Founded 1781
Senior Steward: Martin Stephen Junior
Steward: Steven Whitehead
Recorder: Paul Rose
COMMITTEE Alan Dean Richard Antipas Gareth Poole Denis Tarr Paul Rose Adam Robson David Gandy Richard Dennett Marc Ross Maurice Watkins Neil Jones
The two hundred and ninth Old Boys' Dinner was held at The Manchester Grammar School on Saturday, 23 November 2013. There were 110 Old Boys and guests present.
After The Loyal Toast had been honoured, the Senior Steward called upon The Recorder for his notices.
The Recorder spoke as follows: Mr Senior Steward, Mr Junior Steward, Mr High Master, Ladies, Fellow Old Boys. First of all a very warm welcome to you all, regular diners, return diners and new diners. A particular welcome to Dr Martin Boulton the new High Master.(applause) As I am sure you all know the High Master is an Old Boy being at the School from 1984-1986 which certainly qualifies him. High Master I'm sure that we all wish you a very long and happy sojourn amongst us and I'm sure that you will be enormously successful as the High Master of the School that we all love. You are, as it were, my third High Master and I very much hope that you will be my last High Master. (laughter) I should I suppose warn you however that my predecessor did do thirty two years and so far I have only done ten so you will have to see how it goes.
It's an interesting evening because we have five former Senior Stewards, Messrs David Gandy, Neil Jones, Robert Shields, Clement Goldstone and Peter Povey and four Junior Stewards, if I could read my own writing, Guy Robson, Mark Chilton,Peter Laycock and Ian Thorpe. So, quite unusual to have such a collection of former stewards and I welcome you all.
I have had a number of apologies from regular diners but particularly from Maurice Watkins, the Chairman of the Governors. Maurice really does need a sort of doppelganger, he's in London today as whatever he is for Rugby League, however he sorts his diary out I don't know, but he does send his sincere apologies as does Simon Jones whose wife gave birth to twins, who although they are in Intensive Care are both doing well. They are two very young boys but I am sure in the fullness of time will become Old Boys. (laughter)
Can I again take this opportunity of welcoming the School Officers, Michael Li and James Wills if you would like to stand up and show yourselves? (applause) Thank you, that's enough, (laughter) and a warm thanks to Mark Humphreys as our pianist. Mark, thank you. (applause)
I am grateful to a number of Old Boys who send the emails pointing out my poor proof reading of the ticket and just for your comfort, the name of the road hasn't been changed, but I thought that Old School Lane was perhaps more interesting for the School. (laughter) I never had great attention to detail and personally I put it down to a poor education. (laughter) I normally forget to remind you to vote for the Dinner Committee and on the reverse of your tickets; those of you who have your tickets you will see that you can choose who to vote for. On this particular occasion, particularly as I do intend to have a meeting of the Dinner Committee next year, (laughter) can I ask that you opt for returning the entire Dinner Committee unopposed? If not,then you can find someone else to do the work. (laughter)
Can I take this opportunity particularly to thank Jane Graham for all of her assistance, thank you very much and to Richard and to all of his staff and the boys of the school. (applause )Almost finally, can those who haven't paid let me know, most of you have paid and whilst there are a lot more signatures on the book, it would be nice if you could all please sign in. I will leave the book here with a pen and during the short intermission of ten minutes, if you haven't signed the book, please could you sign it. Thank you very much.The Senior Steward called upon the Junior Steward to propose the toast to The Pious Memory of Hugh Oldham'. (applause)
The Junior Steward spoke as follows: Mr Senior Steward, Mr High Master, Ladies and of course Old Boys, it is actually areal pleasure to address each of you and if I can I'll take you back to when I first thought about this evening which for me is quite a bit of planning. It was Wednesday evening of the mid-week just gone. (laughter) So, Old Boys' Do's are always a lively affair aren't they so ignoring the fact that I am speaking tonight and I have this great pleasure and I was always looking forward to it.Just think of the ingredients, we are at school, we are with our mates, so I get to be fifteen again and be a complete juvenile, (laughter) legitimately smoking and drinking, I know we shouldn't, and in the presence of not one High Master, but two and to cap it all we have probably got access, but we will have to find out, we have probably got access to the Art Hall as well. (laughter) So they are lively affairs and if you want to get the details on the one about seven years ago, grab me at the bar later on and I will tell all. It ended on Old School Lane, as Paul now calls it, one of my mates performing some emergency dental work on another one of the gaggle after some high jinks in the Art Department. (laughter) So come and grab me at the bar and I will tell all for a beer.
