The only time we went to school on a Saturday was to climb the roof.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  That's mad.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  But if, I think it's when you are a boarding school and you've got people, you know, international students, et cetera, and they are living away from home, you've basically got to do something with them. So you thus just do Saturday school.

• 23:24Speaker 00

  What was your bell? Did your teachers go mad?

• 23:26Speaker 01

  The chapel bell?

• 23:28Speaker 00

  That bell's for me, not you.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  I think, yes, I have heard that before, but we would have, it was manually, uh, it was manually pulled by the verger every, every 15 minutes. Manually pulled the bell.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  You're joking.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  And then on Saturday, on Sunday, when it was chapel, because bizarrely, the verger Alan, who's a great friend, uh, his day off was Sunday, which I always think is odd for a verger to have their day off as the Sabbath. Um, which is, you know.

• 23:52Speaker 00

  He can't be pulling bells every day at week.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  But that's, that's the major church day as a Sunday, don't have that as your day off.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  Pull your bells every 15 minutes?

• 23:59Speaker 01

  No, not every 15, every 40. You'd have a bell to say end of lesson, then you had five minutes to get to the next lesson and then it would go again. And if you weren't then in your classroom by that second bell, that was, that's about trouble. Uh, but I was the verger, I was a campanologist on a, on a Sunday. So I would do the chapel bell to announce that everyone had to walk to chapel. So that was my job. Uh, would you do anything differently if you're doing school again now?

• 24:21Speaker 00

  Probably all of it.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Like what? Would you pay more attention or not?

• 24:26Speaker 00

  Probably do maybe in maths, yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  What about you?

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Um.

• 24:31Speaker 00

  I did all right.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  I'd just say no more often, like when they're trying to make you do things like the, the cross country pens, I'd say no.

• 24:37Speaker 00

  Well, you had to, that's all.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  And actually like detention, okay, what you're gonna, you're gonna put me in a room where I can just quietly get on with work? Lovely. But I genuinely don't, I don't think that's a threat.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  We had isolation, that was even worse.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Even better?

• 24:50Speaker 00

  Did you have that?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  No, well, we might have done, but I didn't have it.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  I got put into, because I was always detention, I was a bit, how can I put this? I was a bit cheeky, right? And I once got put into isolation, that's where you got taken out of lessons.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  And you're just sitting in a room on your own?

• 25:04Speaker 00

  I walked into that and that was like prison for me and I thought, um, this ain't me, this. This, there, there was a lad with a cigarette behind his ear and a burst nose and I thought, I'm not this naughty. And you know when that, that chubby guy at the start of Shawshank Redemption walks in and they're like, I'm gonna give him five minutes. And he starts quiet crying, that with me and I thought, I'm a bit bad, but I'm not this bad. And it were good for me, isolation were horrible, it were a windowless room. Real strict teacher, they took it in shifts and you had to be on a table on your own and you couldn't speak and you just had to like rewrite. Like it meant you were so bad, you got taken out of lessons.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Gosh.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  I got taken out of lesson, yeah.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Well.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. It was a wake up call for me, I thought, I'm not with these retrobates. This is, this is different level of shitheadness, this.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Did you have anyone, we had someone called a marshal, who was in charge of discipline and making sure our uniform was correct. And he's literally, he was an ex, uh, army officer and his, he was a major and his, his, he had a separate office. And if you weren't in lessons or you had to go and see the marshal, you were told off by him.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  God, no, that was his job to just bollock kids.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Yes, and I remember thinking if, uh, whatever career, I mean, at school I didn't want to be an etiquette coach, even though I started being it and it was gonna be a career. So I could be a school marshal.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Continuing our school theme, uh, the team and I have been doing some investigating to put your deputy head girl debate to bed. Because you cannot remember who the deputy head girl was.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Do you want to, at this point, have one final guess of who it might have been?

• 26:37Speaker 00

  I honestly, I thought it was Jade Maroxan.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Jade Maroxan, sounds like the thing you go into a B and Q shop and ask for.

