Burnley Grammar School

I caught up with an ex-PE teacher of mine a few years ago, it was about 15 years after I'd left school in 1987 at the time. Up here in Dunfermiline where I attended Woodmill school for six years. My ex-PE teacher was still on the staff at the time.

Woodmill High made all the boys take gym in bare chests only while I was there. There was no other option available to any of us at that period in time. Generally speaking it's not as warm here in Fife like it is in all those southern counties of England. I remember speaking about the school gym and the cold feet I used to get on the hard floor, no trainers you see, just brought your feet, and how cold it could be without a top on in the winter especially but not solely, any time really. Boys were always feeling cold in our chilly echoey sounding big gym, wearing short shorts and not a great deal else how else could you feel when you and many of your class don't exactly have a lot of meat and fat on our skinny bodies.

Anyhow, my ex-gym teacher denied to me that our school gym was ever too cold, and I sniped one back telling him he would say that because he was always taking our gym class in t-shirts, full tracksuits often in navy blue, long sleeves and long bottoms too, no shorts, trainers and socks, so of course he didn't notice, while we were all stuck into the shorts alone policy of the school, or the teachers at the time. His answer back to me was that I may have a point! You bet I did, gym teachers were always having a wee laugh like this over us, over dressing themselves and under dressing all of us, and Dunfermline is not one of the warmest places in the UK. I asked if he still worked at school, and he said yes, and if it was still the same and he said yes, this was about 2003 and another whole calendar decade had passed since I left there.

We used to run in the summer in cross country with all our shirts off, but never in winter, although we ran in all weather, wrapped up against the bitterest cold, in one flimsy sweatshirt. If you came to school with a non sports vest under your school uniform shirt you had to remove it and not wear it.

One PE teacher of mine, James McBride, used to accuse the class of being half asleep if he thought we seemed low on energy or were showing signs of lethargy. If this was the case, and he was always saying it, on return to the changing room he only gave us cold or very close to cold showers that he said were designed to wake us up, so if you were in PE and heard the words lethargy or low energy you almost knew you were probably getting the cold shower dose in the showers soon, and whatever the temperature, we were forced to take them.

On some of the coldest Scottish winter afternoons of the 1980s when we were literally frozen despite any running or constant movement when I took my stuff off to shower I used to be more than a wee bit unhappy at how the cold had shrivelled up the size of my wee winkie quite dramatically compared to it's normal size I was familiar with it being, amnd wanting some warm water on it quick to restore my young male pride in front of the others, who had probably all been affected the same as me.

You didn't have any choice about showering, even if you did get a choice, which we didn't. We were always in a great deal of mess coming from the outside after football, rugby or cross country, the cold wet mud clinging to us was legendary, you could never not shower after many of these PE lessons, you had to. We were expected to be a filthy old mess. They even made us shower when the school boiler broke and it was stone cold.

Hi Graeme,

'Madame PE Teacher?' You make her sound like a dominatrix but I suppose that was your intention.

I note you said it was the two oldest teachers who pressed the bare chested thing. I think it was much more common for boys in the postwar years which would presumably be when those two teachers had started their careers.

What age were you when you had her? Depending on her age, and her experience, she may have felt the necessity of asserting herself over a gym full of lairy teenage boys.

Also the activities you say she made you focus on sound like a lot of gymnastic type stuff, for which a shorts-only kit is safe and practical.

I wouldn't have liked doing PE like that either and the thought of having to do it in front of a woman teacher makes me shudder. Before discovering this forum I had never heard of women teachers supervising boys' PE, much less supervising them in the changing room.It really does seem that every secondary school had its own strange idiosyncrasies. At least Madame PE Teacher was not allowed to do that.

I wouldn't have minded having a go at trampolining though but our school didn't haver one.

Hi Alan,

If you read Rob's post closely he says that shorts are optional for both sexes. Suggesting them is all his manager can do.. And if the postmen really disliked her comments they could turn up en masse in long trousers, that would show her.

Women find the idea of men in shorts amusing and Rob's manager is just playing on that. You're right, women have far more entitlement to these kinds of comments but this is doubtless in no small part down to the fact that women very rarely prove to be sex pests.

No doubt he's right and they don't really mind. Think of it: when was the last time you saw a delivery postman in long trousers?