For me it is a wonderful opportunity but I have got to fess upright now and it is a shame that Si Jones isn't here because Si is a terrier as he should be. He's quite right to chase us all for money for a fantastic cause, but in self-defence we all try lots of different distraction techniques to stop writing bouncing cheques to Si, I know my brother took him for lunch and got him drunk, but the only currency I had left was look Si, if it's worth anything, you can have my time for a speech. I didn't expect him to take it and he did, so here I am. (laughter)
So I think as is probably customary for the Junior Steward it's for me to attempt to tell you something about MGS that you don't already know. Sounds pretty easy.So all I did was got rid of the wife Wednesday evening, a shovel of coal and a log on the fire, blank piece of paper, dog and cat either side and a pint in hand and I thought, this will be easy. Three pints later, empty page, bereft of any ideas and certainly no banter. I did what I think is customary for the Junior Steward to do, which is to turn in desperate times to his mates for help. Wow. So, you've got to remember, I'm a bloke. I don't stay in touch with the handful of people that are prepared to call themselves my actual mate. So with none of the garnish of, How's life?' and How's the wife and work?' and all those kind of niceties, I emailed the handful of people that I could, it's been months since I spoke to them and said boys I need your help. What's it all about at MGS? These are the time scales in which I need a response.' I couldn't have grumbled if they had all blanked me, but actually they all started to come back. Some of them within minutes and no matter what else I say this evening, perhaps the speed of that response says more about the togetherness of MGS boys than anything else I can get on to. On the other hand, it might say more about the nature of my mates and the fact that they are all bums with nothing else to do. (laughter) I will let you be the judge of that and maybe you should reserve judgement to the end of the evening when some of their antics might colour your view. So as it was I fired out the email and obviously leading with my chin I was mercilessly abused by the boys right in the crease, on the back foot, getting peppered with abuse. Again no one asked me how my life was. How's work? How's the wife? Nothing. Straight into abuse.So in the only way we know how, I'm halfway down the wicket, flailing my bat in response and so it ensues for another hour or two. Plenty of banter. Anyone that said anything nice, sentimental, heartfelt about being an MGS boy was absolutely murdered. In fact the top quartile boys of my mates, of whom there is only one, (laughter) and he can't be here tonight, quite sensibly, he emailed me direct with some heartfelt comments, but actually, it's unfair. Amongst all the banter, they did all have something to say. Something heartfelt and pretty genuine about the enduring benefits of being an MGS boy. So even I managed on Wednesday evening, this is probably four pints in, another shovel of coal and a log on the fire, cat and dog long gone, and even I managed to spot a trend in their responses. There was consensus about what it means to be an MGS boy, I'll take it. I'll rebadge it as my own work, but I'll take it and if it's rubbish you can blame table 11. (laughter) If it's any good you can buy me a beer. So I had my theme, what it is to be an MGS boy, I was feeling pretty smug and relaxed about it, so I kicked back, put The Ashes on for a bit of pre-build up commentary on the radio and obviously my mind drifted. Couple of beers, no concentration span and I started to think about an individual. Some of you will get it very quickly, so don't shout out and spoil it for the slow coaches. This individual, test debut for England, 28 July 1977, 102 tests, he scored 5,200 runs.Now, I am in the alumni that were the 5th Form maths set with Mr Davidson, a real bog eyed bunch, there were eight or nine of us every year and we were not so good at maths. So I got the missus to do it and then about three other neighbours to do it and apparently, Richard Dennett, it's an above fifty average. So that will make him pretty good at cricket I think. So I'm thinking on about this guy, he's taken 148 wickets against the old Shackle Draggers from down under, he's our number one wicket taker. He's pretty good this guy and in fact the year before what became his Ashes in 1981, he even managed to play professional football for Scunthorpe. What a legend. So most of you have got it now but for those of you who haven't, he really loves his Shredded Wheat. (laughter) He's such a legend that people sponsor him for his charities simply for walking. So I think that we all know who it is, but if you don't, it's Ian Botham. Probably this country's greatest cricketing all rounder. It's that that we all had consensus on amongst my lunatic mates. Not about Ian Botham, but about what MGS creates and to quote my brother which he won't enjoy, he said like it or not,MGS produces a damn good all-rounder'.
