The Octopus.
I only took one science at GCSE: physics. I ended up in the group taught by BC, a genuinely lovely old man on the final lap towards retirement.

He had a thing about tickertape timers, and was pretty much oblivious to most of the syllabus, but he was only too keen to tell The Octopus Story.

The Octopus Story was a very long, very involved shaggy-dog tale involving an octopus (predictably enough) and a set of bagpipes that he promised to tell us one day early in the course. How long, and how involved was it? Well, it took him most of the next 18 months to recount it. He'd give us a few minutes at the end of class if we behaved; and the better his mood, the more of the lesson he'd devote to The Octopus Story.

BC retired at Easter 1993, a couple of months before we were due to sit our GCSEs. His replacement was equally awesome, and looked a bit like Kryten. He'd helped write the exam we were about to sit, and was prepared to offer us oblique hints about what to revise.

Which was fortunate, really, because one of the first things he did when he met us was to produce a copy of the GCSE syllabus to see where we'd got.

Thanks to BC's obsession with tickertape timers and The Octopus Story, and with about 6 weeks to go, we'd covered about one third of what we should have.

You don't get education like that in the state sector.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 17 Mar 2011, 15:45, 2 replies)

Oh God
I remember tickertape timers. Possibly the worst timing method known to man.
( MatJ LOOK, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 0:29, closed)

The 18 month story about the octopus and the set of bagpipes:
Did the punchline infer that they fornicated?

My Business Studies teacher used to tell jokes that would twist and turn, taking several minutes to reach the punchline, which seemed to be without fail "beam me up spotty".
(Stiltzkin, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 10:15, closed)