Brett was our fun class scapegoat. Each break time we would playfully chase him across the playing fields until we caught him, whereupon a joyfully mild beating would be administered.
I thought of this as run-of-the-mill schoolboy horsefoolery, until my mate from another class furnished me with a more objective viewpoint. He had one of those teachers who would keep students back on any flimsy pretext, so his class often got to see our fun. He provided me with this description.

• The bell would ring. There would then be a gap of some 30 seconds, during which his entire class would stare out of the window.
• Like a panicked Gazelle, Palfrey would spring out from the buildings and beat a breakneck path across the playing fields.
• There would be a further gap of about 5 seconds, as an underfoot thunder gathered force.
• The doors burst open, and a screaming mess of boyhood (containing a significant number of the rugby team) throttled towards the fleeing Palfrey.
• Palfrey would be engulfed. His bag, ejected from the melee, would follow a graceful parabola before showering the ground with his books.
• The cloud would then disperse, cheerfully discussing the whimsical dusting-down that had just been meted out.
• A broken Palfrey forlornly picked up his books, put them back in his bag, and waited until he could get back to the comparative safety of the classroom.

Any thrill which causes adolescent excitement is a cheapy. You "get your cheapies" by becoming embarrassingly over-excited at any mention of sex, violence, snuff movies, girls pants etc.

Used pejoratively as a self-regulating disciplinary mechanism amongst groups of teenage boys:
"Eugh! Smiffy's getting his cheapies"

a real, exceptionally scummy street in birmingham where all prostitutes, including your mum, work.

Pinch a flap of skin on your cheek between thumb and middle finger, then use the index to make a fold in the resulting bulge. Hey presto, you have something vaguely resembling a bald vagina on your face.
This was demonstrated to me aged 8, when I had never seen a cunt, didn't know what the word meant, and had no idea whether a bald cunt was funnier than a hairy one. It was on the guy's cheek though, so I laughed anyway.

A post Joey Deacon, post-Scoper word. Unusually considerate in that it was designed not to insult the victim directly, as they wouldn't know what you were on about. Currently seems to be growing in use, but still only widely used in the Essex/London area as far as I know.

When submitting entries to Law of the Playground, please try to make sure you're not ripped off your tits on a cocktail of amphetamines and brain retarders. For your delight, I bring you - the rather lovely Charlotte Ackrill!
At my school we had a supply freak called Mr Simmonds who looked like Chief Wiggum if he's opted for a Terry Nutkins haircut. He wasnt qualified to teach so instead he'd pick on the class punchbag and direct a tirade of abuse at him until old man simmonds face went red and he started spitting like a retard achieving his first masturbatory orgasm in a broken lift in the sahara. once the spitting had occured it was a signal for the whole class to erupt like a versuvius of snot in laughter at the victim who would generaly end up crying at the spectacle before him. We are still at a loss as to why he did this and why he called it cheese on toast but it generally happened at christmas after screening a video of him doing the laughing policeman at another school he wished he'd never left.

A classic scenario between mother and child. Either through the child's one-off expression of preference, or because the mother is simply mistaken, the mother gets it into her head that her son likes cheese sandwiches.
She will then give her son cheese sandwiches until he finishes his GCSEs. The son will at first eat them, because - after all - he likes cheese sandwiches. Soon, they will be left, rotting, in long-forgotten bag pockets and hedges on the way to school. After five years, the boy might even have to find new ways to walk to school, to avoid over-saturating certain roads with cheese fucking sandwiches.
I did bring this up with my mother in adult life, and she asked me why I didn't say anything at the time. But... you can't, can you?
NOTE : Use this effect to your advantage with less-visited and possibly housebound relatives, who will fill their home with your favourite thing, and you can go around there whenever you feel like it.

This was where you would get a packet of round maize balls (usually 6p and sometimes fortified with vitamins on the premise that anyone so poor as to eat them probably didn't have a healthy diet) and then insert them one-by-one under your foreskin, then pull your flap over them until they disappeared. You would do this for as many as you could and put them back in the packet. Then you would offer them around, safe in the knowledge that if anyone called your bluff, you could quite safely put your own cock cheese in your mouth.