I actually have seen delivery postwomen in those long regulation shorts before, though as Rob says, rarely.

Comment by: Royal Mail Rob on 7th May 2025 at 02:38


"You should work for the Royal Mail guys.

I've got a woman manager at the sorting office and she likes seeing men in shorts on the rounds and suggests it whatever age going......"

I find that appalling Rob. This is a typical example of YT's double standards. I bet if a male manager told this bissom to wear shorts she would be whining about "sexism" and misogyny in the workplace. I would tell her where she could stick her shorts. I always wear trousers and always will. That's the benefit of being self-employed - you don't have to deal with individuals like that.


On shorts in general, (James) I think it is disgusting that your mother made you wear shorts into your teenage years. Did she have no idea about the teasing, bullying and attention she was attracting towards you?. Let's face it, most kids will take the gypsies out of anything. I would have suggested, had my mum been like that, she went out and bought herself some crinolines, bloomers and button boots. It would only have been fair if she practised what she preached. If she wanted to live in the past she should have applied it equally to herself. I bet she didn't though! These days you even see little toddlers wearing long trousers.

Hi Yours Truly.

It must have been very gratifying to be allowed to wear long trousers and give up your shorts at seven.Certainly,when I attended primary school nearly all the boys wore short trousers,so any request to wear long trousers was immediately turned down.I waited patiently to attend my new school when I learned that boys could wear long trousers or shorts.I was shocked as you would have been and my parents were pleased that I would be allowed to wear short trousers for my new school. I was kitted out in my new uniform complete with short trousers at eleven.
When I attended my new school most boys wore long trousers with the exception of a few boys and after informing my mother she was impressed that she chose short for me to wear.

I had 5 different P.E teachers take me for gym while at school some 35 years back. 4 of them were men from quite young to middle aged, 1 was a middle aged woman. School was not regulation shirtless P.E by any means but out of the 5 teachers in gym we had, 2 of them went with doing gym done bare chests A LOT, like 90 percent of the time, they were the oldest two teachers we had and one was the woman who took us for P.E who definitely had the attitude towards boys at school when she was given us for P.E that boys do gym in bare chests and don't need tops on. She was obsessed with trampoline, bench and mat based work and anything involving balance and we sometimes shared her with girls but it was mostly just boys. Most gym I remember was done without plimsolls or socks on. Madam P.E teacher as we sometimes called her was never allowed in our changing area, another male teacher always made sure we did the showers deed and kept tabs on us all.

I never quite got into P.E like that. I liked wearing a top.

You should work for the Royal Mail guys.

I've got a woman manager at the sorting office and she likes seeing men in shorts on the rounds and suggests it whatever age going. Mind you, most guys doing the delivery rounds, on foot or vehicle, do seem to like wearing shorts anyway so it's not a problem, some do so all year long.

But keep an eye out for your post ladies on the rounds, you are unlikely to see many of them wearing female shorts or tiny skirts well above the knee this summer. They are not encouraged to do so incase it leads to unwelcome attention. Yes, really! So we do have a situation where the men are openly encouraged to get our knees out in the fresh air and bare the legs while the women are not. But there's no firm rule on it.

I've had comments about the way I dress in my time, some people think posties look scruffy nowadays, but we dress for comfort on daily rounds, especially the soft shoes. When you are walking about all day you get someone sometime mention your legs if you are in shorts, I've had three or four comments over the last five years or so. I'm not a winter shorts wearer though.

I would not know what the rule is on tops on men, if it was a scorcher and I wanted to do the round without one, but what would put me off that would be sun damage out for hours, rather than embarassment, plus I don't think it would be a good look in the job even if we could and I doubt many would.

Just to mention my schooldays, although I'm only 41 we had our fair share of shirtless PE in my time and I remember sharing such sessions with girls in all the schools I was at from a young age up until close to leaving actually so I'm moderately alright with it as a gym uniform even when not by personal choice. I was taking class group showers in school all through the late 90s from eleven to sixteen, nobody attempted to keep shorts on or anything like that, we all just got naked and got on with it, whatever each of our personal thoughts about doing that were. It's certainly a memorable part of school PE lessons remembering seeing all your class with absolutely nothing on.