• 26:45Speaker 00

  So, but yeah, I can't quite remember and it's bugging me. Fraser Ewing, I think it was Fraser Ewing was our, our head boy, I'm pretty sure.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Okay, well the.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  I remember this was 20 years ago when I left school, 2006.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Um, well, we have been in touch with Mrs Crank.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  No way, really?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  We've been exchanging emails, she's a delight. I've got a golden.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  She's great, she's great.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  She's especially complimentary about your dad, weirdly.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Thought it was a bit odd. I've got a golden envelope, or goldenish envelope here, and inside is the name of your deputy head girl.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  God, I'll be able to sleep at last, really? This has been bugging me, this.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  It's a birthday card, it says, birthday boy, it's your day, dearest William. Hope you have the best day, love, Mrs Crank. P S, Jordan's deputy head girl was called, drum roll.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Rebecca Lingford.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Oh shit, yes, of course he was Becky Linford. Oh, that's gonna bug me. Now I can sleep, it was, so was Jade Weiss deputy head, it was Becky Linford.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  It was Becky Lingford.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  Really, really good at sports. In fact, really good at sports, she was like shit hot at PE. She had best triple jumper I've seen in my life and I've been watching Olympics. Honest, Becky Linford, of course.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  So Fraser Ewing, Fraser's a very, um, posh name.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  He was quite posh, Fraser, yeah. Was it Fraser Ewing? I'm pretty sure it was, was head boy, he was, Fraser was head boy, it's, it's Scottish.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Scottish?

• 28:24Speaker 00

  Well, his dad was Scottish, he used to always wear a Scotland top, there you go.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Well, there we go, well, thank you, Mrs Crank, thank you for the card and thank you for, uh, settling that debate.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  Well, I've been doing a bit of school research about you.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  And sending some messages behind your back.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  And you, you think you're quite good at school, don't you?

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Generally.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  Well, I, I have a message from someone who would, uh, who would beg to differ, Liam Hanson. Uh, and they, they're telling us what you were really like at school.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Hello, Jordan. Oh, it's my brother. Hello, William, James, William's brother here. Couple of stories I can share with you about William not being a hundred percent squeaky clean during his school days. The first one, he was accused basically of vandalism of breaking a light switch. Now, I think I'm right in saying he has denied it to this day. Oh yes, I was young. But I don't think it's ever been proven decisively one way or another. Then when he was a lot older, he was an early adopter of the podcast, so long before sex did. Yeah. He was doing a podcast with his.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  Friends, George and Ashley, and as part of it, they would prank call senior members of the school or other bits of the school. And I can only assume that is why William was never made a school prefect, but I was.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Well. Ah, see, I had you down as a prefect.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  No, no. Well, we'll get on to that in a minute. It's a little scab. I was, I was in prep school, but not an upper school.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  So did you break the light switch?

• 29:56Speaker 01

  So the story goes, this was in my school before Clifton College, St Brandon's. I was, I don't know, five, six. Um, and the, you know, like, it was a cord light switch, one along the cord, and it had been, it had got wrapped around something. And so it was dark. So I jumped up to try to pull the light switch and pulled it down. And it thus, because I was, you know, obviously stronger than I looked and didn't really understand how corded light switches work, aged six, it just came out the ceiling. And I believe the headmistress came in, I won't say her name, and said, you deliberately pulled that down. I said, no, it was wrapped round. And so apparently, I can't remember this, but my mother does, because my mother got a phone call, I deliberately wrote the light switch.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  No, I was trying to do us all a favour because the changing room was in darkness and I was trying to pull the light switch down. And my mother would never forgive that headmistress because I got told off quite unnecessarily, apparently. So thank you, James, for reminding me of that. Shall we do an S K terminology on prefect badges?

• 30:57Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, let's do that.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Just to continue our school theme, after these messages, I'll tell you more.

• 31:06Speaker 04

  It's William. William. The etiquette geek. His knowledge. Knowledge. Quite unique. He'll give you manners. Manners. Subtle tweak. It's time for William's Etiquette, Etiquette, Etymology of the Week. Cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  So where do prefect badges come from? Well, the prefect system is very old. Were you a prefect?

• 31:30Speaker 00

  No, kind of.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Milk monitor?

• 31:33Speaker 00

  Free milk? That was, Thatcher got rid of that in the seventies. Free, free milk?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  No, you may, you may have paid for it.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  I was overhead projector monitor in year six.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Of course, fine.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. But then I got, I got banned from that for doing V's to all assembly.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Well, quite right.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  To be fair, Adam Palmer dared me. And he still, and he were right, goody, goody.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  Swat.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  So the prefect system dates back to the 14th century, where the oldest boys in the schools given charge over the younger ones. But what about the badge itself? Well, this is a new add-on, arriving alongside the rest of school uniforms in the early 20th century, sometimes in silver or bronze, depending on the rank, sewn or pinned onto the blazer pocket on the wearer's left-hand side. One possible origin story for prefect badges is from the 1930s, where an English grammar school needed a new badge for their army cadet corps, but the corps ended up using a different mandated badge instead. So the leftover design got handed down to the prefects instead. So a symbol of academic seniority, at least in that case, started life as army surplus. It's a good reminder that, that a lot of school tradition isn't ancient wisdom handed

• 32:40Speaker 01

  down, it's just whatever was lying around and got repurposed and made official. So there we go. Did you have a school song? I mean, you went to many schools, did any of them have a school song?

