Deep in the slums of London, Conor MacMichael works hard to bring hope to a bunch of maladjusted kids...

Here we go again. Is there no end to these Blackboard Jungle-style dramas? No doubt Glenda Jackson proves an inspiration to her class, turning them on to poetry and the joy of exams?

Not exactly, but then with Phil Daniels leading the sexually active, foul-mouthed East End thugs in The Class of Miss MacMichael (1978) that was never likely. In fact, most of Miss MacMichael’s efforts are expended in trying to keep her charges out of the borstal while curbing their penchants for flatulence and flashing genitalia in the classroom.

How does she do that?

Well a strategically placed mousetrap does deter the more exhibitionist element.

You’re kidding Not at all. It’s an accident, of course, but a fortuitous one as far as Miss MacMichael’s concerned.

This school sounds impossibly awful It gets worse. There’s one thing on school premises even more ghastly than Miss MacMichael’s delinquents And what’s that?

Oliver Reed playing Sutton, the school’s totally over-the-top headmaster. Never one for understatement, Olly makes Sutton a hypocritical psychopath, all sweetness and enlightenment to visiting officials but vindictive to pupils. When he isn’t being horribly sexist self to Miss M, Olly is sending her pupils down to clean the school cesspit, an imaginative form of personal and social education that sets Miss MacMichael and her boss on a collision course.

Well, it would do Fortunately at this point Michael Murphy as Martin, Miss M’s boyfriend, offers to marry her and take her away from Olly, flatulent pupils and a student who believes he’s an African gorilla.

Just a minute isn’t Michael Murphy American? Star of Manhattan, Salvador and The Year of Living Dangerously, what’s he doing hanging around Miss MacMichael’s classroom?

Don’t ask, this film has very little to do with real life.

So does Glenda take the chance to become Miss MacMichael Murphy and jet off to New York?

Of course not. This is one of those stupid heart-warming stories of a teacher so self-sacrificing she doesn’t recognise a lifeline even when it hits her in the face. Which is pretty much what the boy who thinks he’s an African gorilla does.

Is this the worst film ever about teaching?

Perhaps, but it’s a great one for mousetraps.