So what does that really mean? MGS boys,what are we? We are probably almost every man in the pub. We can dip in on a wealth of experience and personas from the melting pot of the catchment, every race, every religion, genuine wealth, genuine poverty. Probably borne out by the fact that some of the boys in 1B, Mr Burin's class, some of them had a real TAG watch, some of us bought one for 20 from the ice cream van, a fake, (laughter)and the rest of us could never afford 20 quid. But the MGS Boy is probably a chameleon in nature, he is neither a street fighter nor a toff, but can address both with equal ease. He can speak to a bricklayer with grace and address aboard of a PLC laying down the foundations of corporate success in the next breath and it's actually that which my mates came back with a consensus and said, MGS boys were pretty flexible really. We can read people; we can empathise with anyone and what does that get us? Most of the time, what we want'. So I am starting to really get into feeling good about this all rounder tag, sounds like a bit of PR spin but I quite like it and the warm embrace of a couple more beers and another shovel of coal my mind starts to wander to even greater heights of an all rounder, getting carried away. Is there someone better than Beefy? So why don't we try this one for size? This guy was double Olympic gold medallist, 1980; I remember it well, the year of my birth, 1980 and 1984. He broke the World Record four times and then when he packed it all in in 1991,unlike Beefy playing only nine games for Scunthorpe this cat went on to play for two professional football teams. The mighty Mansfield Town and Stevenage Borough and even brave non-league football with Ilkeston FC. Fitness coach later on at Wimbledon, bit of an oxymoron, dabbled as fitness at Luton and even became a rally driver in the 1994 Ford Motor Sport Championship. Now you might not all be getting it, but I will give it away, this particular decathlete loved his Lucozade and perhaps the greatest honour bestowed upon him was by Ocean Software who named the iconic computer game in the 1980s after him. It is of course, Daly Thompson, MBE, CBE and OBE. So at this point chaps, stick your shoulders back, puff your chest out, this is working pretty well for us. We are in the same company as a man who is famous for training 365 days of the year.He even trained on Christmas Day. This is feeling pretty good and if I had anything about me on Wednesday night I would have stopped there. In my head we are all patting each other on the back now reaching to our left and our right saying, we are all legends, we are all rounders, we are in the same type of company as Daly Thompson' but for me, it doesn't quite sit right. So on Thursday, a cold wet Manchester morning with sobriety kicking in like a broken lift, I start to reflect on what MGS really meant to me and to my mates. So it might not be the best catchment, but it wasn't one where we bestowed with amazing intellect or wit or sporting prowess, it was far more one of workmanlike and pretty average talent and we had to really graft for anything that we might achieve. I reflected on my own time at MGS, a daily struggle to find some homework to copy on the school bus. (laughter) We are all laughing because we have all done it. The big question is how many subjects were we doing it in? If we call it double checking it will sound better, but I would regularly double check. Gareth Poole who is at Table 11, average student, but much better than me. Double check his responses in Latin whilst trying to avoid the glare of the indomitable Mr Griffin. What is the pluperfect passive? (laughter) Gaz, any answers? Then I start to reflect even further and I think actually I would think nothing of spending a double period in the afternoon perhaps in Religious Studies or something equally riveting, slipping slowly in and out of a trans-fat induced coma having eaten my entire body weight in Donner Kebab meat from Saajans.This isn't the high achieving, fist pumping Daly Thompson, beefy kind of all rounder that I'm kind of thinking we should be. But actually the MGS model for me and the true value is more one of perspiration rather than inspiration,because what MGS teaches you is yes, you have got abilities and you have got an opportunity to do very well but you have (a) got to apply it and (b) you have probably got to learn the biggest lesson in life which is, learn to fail. In learning to fail you have got two choices, stay down and keep moaning like hopefully Groves is later on when he and Froch take to the ring, but you either stay down or you get up.
Now at MGS you are always challenged. There's always somebody better than you. There's always somebody whose parents have got more money or a bigger car or a bigger garden and there was always someone better than you at rugby. So MGS tells you one great lesson, which is yes you have got a skill but remember you can fail and just keep ploughing on. That for me is the nature of an all rounder. The MGS boy is as ever in danger at times of delusions of grandeur and they can come with some pretty sharp edges and when you leave the School with those sharp edges it can hit you square on, but actually it's the teaching staff here which manage to round those edges and make you a more balanced person, able to talk to the bricklayer and the board in one breath. The teachers here do it without you even noticing and for me and my mates, it was one particular teacher, when you are 17/18 and you are looking a bit spikey, ten foot tall and bullet proof that teacher was the late, great, Dr Rod Martin. (approval) So for us, Big Rodders would without us even knowing would mould us in his more balanced and liberal views. Whether we accepted them or not they smoothed the edges. A simple bit of bribery with a few scoops down at the Railway Tavern in Hale and he actually, probably made us all a fair bit better than we were before. I think the point about MGS is that whilst Rod Martin is my example of his impact on my life and he is fondly remembered by me and everyone on Table 11 the thing about MGS is Rod is not the exception, he is the norm. So having left you simply with one theme because I know it's a lot to take in with the red wine flowing and with far more illustrious and eloquent speakers to come, I've left you with the theme of MGS breeds a damn good all rounder' but looking forward to next year when no doubt I will be here I will pose a question for the impending Junior Steward and it would be remiss of me not to raise it. Having on one particular matter endured myself many failings and have enjoyed watching my mates fly around night clubs and bars up and down the country also failing to crack this one particular problem, I might ask the next Junior Steward to answer a simple question. How is it that the MGS model of the all rounder, you have given us a ton of tools to reach into the toolkit for to crack life, but what is it that you can tweak about the MGS model to make us overcome the biggest challenge that we all face, which is: How is it that we outbox and outsmart the fairer sex? (laughter) An easy one for someone else to answer. If we can all be upstanding and please toast The pious memory of Hugh Oldham'.