• 32:50Speaker 00

  No.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Did you not? We had an unofficial, I mean, our school song was called, I mean, it's, it's so ick, the best school of all. Well, I know. In the best school of all, it's not even a good song, but we had an unofficial one, which was fun, which I'll see if I can remember.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  I'm just going to warn you now, it's going to be public school by humour, so it's going to be not funny.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  We want no more history. French is a crashing bore. Science should vanish and drugs should be banished and maths thrown out the door. What a good idea. Classics are a mystery. Music, what a drag. And the teachers teach us nothing because they spend their time doing nothing but nag. Boom. I can still remember that, I have not sung that in 20 years.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  See, that was your humour. I got Bluetooth someone being captured in Afghanistan in year 10.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  And it's still, that image still haunts me to this day. No one should see that.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  No, they should not.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  It's horrific. Still remember it.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Incredible that you can remember that.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Thank you. I was actually genuinely quite impressed with that.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  That was, that was kind of.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  But also incredibly, incredibly awful lyrics.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Well, what was your school song?

• 34:00Speaker 02

  I don't have a school song.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  We went to normal, he's the most middle-class boy ever, and he, even he didn't have a school song.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Is he? Jack? Sophia? No.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Did you go to a Catholic school, is he?

• 34:12Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 34:13Speaker 00

  Were you told by nuns?

• 34:14Speaker 05

  No, we had a couple of priests, but no nuns.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  Now it's time for your questions and dilemmas. Remember, if you need our help with something, then get in touch. We can send you tales of trepidation to [email protected]. Or you can DM us, we're at Sex and My Bus on socials. What have we got now then? Please, Willie?

• 34:32Speaker 01

  This is from anonymous. Hi, William, Jordan, producer Ben, I'm writing to you today with a crush dilemma that I need significant help with. For context, I'm a 16-year-old boy in year 11, about to sit my GCSEs. Remember, no one will ask you in 10 years. I have had a crush on this girl, let's call her Maddie, and we've been friends for a long time and get on really well. Back in April, I asked Maddie out and was rejected, as she said she didn't want to date in high school. I found that, I found that understandable and hoped I'd be able to move on from this crush I have had for about a year. Unfortunately, I still have a crush on Maddie several months later and don't know what to do. We've remained really good friends throughout the situation and still message on a regular basis, several times a day. What is frustrating me is that so many of my friends constantly, constantly say that she is flirting with me, but I simply don't know what to do.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  And I'm giving the wrong impression, as if I'm still trying to get with her when she's already rejected me. Any help would be much appreciated, as I genuinely have no idea what to do. Thank you very much for reading my letter, as your podcast has helped me through some very dark times in my life, and with this podcast, it has been a much-needed break. I look forward to your response. Anonymous. Oh, bless you, anonymous. Well, you know, there are plenty more matters out there, is what I'd say. Don't worry too much about it.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  You could try one more time.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  And be like, look, what about when we finish school? Why won't you want to? I think, anonymous, she'll maybe be impolite and says she don't want to date in school. So just try and move on. But trust me, you think Maddie will be the love of your life now in school?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  You won't even remember Maddie.

• 36:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. You're talking to two old men here. They were, they're telling.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  All right, less of the old.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  They're telling you how, like, you think you're in love.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  And it'll, yeah. You'll meet many more Maddies.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Who was your crush at 16, at school?

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Don't know. Who was yours?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  I can't remember her name.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  Very good.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Matron, probably.

• 36:26Speaker 00

  Didn't you, didn't you go to an all-boys school?

• 36:28Speaker 01

  No, sadly.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  Oh, was the girls there as well?

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, they let a few in for balance.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  All right, okay. Well, look, yeah, try not, these, if she said no once, maybe it's time to take that and, and move on. Maybe one more time?

• 36:42Speaker 01

  No, I'd move on.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  If, if after the second time, then absolutely don't pester her.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  It can be quite all-consuming, a school, a schoolboy crush, can't it?

