By Gary Boothroyd

Sports Books pound;7.99. 1 Evelyn Court, Malvern Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL50 2JR. Tel: 01242 256755 I have mixed feelings about secondary PE teachers. The one I knew best was generous to a fault (“Here are my car keys. Off you go”) while at the same time committed to an unconventional pedagogic style. He had the ability to coach a whole year group of boys playing 20-a-side football in freezing rain, from his Mini parked on the touchline.

Gary Boothroyd seems to have been more assiduous in his duties, which he carried out at Holte school in Birmingham for 27 years. PE teachers certainly see life in a way that teachers of, say, geography (it’s always geography, isn’t it?) don’t. Mr Boothroyd, for example, not only lost an entire cross-country match in the Birmingham fog one day, but also tracked down the location of a pornographic movie, filmed on the premises of a nearby school, by reading a blackboard in the background of one of the scenes. (Why was he watching it? Read the book and find out.) This is a good, light-hearted read, filled with incidents that will ring many bells for secondary teachers.