(applause)I should now like to call upon the Senior Steward to propose the toast Prosperity to the School'. The Senior Steward spoke as follows:Mr Junior Steward, High Master, Mr Recorder, Fellow Old Boys, Friends and Colleagues. It is nine years since my eyes last feasted on the glorious sight of our Recorder and I have to say and I'm sure I speak on behalf of all of us here that I can only offer my congratulations on how well he's weathered that lifetime of alcohol and substance abuse. (laughter) Watch out Neil, he's after your record.A very strange thing happened on the way to Euston station this afternoon. I suddenly realised that I was feeling extremely nervous about making this speech tonight and to be honest with you I can't remember the last time I felt nervous about making a speech and it took me sometime to work out why. And actually, it's extremely simple; my ten years at Manchester Grammar were the happiest times in my professional life. It mattered to me more than anywhere and anything else and actually I feel the same dire sense of responsibility that I can only compare with the speech that I had to deliver at my son's wedding. It really is a tremendous honour to be here tonight. I think I left my heart in Manchester Grammar School and thank you very much everybody here for making me feel that I have come home. I would like to start on an unusually serious note if I may with a thank you and the fact that it's a twice over thank you. Thank you is sadly to a man who is not here and will never be here at these dinners again and who I was never able to say my second thank you to though I did say my first and I refer of course to Ian Bailey. Ian is the only real thing I could wish to hand over to the new High Master. He was an infallible and incredible source of support and I used to spend long times using him as a sounding board or as a focus group or whatever you want to call it. And it was absolutely impossible because while I was thinking about some change or some major thing or other I would always usually turn to Ian and say Ian, what's your reaction to this?' Now, do you think this is a good idea?' and a look of startled amazement would come across his face and he would say but you are High Master' very much I think in the way the Pope might have addressed God I think if he was ever to meet him. I said Yes, I know that Ian but you know please can you tell me what you would do if tomorrow I were to stand up and announce this?' Well I would support you'. Yes Ian I know you would support me but what would you do?' and eventually you would get the answer from this man for whom Manchester Grammar School ran like blood in his veins. And I did,thankfully, have the opportunity to thank him for the tremendous help but I never had the opportunity to thank him for something else.In 2005, I suffered a stroke and it was a massive stroke and like all these things do it came to me completely out of the blue and, to cut a long story short, I found myself on a hospital trolley rather alarmingly in this same suit, unable to feel my left hand side, unable to move my arms and my legs, unable to speak and indeed even unable to see. Every time I opened my eyes there were five people dancing in front of me and it was a pretty bleak moment. This was not the way that I'd hoped it would all end and I was extraordinary lucky twice over. The first bit of luck came actually from the extraordinary figure of my mother in law. My mother in law had had her husband suffer a stroke who, like me, had been left to lie there by the NHS so she had done what one does which is get on the internet at the age of seventy five and had found out that in the United States of America they had made great strides in how to treat strokes and what they had found, among many other things, was that the brain has an incredible plasticity and that it can, under certain circumstances, re-route signals past the area that had been burnt out by the stroke and actually restore at least a vague semblance of normal service but, and this is the key, what they'd also found out was that you have three and a half weeks to activate this process and for some reason, which as far as I understand has never even now been satisfactorily explained, after three and a half weeks the brain loses the capacity to regenerate. Very much like a computer will stop using a programme that hasn't been used for a period of time.So, I worked out that, very much in line with what the Junior School do at school, self-help here was the way forward and got myself, well no if I'm being honest, lied my way out of hospital. You'll be amused to know it was the Mid-Staffordshire Hospital (laughter) famous for its quality of care. I lied myself out of this hospital with the help of my wife,locked myself away at home and thought that I really ought to go back to basics. I couldn't write, well how did I learn to write as a child I learnt to write as I'm sure we all did with copybook Victorian Aaa, Bbb. So for two hours a day I bought myself an exercise book and wrote Aaa, Bbb, so on and so forth and it was terribly disheartening because for a long period of time frankly you couldn't spot any difference between the A and the Z. I couldn't walk. So when I learnt to walk very slowly I found that I could only walk at 45 degrees so, what did I do? I walked up and down the stripes in the lawn two hours a day and every time your foot strays over the stripes you slap your wrist mentally, go back and try it again. I bounced bloody tennis balls and had to catch them two thousand times, don't ask me why two thousand, but bouncing and catching the thing helped the hand/eye co-ordination. But the only fun thing actually was buying a computer game. Flying an F1-15 and pray to God all of you I'm never asked to fly a jet aircraft and I never got beyond the landing stage in this game but after having crashed this ruddy aircraft 2,796 times on the 2,977th time I landed it. Ok, I lost the under carriage and awing but I didn't blow up. Nobody climbing to the top of Everest has ever felt a greater sense of satisfaction. Oh, and reciting the poetry of Andrew Marvell for two hours a day with a cork between your teeth, because that makes you move your lips around it.