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  It's because, and I mean this with absolute respect, it's maybe because there isn't, other than lessons and sport or anything curricular that you're doing, there isn't an awful lot else to worry about, and so thus it, but, you know, once you start having rent to pay and having to find a job, you'll, you'll move on very easily. This is from Dan. Hi, William and Jordan, my friends at school used to routinely put glue on my crotch without me looking. This resulted in having a very embarrassing-looking stain that was incredibly difficult to remove. I have two questions related to this. William, what is the best way to wash super glue out of school trousers? And Jordan, what would the perfect act of revenge be for this? I'm still friends with some of these degenerates, so revenge could still be achieved.

• 37:29Speaker 00

  Next time you're at pub, just go in, like, do you want a pint? And squirt super glue on them. Go, ah, you got, come on, your trousers.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  That would be me, I would do the same thing now, 20 years later.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  I'd use a PVA.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  I'm still going to get Stuart Polkington back.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  I thought you were going to say Stuart Morgan.

• 37:44Speaker 00

  He, he set me.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  That is not a chairman emeritus, Stuart. That's a different Stuart.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  Set me up big time in school, loads of times. I'm still, yeah, there's still quite a lot.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  I, in terms of super glue out of trousers, I've never had to get super glue out of trousers. It also depends on the material of the trouser, but very similarly, over the weekend, I had to get candle wax off my candlestick. And so you pop it in. Don't twist that.

• 38:10Speaker 00

  I know.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  It dripped all down it.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Candle wax off your candlestick?

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Candle wax, so the candle had melted and gone right down, and then the silver candlestick, it had then gone all over the silver candlestick. Pop it in the.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  It's a candlestick, isn't it a candlestick holder?

• 38:24Speaker 01

  We just call it a candlestick.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:27Speaker 00

  That's what a candle.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Isn't that what the candle is?

• 38:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the candle and the candlestick.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  No, that's the candle holder. Ben's right.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  No, it's a candlestick. Could someone Google candlestick and see what comes up? Also, I mean, don't out etiquette me.

• 38:42Speaker 00

  Anyway, carry on.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  I just always thought that the candlestick meant the candle.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  No, that's a stick, that's a, it's a candle, but it's sort of sticky.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  It's a stick.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  It's a candle.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Well, let's pop this on our Instagram and see what people think. I think they'll agree more with me. You have the candle that goes in the candlestick, or candelabra, depending on what. Anyway, same, same, we've got distracted here. Ben, as ever, has made us pivot. I would pop your trousers into the freezer, and maybe the glue will then go sort of very, very, very hard. And then you can like with a credit card or with a spatula or something, try and scrape it off. That's what I'd do.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  Stuart Pelkington kicked chewing gum, and it went in my ear. You know, I used to lob a chuddy. I had a big chunk. I'm still gonna get him back one day. I'm gonna put a big bit of chuddy in his ear.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Stephen Pake fired an elastic band in my eye. It didn't quite hit the eye, but it hit underneath. That was not pleasant.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  That explains. Yeah. It's never quite gone away, has it?

• 39:44Speaker 01

  I do have atosis in one eye, yes.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  A toast?

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Atosis, P-T-O-S-I-S.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  What's that, like psoriasis?

• 39:52Speaker 01

  No, atosis means where one eye, eyelid is lower than the other.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  I have that.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Do you? You and I are gonna have to keep, we'll have to bum bum, keep an eye on it, because as you get older, and your muscles weaken, is generally what happens, if the eyelid then goes over the pupil, this is what I was told, medical people, write in, please let us know if this is correct. If it goes over the pupil, basically, the brain will then think that we don't need that eye and switch that eye off and we go blind.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  What?

• 40:20Speaker 01

  So I'm probably going to have, to have an operation.

• 40:22Speaker 00

  You know the anxieties this boy has. Please don't give him another one. You know how anxious he is. Bless him. And you've just given him another. Look at him.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  At your age, you're fine. I mean, I'm probably gonna have to have this operation.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  We're the first to piss out of him, but he is our friend. But now look at him. Now he's gonna be worried about going half-blind. Anyway, go on. You'll be right. You'll be cute, Blaine. You'll be like little pug, pugty bear.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  And we can both wear our eye patches.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  We can wear little eye patches.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  I think I'm more Jack Sparrow.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Jack shit. This is from Lewis.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  Very good.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Dear William, Jordan, EPP and the rest of the team, back in year eight, I would regularly be able to get out of class by using the lavatory. One afternoon, I asked for a toilet pass and slowly walked to the toilet to get out of the classroom for 20 minutes. When I eventually arrived at the toilets, I was greeted by a student with his trousers and boxers down to his ankles, standing at one of the urinals. The toilets were quite cramped, so I had to delicately squeeze past his bare bottom, just so I could use the stools. Is it incorrect etiquette to use urinals like this? And if so, should I have said something? Many thanks, Lewis. Yeah, I mean, I don't use urinals, but I would say you don't take your entire pants and trousers. Now, it's a bit, it's a bit, I mean, if the boy was in year, oh, year eight, I guess you, you're still working out how life works. You probably think you drop everything, which is what you do when you're four and you go to the loo.