Hi James,

What you describe there is my worst nightmare. The difference being, the last time it happened to me I was seven years old. It is actually what gave me what has turned out to be a lifelong preoccupation with double standards. I can't even begin to imagine how I would have felt having to wear shorts at thirteen.

I do remember one of the women teachers, come straight from a PE lesson, taking our Maths lesson still in her short netball skirt. Don't know what the girls thought about it but we boys paid attention.

Hi Yours Truly,
When I wore shorts particularly at secondary school I found that they gave a distinctly childish and immature look to the boys that worm them,including myself.
This look may have appealed to some adults,but most boys wearing long trousers and girls continually mocked and teased the boys that were wearing them.

Steve, the difference today would be that boys would have a choice if they preferred to wear shorts.When I wore shorts and short trousers I was made to wear them continuously.My mother bought shorts for me and never purchased long trousers or jeans in case I refused to wear my shorts.When I returned from school I would change out of my school uniform shorts and change into my satin shorts.These fitted tightly and my mother used to show me off and display me in my shorts.

Hi James,

It's interesting you say 'she'. Women seem to have had a particular thing about boys wearing shorts. It was all women pronouncing the shorts rule at my infant school. And certainly when my teacher brought me into line my mum happily responded by putting me in shorts most of the time. I also remember, in junior school, when I thought I had escaped the tyranny of shorts, our woman teacher one day in summer surveying us in irritation and exclaiming, "All you boys should be in shorts!" She then proceeded to ask every boy in class in turn whether he owned a pair of shorts. I pointed out that mine weren't regulation school grey but she was very quick to say that didn't matter.

Several years ago I was walking through a park with a social group I used to be a part of. There was a group of young boys playing there and one of the women in the group was moved to remark, "I like to see boys in shorts." Another woman responded, "Little boys?" and they both had a good laugh. They weren't being malicious, they just regarded boys in shorts as part of the natural order of things.

I remember, in my last year at secondary school, a class conversation turning to how we had been at primary school. I remember one girl pulling an exasperated face and remarking how one particular boy had always worn short back then. The two boys she told, who had gone to different primary schools, immediately started laughing exultantly and were straight over to him to start the mockery. So both genders associated short trousers for boys with a sense of indignity.

I still think it was weird that your secondary teacher was keeping count of the boys in shorts though. Or maybe not, given my previous observation that women seem to have a thing about boys in shorts. I expect she thought it was amusing to see you in your shorts and also maybe saw it as you say as a way of cutting potentially bolshie young men down to size, by undermining your developing masculinity. I can't be much younger than you but I don't remember a single instance of boys wearing shorts in secondary school. I wonder if they would even have been allowed them? Girls too, officially, weren't allowed skirts above the knee.

Weirdly the same principle worked and works inversely for girls. Miniskirts had a resurgence in the mid-80s and I remember girls in increasingly short skirts, by their own choice, in contrast to your and my experience, and incidentally, very much against the school's rules. Girls seemed to want to get their legs out as they got older. Didn't they feel self-conscious? Didn't they feel vulnerable? They didn't seem to.

And before you expect me to whip out the double standard thing, we boys were bumming the dress rules as well, in our own ways. My school was just very inconsistent.

Yours Truly,It was in the late seventies when satin shorts became fashionable.
I thought it was strange that my teacher counted how many boys were wearing shorts,but she probably wanted to encourage them to wear them.I agree, my parents wanted to keep me in shorts to keep me looking young.

How times change. I understand the awkwardness of being made to wear shorts by parents however in recent years we have seen protests in schools from teenage boys wanting the right to wear shorts to school in hot weather.

Hi James,

You're not kidding about adolescence being an awkward time for boys - and girls.

What era was this? Sixties? Seventies? I was unlucky enough to catch the tail end of the 1970s and there were still some archaic practices going on in schools.

Why the hell was your class teacher keeping count of the number of boys in shorts? Was he some sort of fetishist?

Maybe the adults deliberately didn't want you to grow up too soon. If I look back to the social landscape of my childhood it included football hooligans, punk rockers, skinheads, metallers, the national front and the Brixton riots. There was a great deal of hysteria in the newspapers about out-of-control young men, not all of which was spurious media hysteria, and a corresponding attitude among older adults that teenage boys needed to be put back in their boxes.