Let's go back for a minute onto Ian Bailey because,in one of our lengthy evening conversations he looked at me and said I know what you are'. An expression of horror came across my face. I said Yes?' You're a fighter. I spotted you from the minute you came,' he said. You're a fighter'and, I will be honest with you, there were three times during the five weeks it took me to gain any semblance of normality doing these exercises ten hours a day. Three times, which I remember, as vividly as if they were yesterday - when I was as close to just throwing the whole thing in as I would ever wish to be in my life. I actually tasted total panic and fear that it wasn't going to happen and actually three times I have the most vivid possible memory of Ian Bailey leaning over me waggling his finger and saying you're a fighter'. And I honestly think that were it not for that bizarre memory I would not actually be standing here tonight speaking to you. And if I am going to say thank you to Ian, and I was never able to say thank you to him in person, I can't think of a better forum in which to say it. If his spirit is anywhere, although I'm sure it is somewhere very nice, it's here with us in this room tonight at the even the loved so much so may I, as part of my formal contribution to this evening,say that thank you to him that I was never able to say to him in person. I listened, as High Master, to a number of Senior Stewards most of whom talked about inevitably their time at the school. Well I can't talk about my time as a pupil but I can, I think, reminisce a little bit about my time as High Master and the incredibly rich number of recollections.For instance, courtesy of a gentleman who's not here tonight, dear Mr Watkins,I was there when Posh Spice met David Beckham for the first time. I mean, after that, what can life hold for you really? (laughter) I was there when Yan Pascal Tortelier, leader of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra came to MGS I was in my seemingly endless trek to get people to sign up to the Foundation Bursary Appeal and this extraordinary man came round, Yan Pascal, I don't know if anybody here knew him for his charismatic figure with the most extraordinary floating French accent.In other words, in talking to sort of fat, white, middle aged males like me he spoke perfect English (changing to a French accent) but the minute anybody female came along it was a wonderful . (laughter) and we wandered around the school with a number of females in tow behind us thinking he's clearly got something I haven't got and he came into the Sports Hall and totally out of the blue he clapped his hands and said (in a French accent) I will bring the Orchestra to play here'. And they did, and it was quite extraordinary 1000 Mancunians gathered at the feet of this world famous orchestra while they made a recording. There are so many of those memories that I can hardly begin but perhaps I could focus on two more: both of which actually refer to a visit. The first one was the visit of Sir Alex Ferguson to The Manchester Grammar School. I was determined to get him as a patron of the appeal and I was determined to get some money out of him, there was a challenge. (laughter) I had a cunning plan and the cunning plan was to invite him to give the prizes to the Middle School. I have to say, this did not go down well with some of the more traditional members of Common Room. What on earth are you doing High Master inviting that soccer person, we're an academic school' and all the rest of it. Occasionally, I said to them occasionally, one has to meet the culture of the boys half way', privately I was thinking occasionally, one has to get into the bank balance of people like this and we had it all lined up Middle School Prize Giving. We rang up, it was on a Wednesday I think, we rang up on the Tuesday, all fine, and half past eight on that Wednesday morning for the first time ever in the history of assemblies at The Manchester Grammar School, the hall was packed. Absolutely heaving and there were boys fighting each other to be on the end of the row so they could touch the coat of Alex Ferguson (laughter) as he walked up the aisle. So I seem to remember suggesting to somebody that we should put tubs of water in the aisle because he could walk on them when he came up and they would have undoubtedly turned into wine when he walked back down again. Anyway, five past nine, the atmosphere is heated beyond belief, no sign of Fergie, ten past nine, no sign of Fergie. So I start to ring the ground. I can't actually get through till about twenty past and I get put through to Sir Alex Ferguson's PA. We're rather expecting Sir Alex here' I said through gritted teeth. She said Ah, yes there's been a problem. I don't think he's going to be able to come.' Fine' I said but can I ask two things? Firstly, I would like you to come here and go into that hall and tell eight hundred and fifty Mancunians that Ferguson is not going to give them their prizes because whoever goes in will undoubtedly walk in as one piece of flesh but will come out as seventeen separated pieces o flesh.' And secondly I said I ought to tell you that I am going to go into that hall, I am going to pick on the most angelic, cherubic, blue eyed, fair haired little boy, smack him around a bit and when he's in tears take a photograph of him and send it to every newspaper in the country with the caption Fergie didn't come to my prize giving!' There was a long pause and she said you're a bit cross aren't you'. YES, I AM CROSS' I said. (shouting) She said What can I do?' Well, you can get him here by noon.' When he turned up at noon he was absolutely charming. I have never wanted to hate somebody as much in my whole life. What had happened apparently was that a certain leading member of the United team had been caught in the middle of a fight at four o'clock in the streets of Manchester, had tried to hit two policeman who thank God were Manchester United supporters and Fergie was actually engaged in a robust exchange of views with the police to get him out. I didn't know any of that at the time and this guy came along and do you know, it was the most infuriating thing in my time as a Head because we Heads spend hours working on these assemblies, fine-tuning them and to get a (clap of the hands) at the end of it if you are lucky. Fergie came