• 41:37Speaker 00

  I was gonna say, if you did that in my school, I remember someone had a shit in our school, and he got called poo boy for the rest of his life. You go in pub now, you go, ah, it's poo boy, poo boy from year eight. He had a shit in school, and everyone used to like, you'd all go over and have a look. I think it's on in between us as well. You'd all climb up and give each other a poo boy. You wouldn't have a poo in my school. So if that happened in mine, you would have had a terrible nickname.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  No, but I think, yeah, I mean.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  Poo boy now got a very successful scaffolding business, by the way. Just letting you know. So who's laughing last? He has, he's got about six, he's got about six wagons.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Give it to Shoutout, what's his name?

• 42:12Speaker 00

  I honestly couldn't tell.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Is that what you call it, wagon?

• 42:15Speaker 00

  He's got about six scaffolding wagons. For me, you just know poo boy, you were two years below me. I were in year 11, I think you were in year nine and got caught having a shit. Ginger life.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  It was all up from there.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  But Lewis, yes, I would say you whip down your pants and your trousers when you're sitting on the lavatory. But if you're using a urinal, I believe you just sort of lower or unbutton your fly and then, what's my call it? This is from Angela. Hi, boys. My son returned from school the other day, looking rather sheepish. After much persuasion, he eventually told me to go and look in his lunchbox. I wasn't quite sure how to prepare for what I was going to find, and I started to fear the worst. A dead animal, a priceless piece of jewellery, a poo. Thankfully, it was none of them, as it was just, in fact, some of my knickers. It seemed that in my haste, I recently washed his coat at the same time as some of my undergarment, undergarments, and they had somehow worked their way into one of his coat pockets. The poor boy unknowingly whipped them out in front of all his friends in the playground and had to hide them in his lunchbox till he got home. How can I

• 43:12Speaker 01

  make it up to him and give some way to heal his embarrassment? I don't know how old your son is. I'm gonna say he's probably early teens. That's probably, because if you were like eight, I don't think you'd be that embarrassed.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  The best way you can make it up to him is just pretend it never happened. Don't keep bringing it up. Don't try and get him a present. He doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to know about it. I'm speaking from experience, because it happened with our Ryan. Put his rugby top on, and my mum's, I'm not even gonna say panties, my mum's thong was stuck to the back of him. Right. Don't forget, Wendy was in a, she's only in her late twenties when our Ryan was in school.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  She was in her prime?

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. Wow. And they didn't talk about it for years, and now they laugh about.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  I think you'll find, Jordan, a lady is always in her prime.

• 43:52Speaker 00

  A lady is always in her prime. And now they laugh about it. But I'm not, it was a full-on thong, as far as I'm aware. It's stuck to his back.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Easy to miss.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  I need to text out Ryan. I think it was a thong. Anyway.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Yes. So I would say buy him something nice.

• 44:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Say, I'm really sorry. Also, top tip for future, regardless of whether you're washing with your school's clothes or not, underwear probably should be washed in a mesh bag, and then that'll stop that from happening as well. Just, Laiders underwear. More delicate garments, unless they were your big Spanx, in which case, you know, whatever, anything goes. Well, thank you very much, all of those.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  There was, I remember Skiddy as well. Honestly, we went swimming, and when he took his.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, we get it.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  He had a big Skiddy in him. And I, I still, up until I deleted it, I followed Skiddy on Facebook for years. But I wonder what, Skiddy, if you're listening, let us know. Again, I couldn't even tell you his full name.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  So Skiddy, poo boy, Rebecca Linford. If you're listening, get back in touch.

• 44:58Speaker 00

  But to be fair, Skiddy was at Carroll, so it was year eight. Yeah, anyway. Thank you for your questions and dilemmas. Remember, you can listen to new episodes every Tuesday and Friday and 24 hours before anywhere else on Global Player. If you want to get in touch about something that isn't a dilemma or a problem, drop into our DMs or send us an email to [email protected]. We also love hearing back from the people we offer advice to. So if that's you, get back in touch, and we'll see you on Friday.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Goodbye.

• 45:24Speaker 00

  Bye-bye.