The unbelievable but true name of an Australian who attempted the World Rolling Record in St. Albans. This involved rolling around the field, egged on by his colleagues. Egging on consisted of friendly kicks to the back.

I defy anyone to find a better use for a periodic table. Simply make rude words up from the available elements.
For example...BiTcH (bismuth, technetium and hydrogen), GaY, FUCK, PoO and especially SnOTi.

Tom Marvan was a smart kid, in all the top streams at school. Which is why it was such a joy to watch him try to do anything manual. He was nicknamed DAB, the acronym of Delayed Action Brain, to verbalise the sheer hopelessness of any task that he had to complete that wasn't cerebral in nature.
One particular treat that I was priviledged to have witnessed was when, during a science lesson, we were told to measure out hydrochloric acid concentrate into a beaker.
You could see that he was desperately trying not to fuck up this time and even had his tongue clenched firmly betwixt lip as he willed his body to obey his commands. He poured the acid into the beaker, only to have his arm refuse to come back into the position that would stop the liquid from issuing any further. It reached the top of container and kept going.
He then abandoned all reason completely and tried to scoop the escaping fluid back into top of the (already full) beaker with his free hand. I think that, in his panic, it simply hadn't dawned on him to just stop and mop it up. The beaker plainly couldn't take twice its volume in acid, but it didn't stop him trying. Tears of shame were welling in his eyes as he felt the undivided attention of the entire class of students watching on, captivated by his fliddishness.
The thrillng denoument to this otherwise usual DAB tale was when he finally gave up and went to wash his hands. The teacher, who also had been observing this spectacle dumbfounded, had to leap into action and stop him before he started the tap. If he had been left to his own devices, he'd have drenched his hands with water which in turn would have reacted to the acid on his hands and more than likely burned them both off.

Magnesium ribbon - a favourite. Produces an intense white light when lit. Can cause temporary blindness if let off in someone's face.
Sodium - produces unimpressive fizzing display when dropped in a sink full of water unless you've got enough to simulate Krakatoa. Dunking a head in the fizz will cause extreme panic and some flailing.
Phosphorus - the heavyweight. Ignites on contact with the air! Imagine sticking it down someone's collar!
Master these three and you may move on to caesium, if you can get the key to the special cupboard.

Oh Peter. Oh Peter. Oh Peter.

As all GCSE students probably can remember the Treat of the crazy, American accented man singing his way through the Periodic Table, the accompanying Video with those Amazing C64 graphics . Yes can you remember that. Well imagine the shock and horror of our class when the teacher in the revision period leading up to exams oneday pulled out a guitar and wanted the class to sing it along with her as part of our revision. I think that she was going through a divorce or something.

The time honoured practice of knocking on someone’s door and running off, the undisputed master of which was Weston. On a dark night we would use a reel of cotton (90 metres on a small reel, very useful) and tie one end to the knocker, unreel the cotton and go across the street and hide. When a car came along, you simply dropped the cotton onto the ground and the car would just go over it. When at a safe distance and hiding, in this case about 35 yards away, Weston would pull on the cotton and make the knocker bang on the door. Inevitably the bloke would come to the door, have a look round and then go in. Wait 10 seconds and repeat. He comes back and opens the door, now visibly pissed off, comes outside and looks for the kids he is convinced are hiding behind his car on the drive. Baffled, he goes back in. Wait 5 seconds and repeat with a very long and hard series of pulls on the cotton. Bang bang goes the knocker. Now he’s out again and really pissed off and because the knocking was only 5 seconds ago, the offenders must be very close by, right? He looks around, says predictable but pointless things like ‘where are you then?’ (like we’re going to say, ‘we’re over here in this bush mate, using cotton to bang your door knocker!’), then after a while he goes back indoors. The second the door closes, Weston bangs again and the door flies open. By now, I am a mess of pissing myself laughing whilst feeling some trepidation at the bloke’s increasing rage. Hidden in the bush, Weston continues to knock the door with the cotton in plain sight of the bloke who looks in disbelief at the slightly surreal and scary sight of a door knocker banging itself. Then finally in the dark he spots the cotton and traces it back to our bush. This isn’t difficult as Weston is still tugging on the cotton, now standing, with no attempt to hide. The bloke gives chase shouting some obscenities and we leg it whilst hearing him continue the pointless requests like ‘come back!’ So we stop, go back to face music and apologise. No, of course we didn’t.