along, I can't even attempt the accent, and he spoke for longer than President Lincoln at the Gettysburg Address, shorter, I beg your pardon, about half an hour shorter and something along the lines of (imitating accent) I'd like to say, etc etc etc you have determination etc etc' and he got a standing ovation. (laughter)My other memory is of another visit His Royal Highness, Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales. Actually, there is a story about that that nobody has ever heard about, I asked Prince Charles to be Patron of the appeal. Personally, actually, my background is Scottish and if you want the honest truth my family view is that if you've got to have a monarchy you had better have a Jacobite because at least they're fun. But anyway, I submerged all my principles, wrote to Prince Charles and it must have been the time that he sent Prince William to Eton. And I said, you know the purpose of this bursary is to make places at a good school available to children who otherwise won't be able to afford it. And I waited and I waited and I waited and I think three months, by this time I was absolutely spitting and I wrote him the best letter that I had ever written to anyone in my life. And it was along the lines of you will send your son to Eton but you won't even cough up a bit of your name for other people.'.You can imagine I really enjoyed writing that letter. And I went home, we were living in Didsbury at the time, and I remember stopping by the mosque in Didsbury getting out of the car, going to the letterbox and actually, I'm not joking, this letter was in the hole and I remember my father saying Write in anger, post at peace' so I thought take it back. The next morning I remember the letter came from Prince Charles saying I'm happy to be Patron of the appeal'. (laughter)It was young Mr Thorpe who had the brilliant idea for the visit of Prince Charles. Because Ian actually spotted the fact that on most Royal visits few people ever see the person coming. So Ian had this genius idea, or so he thought at the time, that Prince Charles will give an assembly or two actually one to the Lower School and one to the other children. So there were one thousand in the Hall and four hundred in the Theatre. And, bless him, he said yes which is not easy. But, a week before the Royal visit, we were reported to that a certain pupil, unnamed in the school, planned to consume most of the cans of baked beans in the stock of Sainsbury's and during this assembly deliver the loudest and most rip roaring bowel noise that had ever been heard in the Hall and certainly the loudest ever heard in a speech by the heir to the throne. (laughter) This presented something of a challenge so in assembly I said word has reached me that one of you plans to break wind in the assembly of Prince Charles's visit.' Roar of laughter I don't think I ever used the F' word in the Memorial Hall, I think even I drew the line at that not that F' word, the other 'F' word. (laughter) And I said Well actually you know, seen from your view point I can see it's not such a bad idea because whoever does this will go down in folklore, you know, the boy who farted in front of Prince Charles, will be probably remembered by Junior Stewards for the next two hundred years and I suppose it's what a way to go down in history but I suppose that there is a problem. When the problem is firstly, Prince Charles himself doesn't have to be here. There's plenty of other places he could be, he's giving up his time, his effort and by my conservative estimate has probably brought between one and two million pounds more to this appeal and I think we owe him a certain duty.' And I said the other thing is that everybody and their mother's aunt who matters in the North West will be there, the Lord Lieutenants and the Mayors. You may think it's funny but they will see it as a deep insult, it will be in the newspapers and you will make our job of raising this money infinitely harder and you will actually make this school a laughingstock.' So I said, actually, I can't make you stop doing this whichever one of you is doing it. There's actually nothing I can do except one thing I can ask.'So I said Please don't let this happen.' And there was pin drop silence. And do you know I have never ever seen a better behaved bunch of boys in my life.They were incredible. And I think it was at that moment that my heart really went out to the products of The Manchester Grammar School. I have known and seen very many schools where you simply couldn't have taken that gamble with the pupil body. You simply couldn't have stood there as a High Master and said 'Please, I'm relying on you to get it right' and I believe this is one of the very very few schools in the world where that would have worked. And I will forever be grateful to them for doing it because it went off absolutely brilliantly. And my final memory concerns a Mancunian in a hoody and I had been speaking at a debate in the Oxford Union and after the debate I was walking down Oxford High Street back to my hotel when there were the sounds of running footsteps behind me and a young man in a hoody is running up. So I immediately go into Manchester urban survival mode, needlessly, because this young man screeches to a halt pulls back his hoody and says, You used to be High Master didn't you?' I said, yes'. Well Dr Stephen' he said just saw you there, I was one of the first pupils to come in, on the bursary', oh and let me make one thing absolutely clear before I end this, I'm very happy to take credit for the Foundation Bursary Appeal but as many people in this room know the credit is actually due to the team and it was a brilliant team I think and indeed in the final count to the people who gave the money and I was simply the figure head though I am proud of being the person who had the idea. But I've never seen myself as the person who raised the money, the most I've seen myself is a leader of the team who did it.But this young man looked at me and said, I was one of the first pupils to come to Manchester Grammar School on one of the new free places' he said I got a first from Oxford, I've just finished my PhD, I'm off to Harvard now to do post doctorate research. I owe it all to you. I thought I ought to say thank you, bye bye.' And he ran off. I'm not joking Gentlemen, I had tears in my eyes. I felt