Comment by: Ronnie on 5th May 2025 at 01:24

I also decided to watch that film for the first time late last night, which must have been the very time you were watching it again after all those years since you remembered it. It was very much of its time, but I thought as well as being such a moving film, it did demonstrate quite clearly the difficulty some fathers have in demonstrating their love, which they do have, for their sons, no matter the reason. Very sad.

Yours Truly,boys generally go through an awkward time when they go through adolescence and as I was kept in short trousers at 13 this made it particularly awkward.How can anyone start to feel grown up when their parents insisted that I wore short trousers all the time? My form teacher encouraged this by counting how many of the class were still wearing shorts.

Comment by: Mark on 4th May 2025 at 22:33
Comment by: Matthew S on 4th May 2025 at 20:28


Thanks boys for your help. The winner is Mark! That's the one I was thinking of, spot on. Even older than I thought it was. I've enjoyed watching that again over the last hour.


Thanks Matthew, I'll also check out your suggestion too if it's around to be seen anywhere. I believe the writer of the drama Mark's found was also just 22 when he passed.

Hi Ronnie, I think I might recognise your description. It wasn't this was it? Although if it is it's older than you thought, actually from the mid eighties not the nineties. It has a cancer story, a teenager, football and halfway through a sudden communal nude scene with bath and walking about at 28 minutes.

In always find it weird when they put such gratuitous scenes in drama like this, even if it is portraying reality. But then it was the 80's. I wonder how they sell roles like this to actors and if many refuse to do them when asked.

https://youtu.be/zH4jHGgxdUs?feature=shared

Ronnie, this may not be the drama you were referring to, but there was an inspirational, if desperately sad, film repeated on the BBC in the 1990s called "The Terry Fox Story". It depicted a real Canadian who gave up football after having his leg amputated. Terry Fox ran a three-thousand-mile distance with an artificial limb to raise money for cancer research. The cancer returned and he died at the age of twenty-two.

Yours Truly,thank you for your reply,you raised some points that I hadn't considered,although I did accept that the wearing of short trousers was a form of a strict disciplinary practice.Of course growing up wearing shorts I had to accept wearing them all the time and like your parents mine were locked into this mindset'little boys wear shorts'.To be told that'I looked nice in my shorts'seemed to me to be very patronising which led to my mother by me more pairs of shorts.My parent took the decision that I should continue wearing them through my secondary school.

We also had white shorts which exposed every detail when wet.
My older and younger brothers, and their classmates, also complained about them. Yet they never changed them. Bizarre

Chris H, we also wore those white running shorts at school.Mine were made out of polyester nylon and had a very shiny satin effect and were translucent.When we ran in the rain they were almost see through.,which could be very embarrassing.We often participated in inter-house running events and we provided the girls quite a spectacle.

Comment by: Simon W on 3rd May 2025 at 17:09




".........I'd like to try and understand how those who faced compulsion to shower at school found it, for good or bad, so if anyone would care to share such thoughts I'd like to read them and to know exactly what it was about this that caused anyone's own personal difficulties, or perhaps none at all......."

Hello again, Simon and welcome back, I can only wish you had been my P.E. teacher at school. The great problem I had at school, apart from a P.E. teacher who seemed to have been put on this earth to make everybody's life a misery, (I have discussed him at length previously and will not do so again) was that, before the age of 11, and the world of compulsory showers and near nudity in lessons, I was aware that I was homosexual, which troubled me deeply. It has always been the bane of my life. I loathe it in myself, and had I been aware of conversion therapy -non-religious, - I would probably gone through it, but in school years I was terrified of being found out. Luckily I never was, but of course back then it was illegal for anybody under 21, and there were still very pejorative stories in newspapers, and the lads in our school (a fairly rough area of East London) used the "q" word about everybody, just as often as the "f" word. There was always fear, and all the years I was there it never lessened. It probably got worse, in truth. It didn't help, on the physical level, that the P.E teacher's name for me was "Tin Ribs" - he disliked me as much as I disliked him.

