The Archers' Simon Williams on public school 'fagging'
The British government abolished slavery in 1833 but British public schools took another 140 years to put an end to ‘fagging’ – a system that allowed prefects to totally enslave boys four years their junior. Perhaps its purpose was to give them continuity of the serfdoms they ran at home in Staff-Under-Thumb, Hampshire. Maybe it was to prepare them in the ways of servant management in the colonies, how to click their fingers at waiters and shout instruction without making eye contact or saying please.
For insubordination, fags could be given a good beating – the gift that keeps on giving older members of the judiciary a warm glow of nostalgia.
As a new boy at Harrow in 1959, my morning duties were to spit and polish my prefect’s shoes (even his rugby boots), to serve him tea and toast, make his bed, run his bath and fetch his paper (the Daily Express, for heaven’s sake). It was also my duty to sit on the lavatory he intended to use after breakfast in order to warm the seat for him. ‘And don’t you bloody well do anything in there, Williams, I don’t want you stinking the place out.’
Generally I’m all for people having a bit of power; I’ve never had any myself but I can see other people enjoying it – Jeremy Clarkson headbutting a vegetarian or Paxo razzing up a leftie.
It was my duty to sit on the lavatory he intended to use after breakfast in order to warm the seat for him
However, it can’t be right to encourage the Bullingdon Club alumni to go too mad with it. As an example, last week I heard a story of truly gross excess: a friend of mine who is PA to one such high-flyer was awakened in her flat in Fulham by her boss ringing at 3am from the back of a stretch limo in LA.
The glass partition was up and the purpose of his call was to tell her to ring the driver and get him to turn the air conditioning down.
With Henry Blofeld’s departure from the Test Match Special commentary box, cricket is losing one of its great characters. Blowers is the only man who could have taken on Brian Sewell in a Fruity Vowel showdown, and his amazing techicolour wardrobe brings to mind the fast-fading world of PG Wodehouse. I can imagine him as Lord Emsworth with the Empress of Blandings at his side, marvelling at the redness of a bus beyond the fine leg boundary.
Who but he would ever dare refer to Geoffrey Boycott (the least camp man in broadcasting history) as ‘my dear old thing’? You’d never hear Blowers using my favourite cricketing cliché: when so-and-so hits the ball ‘it stays hit’.
Finally, here’s a nice little upside of fame: when my mother-in-law, Celia Johnson, rang her local cinema to see what time the feature film started, the manager replied, ‘What time can you get here?’
Simon Williams is appearing with his wife, Lucy Fleming, in Posting Letters to the Moon at the Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath from 18 to 20 January; postingletterstothemoon.com