like saying well,actually, lovely of you to thank me but how about thanking the other people,particularly Ian Thorpe, who helped in all this and also should really be thanking the people who gave the money in the first place. That being said, if when the dreaded moment comes and I do finally fall off my perch and somebody wants to write on my tombstone he helped Manchester Grammar School raise the money to let a lot of children from poor backgrounds come there' I think I will be very happy to accept that, actually. I still think of my time here, as I said to you earlier, as the most fulfilling and the happiest of my life. I've been at three superb schools in my life and I'm not in any sense criticising the other schools which have been brilliant in places but I've also been on a world tour after I left St Pauls where I visited just about every leading school in the world. And I tell you tonight with every shred of sincerity I can muster I have never in all that time seen anywhere to match The Manchester Grammar School. It is the best school in the world. It is unique and extraordinarily special and I have to say that I shall count this as one of the greatest honours anybody has done me to come back and speak to you here tonight. You will have many people who will propose the toast to the prosperity of the school with as much sincerity as I do. Believe me, you will have nobody who will ever propose it with more sincerity.May I ask you please to be upstanding for the toast, Prosperity to the School.' (applause)When August Suns' was sung at this point, after which the Senior Steward called upon the High Master to respond. (applause)
The High Master spoke as follows: Mr Senior Steward, Mr Junior Steward, Mr Recorder, Ladies, Old Mancunians, before I start I have an interesting duty to perform. It's taken us ten years but finally we have a portrait of Martin. I thought it probably appropriate that we unveil that tonight which I will probably make a complete mess of and I have been told this doesn't come off easily but here we go I'll try. (unveiling of the portrait to applause and approval)
As a new High Master one always feels that past High Masters are looking over one's shoulder. It really is true tonight. (laughter)One of the first things I did when I arrived back at MGS earlier this year was to go and dig my file out from my time as a boy. (laughter) I discovered that I narrowly managed to beat a couple of members of the Common Room to it. I think one of them is here tonight. You'll probably cut me off on the microphone now. I am sure their motives were honourable.I found it quite a moving experience to go through the letters my mother had written to the school, as she tried to ensure that I had the best education possible. And a chance to read my UCCA reference with hand written annotations brought back very fond memories of my time at the School. Inevitably one ends up at the reports. I wish I had found some classics, something like Boulton has reached rock bottom; and started digging' but alas not.I think that my favourite which is unsigned, so I don't know who wrote it, but it came at the end of a course on Philosophy, which was then a compulsory part of the Sixth Form programme; it said I have enjoyed teaching him immensely and not only because he occasionally agreed with me', I must have been quite pleased with this because it followed the previous term's report which said that so far he has not demonstrated himself to be anything better than a third rate philosopher'. (laughter) I hadn't realised I was being compared with Plato. (laughter)I apparently displayed a lively interest in folk music, I don't know if that was a good thing or not. (laughter) And I showed a thorough interest throughout the bizarrely named electronics for pleasure'. (laughter)At the end of my first year my maths teacher said I am not prepared to predict how he will perform in the end of year exam'. I don't know if this was because I was unpredictable or if he was uninterested. Anyway they did get better and I am pleased to say that John Willson who is here tonight finally felt able to write A very likeable, cheerful and thoroughly reliable young man; he has joined in extremely well and is clearly a good leader'. Thank you John. (laughter)When a new head starts in a school the question they are most often asked is what are you going to change?' The fact I was an Old Boy meant that for me a close second was has MGS changed since you left?' I think that in many ways those two questions are related, it is certainly the case that one's own experiences on the receiving end of an education, particularly one of the quality I received here, will greatly influence your perception of what a makes a school great and that in turn informs your thinking on how it should be run. But of course the world has changed and the educational landscape has changed beyond all recognition.Before I give you my answers to these two questions, I would like to tell you a little bit about my first term here.For those of you who don't know, after being in post for some five days I had a phone call telling me we were long overdue an inspection and that fifteen inspectors were turning up in a few days' time to crawl all over the school,upset the staff and write some sage, or not so sage, words to tell us how they think I should be running the school. At about the point I had escorted the last inspector off the premises my predecessor then stepped in and caused something of a perfect storm by giving an interview to an Old Boy of the school for what is probably the dullest book available on Amazon. The Manchester Evening News didn't take very long to pick up on the story so just when I though tI could get going with the job my time was filled with other matters once again. I am not sure that Mason or Eric James would have had to deal with such things but as I said the world has changed.And so last week was probably the first week that I got to do the things that I had planned to do: talk to boys, talk to staff, get around the School and see what was going on. As Martin said one of the benefits of being HM is you get to meet some very interesting people when they visit and the highlight of last week was the chance to meet with the last poet laureate, Andrew Motion, who had come into give this year's Hugh Oldham Lecture. Before the lecture all the boys heading off to read English at university next year and a few hangers on, me included, had lunch with him and the opportunity to pick his brains.The conversation turned, as conversations with teachers often do, to the teachers or moments in one's own education that had a profound effect on the life that followed. For him it had been his English teacher as you might expect. He came from a home without books, his father confessed to him that in his whole lifetime he had managed to only read one half of a book. The lesson that was the catalyst was when Peter Way the said teacher introduced him to the Hardy poem I look into my glass'. It was a poem I knew well because it was part of my O Level set text. It is quite an exceptional poem but it was the man delivering it, bringing it alive, the chap in front of the class as much as Hardy himself that had the real impact on the seventeen year old Andrew Motion. I don't know if it is the fact that I am a teacher that makes me often reflect on my own education and how it influenced the person I have become but I do do this often and so I found myself recounting back my own story to him.Before I go further you need to know that I began my career at MGS in 3MathsB taking Maths, Physics and Chemistry Michael Gove's holy trinity. The teaching was exceptional and as I know many of you will have found when I arrived at university I had already covered most of the first year's work. But this was not the life changing part of my time here. I have come to realise it was an option done in my fourth term with the grand title Modern European Literature'. Neil Sheldon,a mathematician, delivered the course and we must have covered a dozen or so books. The authors ranged from Camus to Thomas Mann and I can honestly say that have re-read every one of them at least once in subsequent years; but two had a real impact on me at the time, Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier' and Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time'. It is difficult to sum up in a few words the effect studying these books had on me but it turned a rather narrow-focused seventeen year old science student into someone with a real sense that one's learning should have no boundaries; an educational Pandora's Box had been opened for me.When talking with Andrew Motion I mentioned this and how it meant that whilst studying engineering I also used to sneak in to lectures given by the Irish Poet Tom Paulin who it turned out was one of Motion's close friends. How it also meant that I spent most of my evenings in the university's arts library talking about literature, language, history rather than tapping away on my calculator in my room or heading off down The Brazen Head or other less reputable establishments.
So I had a wonderful time at university but all good things come to an end and eventually I thought I should probably do the proper thing and go and earn a living.So it was that I found myself in an office with a spreadsheet in front of me surrounded by accountants and tax lawyers. If that sounds dull to you it was.(laughter) Sorry I assume there are probably a few tax lawyers and accountants here. (laughter) I wanted to be surrounded by people with intellects and interests (more laughter) that extend beyond pound signs. (laughter) So without giving it really much thought I left.What next?' I asked myself. It wasn't really an epiphany, more a realisation of the blooming obvious that the place I wanted to work was the Common Room at MGS. If the Neil Sheldons and his like could have such an impact on me as a boy how wonderful it must be to have them as colleagues and to perhaps have a similar influence on other boys. And so it was that I wandered through the doors of Manchester University to begin my teaching career.Now,much has happened in the interim and I am sure that at some future dinner it can form the basis of another rambling journey through my memories. The end of that tale will see me arriving at MGS for my second first day here.And so I return finally to those two questions.Firstly,has MGS changed since you left?Well,in the way that matters no, the Common Room still has in those dark corners the conversations I so dearly craved when looking at spreadsheets in the city.There is the same competition to finish the crossword in the morning between the mathematicians and the classicists and I know that if I have just finished a novel there will be someone to talk to about its meaning.On the second point -It would be wrong to say that I want to return the School to the way it was in the 1980s. It would not be possible even if it were desirable, and flared trousers were never very attractive. But what I do want to do is ensure that the eighteen year olds leaving MGS have hopefully come across a teacher in their time here who, probably unknowingly, will change their life. Thank you.(applause)
The Recorder spoke as follows: Fellow Old Boys, all that now remains before we retire is to announce the results of the election of the Dinner Committee. (laughter) Last year I compared and congratulated you on having a lower turnout than that of the Police Commissioners. (laughter) All I can say is that this year you have excelled yourselves, six people voted. (laughter) Three of those spoilt their ballot papers (laughter) but the other three voted overwhelmingly for the re-election of the Dinner Committee en bloc. (applause and approval) Fellow Old Boys the Dinner next year is on the same Saturday in November as this and can I give you advanced notice which is that the 2015 Dinner which will celebrate the 500th Anniversary of the School will be likewise on the same Saturday in November.And whilst I will probably refer to this next year, we are expecting a very large turnout and to be able to accommodate that turnout, it will be necessary for people to reply by a particular date, which I know is rather challenging for Old Boys (laughter) and we might have a practice next year. (laughter) So I hope that you have enjoyed the evening. My thanks on your behalf to the Senior Steward, the Junior Steward and to the High Master. I am sure that we will see them again on many future occasions. It only now remains me to wish you a safe journey home and to join as usual to sing Auld Lang Syne'. Thank you. (applause)
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