To this day, I am astonished, when reading on here, of how lads were looking at each other (somebody the other week referred to enjoying the "naked camaraderie" of the showers) Our school expected over 30 boys to use those showers at the same time - it was a small area and you were constantly trying to avoid contact. I was very green and unaware at the time, and I would have been mortified to know that there were old men out on their bikes watching us, and enjoying the spectacle. A few years back we had one old man on here who used to drop into a school playing field, on a regular basis, to watch shirtless boys (in December!) and chat to the P.E. teacher. I can't imagine you doing that. It might have been his fantasy, but nevertheless whether it happened or not, that is what he would have LIKED to have done.

The situation for lads like me was bad enough then - imagine what it must have been like pre 1967 when it was illegal full stop.

Not you, as clearly you are cut from a different cloth to the old doctrinaire teachers, but it astonishes me that teachers back then did not realise there would be boys who had similar difficulties, and made no effort to understand it. I am equally astonished at the number of lads who "come out" at school these days. Seriously if they had done so at my school, it would have been very dangerous to do so. You could get beaten up for just having the wrong accent or wrong colour hair - even fights over which computer was best - the Spectrum or the C64 - can you imagine anything more stupid?. most of the violent behaviour happened at the bus stop, but schools should be a safe place where you go to learn, and I never felt safe at mine. Music and electronics, which were an interest from a very young age were non-existent in my school, even though they have continued throughout my life. I still listen to music, even though I ceased playing in my twenties.

Chris1970 I saw you write about the teacher pulling you by the ear and you having to take a going at from him without anything on. I agree that's not the nicest way to treat people but compared to some of the outright beatings, even just with a hand I saw in our school in the 70s that is almost nothing. Our gym saw lots of whackings across bare skin leaving reddened marks. It ranged from just a hand, a plimsoll or at worst a belting proper. Legs, backside or the back. Head clouting was so common in any lesson, but I remember the PE most for it.

Hi Greg2,

That extra detail in your previous post made more sense of your incident. Your PE teacher came in at the crucial moment, caught you violating the girls' private space and feeling obliged to defend them slippered first and asked questions later, since you 'obviously' needed to be temporarily stripped of your boyish exuberance, and touching your toes for his plimsoll was an immediate and effective way of doing it.

'To tell you the truth we seemed to forget about it, or just leave it, which seems odd now.'

You had no choice, did you? You knew what would happen.

'Unlike males, don’t all females like to think they’re entitled to know every detail about everything anyway, which is probably why their female teacher let them continue.'

I'm not sure that's the truth. Both genders have an evolved instinct to 'cut males down to size'. Men because of the adversarial alpha-male instinct. Women because, when you think of it, they are at far more risk of every type of violent offence from men than men ever are from women. Every opportunity to mock and humiliate men is to them is just evening up the score.

Also, both genders mercilessly tease each other at that age, don't they? And not just children. That bullying from your nurses was disgusting and unprofessional but then, hey, you were only a boy after all.

It actually reminds me of an anecdote my mother, who trained as a nurse, once told me about her days on the ward. This male patient came in for an operation and they happened to notice that it was stated in his notes that he suffered from what is nowadays termed 'micropenis', ie, he was unable to father children. They were all curious to check it out and while he was unconscious every single nurse on the ward took a turn tending him - and the male surgeon let them. Afterwards, on their break, they all had a damn good laugh about it. This was the late 1960s and there was a pop song with the lyrics "Willie, can you do the things I ask you?/ Willie, can you do them true?" One nurse sang this lyric before triumphantly hooting, "Willie, can't, can he?" to general laughter.

Although I do know that every salacious rumour at my school seemed to generate from among the girls. Some of them ought to have gone to work for GCHQ.

'there is one other thing I’ve realised since thinking this through again all these years later: we never did try to explain that we were just getting our own back'

Maybe because you all knew he wouldn't give a flying shit. You have mentioned several times how he never stopped his female colleague from entering your male space. He plainly had no regard for your feeling or boundaries, which seems to have been part of the job description for that generation of male PE teachers.

And as I have stated before, it's my belief that, contrary to every assumption and stereotype, it actually boys who are the more compliant gender. Boys find themselves in a world of physical threat, actual or implicit, from day one, while girls are raised to regard their personal boundaries as sacrosanct. For boys the consequences of resisting are potentially greater, as several previous posters here, both male and female, have observed.

A good answer you gave Brian there Neal. Where I was at all my teachers were Brian's though.

I flew to Norway once for a quick two day works trip with my then boss. The only people I saw there were well wrapped up! What is it that makes people from cold nations so easy going on the stripping off.

If anyone can give me the secret to that kind of casual easy confidence to take stuff off and not give a damn then I'm listening intently.

At our school in Wrexham forty or so years ago we had a gym teacher there who had a habit of going all physio on favoured sporty pupils after PE in our changing room and you'd sometimes see him massaging select boys bare legs and manipulating their bare feet too back and forth around the ankles, often after cross country, before or after we'd hit the showers. I never knew quite what to make of it. When they moved PE to last lesson another teacher, not him, started coming into the shower with us from time to time but kept his shorts on. We however could never keep our shorts on to shower, or anything else, getting naked was mandatory for us all.

It's surprising how many films, dramas and documentaries are out there that drop group showering scenes into them, not always adult but also younger persons even with a couple of examples on here and no strategic coverage.

Sometimes they pop up in the most unexpected places. I watched a moving drama one evening on telly about a teenage boy crippled with cancer who could no longer play football when completely without warning there was the abrupt appearance of a changing room with everything out. I'd like to know what this was actually, so if anyone here recognises my description then let me know. I think I watched it in the 90's, and it was a one off like those old Play For Today things of the 70's. I can't recall any of the actors or writers alas.

Hi James,

I don't think my parents intended to humiliate me either, they were just locked into this 'little boys wear shorts' mindset and were seemingly oblivious to my obvious distress.

But that is just the thing, it didn't make it fair at all when the girls were allowed to wear whatever they pleased.

I expect the school's motivation was the same, that boys just look nice and smart in shorts. Although I always wondered if there was a sly disciplinary tactic going on there. As you say, shorts in the seventies were shorter than today and going to school feeling half-stripped made you feel vulnerable and embarrassed and therefore easier to control. Also, having to dress in shorts meant you were aware that you were then under the teacher's authority. Perhaps the shorts were intended as a covert substitute for uniform which didn't come in until junior school. But this is all just my speculation.

I do think that if a child is that obviously reluctant for whatever reason their boundaries should be respected and to an extent kids should be allowed to come to these things in their own time instead of being forced by any means necessary. I did eventually come to relax and accept the shorts and put the unfairness of it to the back of my mind - but then when you discover that your teacher keeps a gym plimsoll for naughty boys a little embarrassment and injustice no longer seem such high priorities.

My parents were quite happy that the nonsense had been knocked out of me and my mum happily bought me several new pairs of short while my treacherous father actually shook that teacher's hand at a subsequent parents' evening.

I do agree with Alan that you should not have been made to wear shorts casually after age eleven but then I understand that was still relatively common practice for boys as late as the 1960s. It actually reminds me of a letter from the problem page of a well-know tabloid when I was a teenager, from a 13-year-old boy who had been put back in shorts by his mother after he had been caught bullying girls. This was obviously intended to humiliate him and judging by his letter it worked!

Comment by: Russ on 1st May 2025 at 22:04

Thanks for the link to the Norwegian film site Russ. It seems an interesting websitewhere I might explore a little more. You also mention a historical films archive site, is this a Norwegian site? i think I remember watching some old footage on such a site some years ago but have since lost the link. I do sometimes watch digitalised old documentary films on the Swedish filmarkivet.se and also the Danish danmarkpaafilm.dk sites, both of which I find very interesting. Also the British Huntley film archive and the bfi are good, from which I posted a link last February showing a boys’ walking race filmed in 1922. Danny C gave an appreciative comment on that post. I hope he can return here sometime.

I decided, just out of curiosity and interest, to have my dna ethnicity checked earlier this year, and it came back telling me my highest ethnicity count being 46% Scandinavian and 30% Eastern European, which is how my family looks I suppose and takes in my Scandinavian surname from my Father’s side, and the Eastern European link covers Eastern Germany where my mother’s family came from. Basically I'm Northern European it seems, which I suppose explains the affinity I’ve always felt to Scandinavia and it’s culture and peoples…not sure I’d be too keen to have a shower like those lads with the corridor door wide open though! Actually, perhaps this might have been part of their changing room area as you can see a mirror on the wall out there.