An insult for boys or girls who have red faces. A superior insult to "Ding Dong, Avon Calling", as it completely robs the victim of any comeback. This is because, in essence, it makes no sense.

An alternative activity to looking at me, but one which unfortunately has the same outcome, to wit, losing your fucking teeth.

The old Wrigleys packs of chewing gum used to have 3 pictures on the back, one of a pair of lips, one of an envelope (no idea why) and one of a man putting litter in a bin. Tear the wrapper into three, mix them up and predict a friend's romantic future.

If you pick the piece of paper with the lips on, then someone's going to kiss you. If you get the envelope, someone's going to write you a love letter. If you get the bin, you're going to get dumped, which doesn't really work if you were single, but such is the scrambled logic of the hormonal pre-teen.

Dicking about on the stage in the main hall during an Art lesson, Danny Bailey and myself got bored and decided to throw random objects at David Forsyth, a confused young boy who used to draw pictures of axe murderers. Legend had it that his dad drew Count Duckula.
The first object that came to hand was a Chewit, and it was thrown a good 50 feet across the hall, hitting him square on the head and causing him to explode with shock, casting his pencils and drawing equipment into the air in a true comedy moment - it was probably the most accurate shot I've ever seen in my life.

I saw David Forsyth in a pub last year, and his girlfriend was better looking than mine, bastard.

This was a martial art invented and practiced in my secondary school. Pioneered by Matthew Roche and Jason Walker, it involved opponents (one-on-one or team event) running at each other at high speed, jumping into the air, whilst turning so that the bums of each opponent would clash. The main idea was to knock your opponent off balance in mid-air so that they would land flat on the concrete with a rather loud slap. It was also customary to chant 'chicken bumswing' in a mild Oriental voice whilst in battle.

Legendary local tramp who seemed to be based in the local scrap metal dealer. Fundamental to the legend of Chicken George is that he was actually a millionaire (honestly, a 17 year old boy with a scooter who hangs around with 12 year old girls says so). We found out later on in life that Chicken George had a Godly omnipresence, or moved around frequently, as he seems to have been the legendary local tramp for schoolchildren covering a twenty-mile radius.

Some remedial classes, because of the innately gentle nature of the mentally unexcellent, are sometimes charged with the care of several chickens. At Great Sankey High School, the use of being in the chicken group as an insult lasted until a child took it upon himself to destroy all the chickens with a spade.

A game on the BBC computers at primary school. I forget what it was called, and what the point of it was, but every now and then the screen would fill up with chickens and eggs and then the question would be popped "What came first, the chicken or the egg?"
I never knew the answer.

The use of the nail on the index finger of one hand to scratch the back of the other hand, repeatedly and continuously. The aim was to go past redness, rawness, and well into the open wound category leaving scabs for weeks and possible scarring. The really hard, and thus trendy people would rescratch partially healed scratches to ensure they were 'fresh'. The practice was banned in an assembly when a couple of kids got blood poisoning.

I believe that this is the best entry we have EVER had.
When I was a child these five girls used to love kissing me all at the same time! When they had finished I would proceed to punch this guy named Edward in the stomach!
Were YOU a bigger child stud than Murray Pirret? Perhaps you were snorting coke off a prozzies' tits at nine years old. We NEED to know.

After resisting all the uses of the chin for a long time (feeling that Baddiel and Newman had covered it adequately), here they are: