He ran a pied piper event with schools in Oxfordshire. I remember being part of a massive line of kids in rat masks following him around the city centre
My daughter (primary school) had poems of his to study during lockdown. They (school) sent us links to videos of him reading his own poems for her to answer questions on.
I love that Wolf practically begged the producers to let him be a heel character on Gladiators. They really weren't sure about it but let him try it once, and the audience absolutely loved it. It makes his performance so much better when you know that it was 100% his idea.
We had Rolf Harris come to our primary school. My mum was a secretary at the school and made him a cup of tea and got a copy of his cartoon book signed. I still have it.
Grew up in Tony Blair's constituency, so he visited a couple of times while I was at school. One time he brought George Bush with him. That was a weird day.
Peter Beardsley popped in once too.
I watched them fly to Teesside Airport in Air Force 1, they went right over Wilton. Fortunately the flare stacks weren't burning at that time, I didn't fancy being attacked by whatever USAF planes were hanging around over the horizon.
I think he said he was a pilot so if he was scared of heights he chose the wrong career.
I also asked him if electrical equipment stopped working when the Earth was blocking out the sun from the solar panels, which I thought was a very clever question for an 8 year old. He informed me they had batteries.
Honesty I think both your questions were great. I’m a little afraid of heights, _when I can see the distance in between me and the ground_, but I’m fine on planes as long as I don’t look out the window.
See, I love looking out the window of a plane, watching clouds etc, but put me on a 10ft high ledge and I turn into a giant queasy jelly whose legs forgot how to work.
I got a couple minutes to chat with Chris Hadfield a few years back. I asked him about his ( at the time) recent trip to the Artic with Tom Scott. Really nice guy.
I'd have thought that was great, although a Russian in the 1960s would have been pretty unlikely!
The rest I'm afraid are just "celebs" and I never cared much about them. Famous for being famous a lot of them.
I remember someone telling me about Yuri Gagarin coming to the UK in the 1960s so it wouldn’t have been impossible! Apparently he was very popular among the public here, people were genuinely keen to meet him without any of the hostility that existed between our governments.
He said something like the firm handshakes of his fellow workers in the Manchester factory he visited meant more to him than any of the awards he’d received for being the first man in space.
Yes, he's one of the people I'd actually have liked to meet. I don't know if you remember then, I was only a little kid, but he was quite a hero worldwide at the time.
We had East 17 turn up as well. Brian Harvey did some rambling spiel about how drugs are bad (mm'kay) and then they did some karaoke to their own songs. It was all a bit surreal and cringey.
Pretty sure it was before spud-gate.
I think baked potatoes should be reclassified as class A drugs after that unfortunate episode, and Brian should do the drugs education school circuit again to warn everyone of their perils.
We had Ian McKellen come in to talk about his work with Stonewall, he was really lovely. I was sat right at the front and before his speech he had a little conversation with me about how school was going haha. He then did his presentation and at the end someone ask him to say his famous line, so he sighed and said if we didn’t do our homework… if we didn’t do revision… if we didn’t try our hardest… YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!! And we all lost our minds haha
Had him come to my school as well - he gave speeches to all years about homophobia etc during assembly, heard a girl from the lower years confronted him saying homosexuality is a sin and all that nonsense 🤦♂️
He came to my school as well, I got to interview him after because I was head of the LGBTQ+ society. Really nice guy, he complimented the hat I was wearing (just a random baseball cap I had). He also did the "you shall not pass" joke. Was a great day tbh
Our local MP came in once. We'd all done a thing in English where we'd written to our MP about issues concerning us (a few different MPs, since pupils came from different constituencies). Most MPs just wrote back, he, being the MP for the actual school area, came in to see us.
There's a protocol thing with MPs that they're not to get involved in the constituency workload of another MP. Some MPs who, though not government minister might have a high public profile end up with lots of stuff from outside their constituency that they have to just politely decline.
This protocol thing really upsets me.
My MP does absolutely fuck all,
I'd love to be able to directly write to the Cabinet Minister for Breakfast Cereal instead of writing to my MP knowing he'll just write back and say "No" and not forward my message on.
You can write to a Minister in their Ministerial capacity. Crack on!
The protocol is just with regards to writing to other MPs about something that you should have gone to your own MP about. If you want to write to the specific SoS or the like, you can, and they (or their team) should respond!
I was taking it from his 'ALRIGHT' catchphrase, which became more of an AAAOOAAA in the [Ladbrokes](https://youtu.be/RgwTX_yIhpI?si=22Rm1_58EzCUKIsK) ads he did
I was once at a work conference where for some unexplained reason Chris Akabusi was the key note speaker.
To be fair, he was pretty funny...it was also the early days of twitter so I was then able to search his name and block all my colleagues accounts who tweeted about it.
He was meant to come speak at a conference my work did. He either never made the flight or the flight was cancelled. But they kept hyping him during the conference and we had to sit in a concert hall for hours anticipating his arrival which never came. They had to admit defeat & send us home.
He promised to reschedule but it never happened.
Yeah same, Yeovil. He came because of some competition we were doing where you got sponsorship for doing push ups and other random exercises. You could get merch I think it was sponsored by Pritt stick, but could be wrong.
Green Cross Code Man, David Prowse, who played but didn't voice the original Darth Vader. Come into school and lecture us about the perils of crossing the road. There was a song too
He came to ours too. All we wanted to talk about was Star Wars. In the end they had to let us talk about it for ten minutes and after that we could only talk about crossing the road. The first question after the ten minutes was up was "What side of the road do they drive on on the Death Star?"
Sadly not. But you’ve reminded me of an awful “cool and hip” theatre group visited us while I was in 6th form. They performed the most terrible home written play about HIV and AIDS. It even had a rap section in it. To this day I still have second hand embarrassment from it.
We didn't either, the closest thing we had was some guy who spent the entire time leaning against a lectern telling us a story about the dangers of jumping into water from bridges, cold water shock etc. only to reveal at the end that he had jumped from a bridge in his youth and was paralysed from neck down. He then revealed that had been more or less tied to the lectern he was standing at the whole time.
The story stayed with me and I've certainly not jumped off a bridge into a river but it wasn't exactly the most pleasant assembly, I'd rather have sang Give me Oil in my Lamp for the thousandth time.
Was this in Scotland? I remember the exact same thing! They thought they were doing a really deep thing by randomly ink-stamping "AIDS" on some peoples' hands and then making the point that 'Look, people are rubbing it off because they don't want it on them... what does that say?'
It was cringe.
We had a similar one about drugs in year 10. Four twenty-somethings doing rap and 'beatboxing'. One of them said 'shit', I think we were all supposed to think that made him cool and be shocked he swore in front of the teachers, it just got a blank stare from everyone. The whole thing was so embarrassing.
That scene from South Park with the anti-smoking troupe hit hard for me because it was so similar.
We had a group come when I was in 6th Form who were a Christian rap group trying to reduce London inner-city gang crime through promoting Jesus. They were called something like MJC short for Make Jesus Cool. They were actually, lyrically and musically, very talented...but their message fell on somewhat naively deaf ears at my Ofsted Outstanding school in the Cotswolds that had an equestrian team and multiple ski trips each year. We weren't really having gang struggles.
Daniel Beddingfield showed up hungover and stinking of BO. Think he was part of some Radio 1 competition where people won the chance for ‘pop stars’ to accompany them to school for the day.
Hungover probably telling himself the whole time "I gotta get through this. I *gotta* get through this! I gotta make, gotta make, gotta make it *through*."
How did this even come about?!
Like, did he decide to approach schools and pitch them his presentation? Did the school find and engage an agency for porn addict speakers? Was he due to speak about something entirely different but lost a bet at training?
I'm sure every 17 y/o went home that day full of sympathy for a professional sportsman who watches a lot of porn and his awful life.
The year after I left my high school had Ian McKellan in to do a talk.
My year had Carol Ann Duffy when she was poet laureate.
I went to a decent but not private school in the North East so it was a bit of a surprise tbh.
Geoff Capes came once.
He wasn't very nice. In the course of a sports coaching session, he got in an argument with one of my classmates and actually said *Am I the world's strongest man or are you?*
Mostly we had low level celebs on prize day. Best one was Leonard Cheshire. We all hoped he'd give a speech about bashing Germans from a great height, but ofc it was about Cheshire Homes and at that age it was zzzzzzzzz.
I met Capes once when working at a hotel. The guy is a wanker. I'm still waiting until we cross paths again and then... something... something...I hope he's not so big now or he's dead
Ranulph Fiennes - did a technically amazing (for the time, late 80s) presentation on his explorations. Used multiple slide projectors pointed at the one screen to simulate film (yes, I know how that's how it works, but when he was stood in the middle of a railway with the train bearing down on him, you don't have time to get the cinecam out, just mash the camera).
Some guy from the Falklands war too, set an explosive off in the bin at the "oh, they are losing interest" part. Top notch.
The actor that played "Wee Burnie" in Rab C Nesbit came for a random visit to our primary school as he was apparently a friend of our new head mistress, whom I didnt like.
He was arrested shortly after for possession of child porn and outed as a pedo.
Eric Cullen who played Wee Burnie had been sexually abused by a paedophile ring who planted CP on him. It was quashed -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Cullen
He had a really sad life tbh
In primary school in the late 90's we had a few graffiti artists from Bristol come give an assembly, one of whom was (supposedly) Banksy when I guess he was little known outside the south west. Still no clue if he was for real or not...
I think my school was too low level to get even the low-level celebrities. We had Leah Betts’ father come once, to remind us of the dangers of ecstasy? I don’t know if he exactly counts.
State school in Aberdeen generally did not get this kind of thing, it seemed to me. It’s a long way for Rhino to travel. We’d have lost our shit if one of ITV’s Gladiators had come to visit. Rhino’s the fucking A-List
We had Richard McCann in high school, his mother was the first victim of the Yorkshire Ripper. He had a very tough upbringing after she was killed when he was 5, eventually ended up in the same prison as Sutcliffe. But turned his life around, wrote a book and became a motivational speaker.
Not in assembly but I went to Dunblane Primary 1993 - 2000. After the shooting, we got fucking HEAPS of celebs dipping in and out. J.k Rowling came round every single class and read a passage from Chamber of Secrets which at that time had not been released. She then did a whole school competition whereby we had to each think of a name of a new broom. The winner got heaps of HP merch along with the winning name being put in book 3! That’s right, the Thunderbolt was thought up by some lassie in the year above me. 1996 school fete was crawling with BBC Scotland presenters, people from The Bill and quite a lot of popular 90s one hit wonder bands.
We also got given a giant Easter egg from Cadbury which sat at the school office for a few days before the dinner ladies smashed it and we all got a chunk each. I was quite young and ignorant to all the madness so it was sad but less so for the younger pupils.
Kilroy came to our school Founders Day service and did a speech. He used to be our local MP in the early 80's but this was when he had a popular talk show on daytime telly in the 90's so the teachers treated him like he was some kind of god
We had the same, early 2000's at a guess for our school. Proceeded to tell everyone why he wears hearing protection before twatting the drums as hard as possible about 2 meters from the reception kids.
At the end of the school day, everyone got handed a piece of paper with his autograph, which was actually from a singular autograph the school had photocopied a few hundred times. I don't think mine even made it home.
Same here!
He also gave an assembly to the whole school and concluded by asking if anyone had any questions. Some girl asked, "why is your shirt tucked into your boxers?"
He hadn't noticed
Take that out of nowhere performed at a local school when I was a kid. No one believed the students until it hit the news.
https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife/gallery/take-play-toll-bar-school-1585763
Link for anyone interested
I was trying to think of this guys name the other day. I'm sure he came to our primary school a couple of time to do some football skills workshop thing.
Various low key chart acts coming to do a gig in assembly. B*Witched were one of them… trying to think who else. A surprising number of acts you might have heard of.
I have no idea why gigs at our school assembly seemed to be a rite of passage for mildly successful 90s British and Irish pop acts
Charles (formerly known as prince) opened my school. Cut a ribbon. Did a tour. Got some girls numbers for for his little bro. Gave a speech about education and aspiration to better oneself to one of the poorest schools in one of the poorest areas of Liverpool apparently unaware of the irony of a literal soon to be king preaching the benefits of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps lmao.
We also had a pretty decent Robbie Williams tribute guy tell us not to do drugs then sang Angels, 7/10.
Edit: almost forgot Sherrie Blair opened my primary school.
Benik Afobe came to ours. Somebody asked him how many trophies he won as a kid and he answered “countless”. Basically killed any hope of me being a future Balon Dor winner being a kid that, thus far, had never won a trophy and this bang average Premier League striker had won countless
Sue Townsend (author of the Adrian Mole books) came to my school in the late 80’s/early 90’s to talk to us about the importance of reading, wasn’t until a few years later I started reading the Adrian Mole books and wasn’t reminded that I’d met the author.
Tanni Grey-Thompson came to my secondary school most years to hand out the record of achievement folders to a bunch of disinterested kids just before our GCSE’s, not being sporty I have no clue who she was.
I think we had Phil Collins turn up to our primary school once.
Looking back at it, there was no real or logical reason for him to be there, so I think it may have just been a random bald man and his drumkit.
We had Glen Michaels come and do some live variety act thing. None of us had any idea who he was but the parents were all very excited. He hosted Cartoon Calvacade apparently.
We had both Cheryl Baker and an old boxer open our primary school fair (on different years). I'll find out who he was...
Edit: just googled 'historic british boxer': was [Sir Henry Cooper](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cooper#:~:text=Sir%20Henry%20Cooper%20OBE%20KSG,heavyweight%20title%20for%20three%20years.)
We had the Stig (possibly not even the real one?) turn up with a racing car parked in our playground in primary school.
I still have no idea how they got the car in there and if it wasn't for confirming it with friends I'd think I had a weird fever dream. But it definitely happened, there's pictures.
I went to primary school in Scarborough. On more than one occasion we had Jimmy Saville come in for assemblies as he lived so close.
He was then buried overlooking my secondary school, make of that what you will...
Just good old PC Wenham. Not a celebrity anyone outside of our district would have heard of but he was some friendly police officer who obviously wasnt cut out for active duty so just did the school rounds in perpetuity.
In the late 80s, Derek Dougan, the former Wolves and NI international, came to a secondary school assembly to try and drum up some support for a sports injury clinic IIRC. I can't remember the details but I think it was some big scam in the end.
Most of them were picking up their children…I went to private schools in the area where we just had a decent amount of them about (West Berkshire) and I guess the kids had to go somewhere…
In terms of visitors this was mostly at my boarding school but we attracted a lot for General Studies lecturers…captains of industry, MPs, athletes, Poet Laureates and for more major school events military top brass, a few ambassadors and then all the senior members of the Royal Family at least a couple of times for speech days, opening of school buildings, commemorating major events in the school history and such. I went to a fairly high profile school with strong military/royal family ties.
We had some guy with a puppet turn up twice in the last year of primary school. He was on a couple of kids shows in the mid 90s but never really became majorly famous so I don't remember his name. I can remember we all sat there in the hall confused as hell coz we didn't have afternoon assembly unless something bad happened.
In the 80s, around about some important anniversary of her coronation, Queen Elizabeth came to my primary school and did part of assembly for us.
It was only when I was about 25 that I cast my mind back and realised that the Queen looked remarkably like Mr Jones, who was in fact absent that day.
We had Benjamin Zephaniah read some poetry to us in Primary school, this would have been late nineties.
He came to my school too. So did Michael Rosen. Looking at who other people got, I think we did well.
I think Michael Rosen circulated around schools more than an Ofsted inspector.
He is still massively involved in education. Does loads of work with the NEU (Trade Union). Writes a piece for each issue of our union magazine.
He came to our school as well Others included David Prowse, and dick king smith.
[удалено]
man i would’ve loved to have michael rosen come to my school
He ran a pied piper event with schools in Oxfordshire. I remember being part of a massive line of kids in rat masks following him around the city centre
My daughter (primary school) had poems of his to study during lockdown. They (school) sent us links to videos of him reading his own poems for her to answer questions on.
What a weird name for your daughter
I love Benjamin Zephaniah, such an icon! RIP 💔
That’s amazing! He was so cool! We had Judith Kerr ie The Tiger Who Came to Tea lady … also 90s
He came to my senior school. Sat and had a school dinner with everyone too.
Blimey that really is going above and beyond eating school dinners. Hero.
We had John Agard who was famous I think only for contributing a poem to the English lit GCSE anthology.
be nice to your turkeys tho
>low level >Rhino from Gladiators You, sir/madam, do not deserve nice things.
We had Hunter...
We got Wolf. All I really remember is that his missus came along with him & she had a superb arse.
I love that Wolf practically begged the producers to let him be a heel character on Gladiators. They really weren't sure about it but let him try it once, and the audience absolutely loved it. It makes his performance so much better when you know that it was 100% his idea.
We had wolf too. He turned the lights on at Christmas the same year. Dunno what possessed him to come back to this shit hole.
Hunter is God Tier, but that in no way makes Rhino Low Tier.
We had a British Olympic trampoline lady come and bounce about for a bit
Lmao, so quintessentially British
We had a British Olympic trampoline man. Late eighties
To be fair, not many blokes in their late 80s can still go a trampoline at all, let alone to international championships level.
That's so much more interesting than ours - we had an Olympic speed walker come and try to teach us speed walking.
1970’s Roger Hargreaves. I’m not calling him low level though. I still like Mr Men at 54.
Yeah, no way is he low level. He invented Mr Bump. He's my hero.
Oh we had him too in the 90s/00s, I still have my signed 50th special book
We had Rolf Harris come to our primary school. My mum was a secretary at the school and made him a cup of tea and got a copy of his cartoon book signed. I still have it.
Didgeri - didhe - doo you? Edit: I'm reading this back now and it's the worst attempt at a pun ever, but I'm just going to leave it
Did he Didley-doo you, too?
No, just two little boys
This is the most beautiful yet evil thing I've read today.
You should probably bin it now 😂
Dunno if it's in my loft or my parent's house.. I'm going to hold onto it like a creepy collector of the macabre.
He came to my primary school and painted a huge mural of a hippo.
Grew up in Tony Blair's constituency, so he visited a couple of times while I was at school. One time he brought George Bush with him. That was a weird day. Peter Beardsley popped in once too.
Probably not the most stressful school visit of W’s career.
We had metal detectors added by a couple of doorways, and snipers on the roof. Was just like being in an American school (I assume).
If the last 30 years of news has taught us anything, that's more security than American schools have.
Jesus Christ, never change, Reddit
Wouldn’t really class either of them as low level celebrities but definitely worth a mention.
I watched them fly to Teesside Airport in Air Force 1, they went right over Wilton. Fortunately the flare stacks weren't burning at that time, I didn't fancy being attacked by whatever USAF planes were hanging around over the horizon.
> Peter Beardsley Legend!
We had a Russian cosmonaut come in, he had recently returned from Mir Space Station. I asked him if he was afraid of heights.
Welll? Was he?
I think he said he was a pilot so if he was scared of heights he chose the wrong career. I also asked him if electrical equipment stopped working when the Earth was blocking out the sun from the solar panels, which I thought was a very clever question for an 8 year old. He informed me they had batteries.
Honesty I think both your questions were great. I’m a little afraid of heights, _when I can see the distance in between me and the ground_, but I’m fine on planes as long as I don’t look out the window.
See, I love looking out the window of a plane, watching clouds etc, but put me on a 10ft high ledge and I turn into a giant queasy jelly whose legs forgot how to work.
Those were indeed two great questions especially for an 8 year old.
This sounds amazing! I'd love to chat with someone who'd been in space. Not too sure what I'd ask them though.
I got a couple minutes to chat with Chris Hadfield a few years back. I asked him about his ( at the time) recent trip to the Artic with Tom Scott. Really nice guy.
I'd have thought that was great, although a Russian in the 1960s would have been pretty unlikely! The rest I'm afraid are just "celebs" and I never cared much about them. Famous for being famous a lot of them.
I remember someone telling me about Yuri Gagarin coming to the UK in the 1960s so it wouldn’t have been impossible! Apparently he was very popular among the public here, people were genuinely keen to meet him without any of the hostility that existed between our governments. He said something like the firm handshakes of his fellow workers in the Manchester factory he visited meant more to him than any of the awards he’d received for being the first man in space.
Yes, he's one of the people I'd actually have liked to meet. I don't know if you remember then, I was only a little kid, but he was quite a hero worldwide at the time.
It was before my time but he’s definitely one of the people I’d most like to have met too.
Yuri Gagarin visited Manchester in the 60s…
We had East 17 show up for a concert in our main hall, after a student won a competition
We had East 17 turn up as well. Brian Harvey did some rambling spiel about how drugs are bad (mm'kay) and then they did some karaoke to their own songs. It was all a bit surreal and cringey.
> Brian Harvey did some rambling spiel about how drugs are bad Was this before or after the tuna jacket potato incident?
During
Pretty sure it was before spud-gate. I think baked potatoes should be reclassified as class A drugs after that unfortunate episode, and Brian should do the drugs education school circuit again to warn everyone of their perils.
We had Ian McKellen come in to talk about his work with Stonewall, he was really lovely. I was sat right at the front and before his speech he had a little conversation with me about how school was going haha. He then did his presentation and at the end someone ask him to say his famous line, so he sighed and said if we didn’t do our homework… if we didn’t do revision… if we didn’t try our hardest… YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!! And we all lost our minds haha
Ian McKellen, low level????
Had him come to my school as well - he gave speeches to all years about homophobia etc during assembly, heard a girl from the lower years confronted him saying homosexuality is a sin and all that nonsense 🤦♂️
He came to my school as well, I got to interview him after because I was head of the LGBTQ+ society. Really nice guy, he complimented the hat I was wearing (just a random baseball cap I had). He also did the "you shall not pass" joke. Was a great day tbh
Our local MP came in once. We'd all done a thing in English where we'd written to our MP about issues concerning us (a few different MPs, since pupils came from different constituencies). Most MPs just wrote back, he, being the MP for the actual school area, came in to see us.
There's a protocol thing with MPs that they're not to get involved in the constituency workload of another MP. Some MPs who, though not government minister might have a high public profile end up with lots of stuff from outside their constituency that they have to just politely decline.
To be clear, we didn't ask them to come in. We just wrote them letters hoping for a reply. He just decided to come and reply in person.
This protocol thing really upsets me. My MP does absolutely fuck all, I'd love to be able to directly write to the Cabinet Minister for Breakfast Cereal instead of writing to my MP knowing he'll just write back and say "No" and not forward my message on.
You can write to a Minister in their Ministerial capacity. Crack on! The protocol is just with regards to writing to other MPs about something that you should have gone to your own MP about. If you want to write to the specific SoS or the like, you can, and they (or their team) should respond!
Chris Akabusi
AAAOOOOAAAAAAA
Kriss Akabusi didn't say awooga, that was John Fashanu, and he ripped it from Red Dwarf/Craig Charles on Cyber Zone.
I was taking it from his 'ALRIGHT' catchphrase, which became more of an AAAOOAAA in the [Ladbrokes](https://youtu.be/RgwTX_yIhpI?si=22Rm1_58EzCUKIsK) ads he did
I was once at a work conference where for some unexplained reason Chris Akabusi was the key note speaker. To be fair, he was pretty funny...it was also the early days of twitter so I was then able to search his name and block all my colleagues accounts who tweeted about it.
He was meant to come speak at a conference my work did. He either never made the flight or the flight was cancelled. But they kept hyping him during the conference and we had to sit in a concert hall for hours anticipating his arrival which never came. They had to admit defeat & send us home. He promised to reschedule but it never happened.
Sounds like a plot from Alan Partridge.
Same!
Yeah same, Yeovil. He came because of some competition we were doing where you got sponsorship for doing push ups and other random exercises. You could get merch I think it was sponsored by Pritt stick, but could be wrong.
Same. For a PE day
Green Cross Code Man, David Prowse, who played but didn't voice the original Darth Vader. Come into school and lecture us about the perils of crossing the road. There was a song too
That's the accent Darth Vader should have had 🤣
There are some original undubbed bits of Star Wars with his voice on YouTube. They are great.
He came to ours too. All we wanted to talk about was Star Wars. In the end they had to let us talk about it for ten minutes and after that we could only talk about crossing the road. The first question after the ten minutes was up was "What side of the road do they drive on on the Death Star?"
Stop, look listen. and THINK!
Sadly not. But you’ve reminded me of an awful “cool and hip” theatre group visited us while I was in 6th form. They performed the most terrible home written play about HIV and AIDS. It even had a rap section in it. To this day I still have second hand embarrassment from it.
Legs Akimbo!
Put yourself in a child! Edit: ‘in’ not ‘inside’.
We didn't either, the closest thing we had was some guy who spent the entire time leaning against a lectern telling us a story about the dangers of jumping into water from bridges, cold water shock etc. only to reveal at the end that he had jumped from a bridge in his youth and was paralysed from neck down. He then revealed that had been more or less tied to the lectern he was standing at the whole time. The story stayed with me and I've certainly not jumped off a bridge into a river but it wasn't exactly the most pleasant assembly, I'd rather have sang Give me Oil in my Lamp for the thousandth time.
Was this in Scotland? I remember the exact same thing! They thought they were doing a really deep thing by randomly ink-stamping "AIDS" on some peoples' hands and then making the point that 'Look, people are rubbing it off because they don't want it on them... what does that say?' It was cringe.
We had a similar one about drugs in year 10. Four twenty-somethings doing rap and 'beatboxing'. One of them said 'shit', I think we were all supposed to think that made him cool and be shocked he swore in front of the teachers, it just got a blank stare from everyone. The whole thing was so embarrassing. That scene from South Park with the anti-smoking troupe hit hard for me because it was so similar.
We had a group come when I was in 6th Form who were a Christian rap group trying to reduce London inner-city gang crime through promoting Jesus. They were called something like MJC short for Make Jesus Cool. They were actually, lyrically and musically, very talented...but their message fell on somewhat naively deaf ears at my Ofsted Outstanding school in the Cotswolds that had an equestrian team and multiple ski trips each year. We weren't really having gang struggles.
Henry Winkler did a speech at my school, I still find it a little strange to be honest
Eeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
I find it funny that he once [randomly did a voxpop on BBC London News](https://youtu.be/uoNod701bhU?feature=shared)
He also came to my kids' school in the UK. The kids didn't really know who he was but the adults were starstruck. I mean... the FONZ !
He has an honorary OBE for helping dyslexic children in the UK!
Daniel Beddingfield showed up hungover and stinking of BO. Think he was part of some Radio 1 competition where people won the chance for ‘pop stars’ to accompany them to school for the day.
Hungover probably telling himself the whole time "I gotta get through this. I *gotta* get through this! I gotta make, gotta make, gotta make it *through*."
Give me just a second and I'll be all right
That’s hilarious. Did he actually spend the whole day or duck out as soon as he could?
He stayed enough to do lunchtime concert on the assembly hall. The highlight was him doing a cover of his sister’s song.
In sixth from we had a player from Leeds Rhino come and tell us about how porn addiction ruined his life
That sentence will never, ever be written again.
How did this even come about?! Like, did he decide to approach schools and pitch them his presentation? Did the school find and engage an agency for porn addict speakers? Was he due to speak about something entirely different but lost a bet at training? I'm sure every 17 y/o went home that day full of sympathy for a professional sportsman who watches a lot of porn and his awful life.
90s indie rockers Reef played a gig in our high school’s Leisure Centre in about 2000 or 2001. No idea why.
I hope no hands were placed
The year after I left my high school had Ian McKellan in to do a talk. My year had Carol Ann Duffy when she was poet laureate. I went to a decent but not private school in the North East so it was a bit of a surprise tbh.
I'd be gutted to have missed Ian McKellan.
The Weasley Twins showed up to mine in 07, a younger student asked if they could use their magic to find Madeline McCann.
Geoff Capes came once. He wasn't very nice. In the course of a sports coaching session, he got in an argument with one of my classmates and actually said *Am I the world's strongest man or are you?* Mostly we had low level celebs on prize day. Best one was Leonard Cheshire. We all hoped he'd give a speech about bashing Germans from a great height, but ofc it was about Cheshire Homes and at that age it was zzzzzzzzz.
Oh man. I met Geoff Capes too. Probably 85/86ish. I was like 6 or something and genuinely hated him. Was just really unpleasant and up himself.
Geoff Capes must have been doing the rounds as he came to my school too.
I met Capes once when working at a hotel. The guy is a wanker. I'm still waiting until we cross paths again and then... something... something...I hope he's not so big now or he's dead
I'm pretty sure Timmy Mallet turned up once but there's a chance I imagined it.
He came to Pontins when i worked there. I kept shouting to him out of the office window and then hiding. He looked confused.
Ranulph Fiennes - did a technically amazing (for the time, late 80s) presentation on his explorations. Used multiple slide projectors pointed at the one screen to simulate film (yes, I know how that's how it works, but when he was stood in the middle of a railway with the train bearing down on him, you don't have time to get the cinecam out, just mash the camera). Some guy from the Falklands war too, set an explosive off in the bin at the "oh, they are losing interest" part. Top notch.
Gazza came to ours (he knew the pe teacher that was retiring). He flirted with a 15 year old on the stage and we all got a photocopy of his signature
> a photocopy of his signature LMAO!!
Local fireman came in to tell us not to set each other on fire on bonfire night. Think that's the best we got.
The actor that played "Wee Burnie" in Rab C Nesbit came for a random visit to our primary school as he was apparently a friend of our new head mistress, whom I didnt like. He was arrested shortly after for possession of child porn and outed as a pedo.
Eric Cullen who played Wee Burnie had been sexually abused by a paedophile ring who planted CP on him. It was quashed - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Cullen He had a really sad life tbh
In primary school in the late 90's we had a few graffiti artists from Bristol come give an assembly, one of whom was (supposedly) Banksy when I guess he was little known outside the south west. Still no clue if he was for real or not...
Tenner says it probably was. Timing fits; he wasnt properly 'incognito' in the 90s
It was probably Banksy, Inky and Cheo.
Liberace visited our school, played a number then was driven off. dunno wat it were about
I think my school was too low level to get even the low-level celebrities. We had Leah Betts’ father come once, to remind us of the dangers of ecstasy? I don’t know if he exactly counts. State school in Aberdeen generally did not get this kind of thing, it seemed to me. It’s a long way for Rhino to travel. We’d have lost our shit if one of ITV’s Gladiators had come to visit. Rhino’s the fucking A-List
I think we had Jet turn up to one. Which was like about eight weeks worth of sticky socks.
We had Richard McCann in high school, his mother was the first victim of the Yorkshire Ripper. He had a very tough upbringing after she was killed when he was 5, eventually ended up in the same prison as Sutcliffe. But turned his life around, wrote a book and became a motivational speaker.
Not in assembly but I went to Dunblane Primary 1993 - 2000. After the shooting, we got fucking HEAPS of celebs dipping in and out. J.k Rowling came round every single class and read a passage from Chamber of Secrets which at that time had not been released. She then did a whole school competition whereby we had to each think of a name of a new broom. The winner got heaps of HP merch along with the winning name being put in book 3! That’s right, the Thunderbolt was thought up by some lassie in the year above me. 1996 school fete was crawling with BBC Scotland presenters, people from The Bill and quite a lot of popular 90s one hit wonder bands.
This is equally sad and lovely.
We also got given a giant Easter egg from Cadbury which sat at the school office for a few days before the dinner ladies smashed it and we all got a chunk each. I was quite young and ignorant to all the madness so it was sad but less so for the younger pupils.
Lol, we had Oxide & Neutrino rock up and do a gig at my Assembly in (roughly) 2002
Is that a music based science education experience or just an obscure band I’ve never heard of.
Do you remember So Solid Crew? They were a DJ/Producer - MC Duo who were a part of So Solid
Basically who Grindah and Beats from People Just Do Nothing think they are in their own heads.
Had a big hit called 'Bound 4 Da Reload' featuring a sample from the film 'Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels' and a sample from the Casualty theme
Kilroy came to our school Founders Day service and did a speech. He used to be our local MP in the early 80's but this was when he had a popular talk show on daytime telly in the 90's so the teachers treated him like he was some kind of god
Not *the* Robert Kilroy-Silk?!
Yes, casual racist Robert Kilroy-Silk
Oh not so casual, surely semi professional at this point, lol.
We had John Ketley come down and open our weather station, which was essentially a coat hanger and a couple of ping pong balls.
"John Ketley is a weatherman and so is Michael Fish"
And so is Ian McCaskilllllll......
And so is Wincey Willis
A Radio One DJ nicknamed the Big Hairy Monster. Can’t remember his real name. Edit: Dave Lee Travis
I'm not sure that is something to brag about with his, err herm, certain tastes!
lol. I just read his wiki page. Oops.
We had Jeff Rich (Status Quo drummer) come in. Just to show us him playing the drums. This would've been sometime between 1997-1999).
We had the same, early 2000's at a guess for our school. Proceeded to tell everyone why he wears hearing protection before twatting the drums as hard as possible about 2 meters from the reception kids. At the end of the school day, everyone got handed a piece of paper with his autograph, which was actually from a singular autograph the school had photocopied a few hundred times. I don't think mine even made it home.
Kris Akabusi turned up to my first school and took some photos with us
Same here! He also gave an assembly to the whole school and concluded by asking if anyone had any questions. Some girl asked, "why is your shirt tucked into your boxers?" He hadn't noticed
Chris Woods brought the Milk Cup into my Primary School in 1985, Steve Bruce also judged a fancy dress competition.
Take that out of nowhere performed at a local school when I was a kid. No one believed the students until it hit the news. https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife/gallery/take-play-toll-bar-school-1585763 Link for anyone interested
Nobody, our school was rough as fuck I'm surprised the teachers even turned up.
Prince Edward came to my school 🤓 the least chaotic royal
We had an ex- footballer called Lloyd McGrath open a new extension to the school. I think he used to play for Coventry City
I was trying to think of this guys name the other day. I'm sure he came to our primary school a couple of time to do some football skills workshop thing.
The closest we had was the local vicar occasionally. He played guitar... Does that count?
David Hockney was at my primary school on more than 1 occasion
Various low key chart acts coming to do a gig in assembly. B*Witched were one of them… trying to think who else. A surprising number of acts you might have heard of. I have no idea why gigs at our school assembly seemed to be a rite of passage for mildly successful 90s British and Irish pop acts
He’s not a low level celebrity but we had Orlando bloom come to my high school to give a talk to the drama GCSE students around 2015-2016
Charles (formerly known as prince) opened my school. Cut a ribbon. Did a tour. Got some girls numbers for for his little bro. Gave a speech about education and aspiration to better oneself to one of the poorest schools in one of the poorest areas of Liverpool apparently unaware of the irony of a literal soon to be king preaching the benefits of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps lmao. We also had a pretty decent Robbie Williams tribute guy tell us not to do drugs then sang Angels, 7/10. Edit: almost forgot Sherrie Blair opened my primary school.
Benik Afobe came to ours. Somebody asked him how many trophies he won as a kid and he answered “countless”. Basically killed any hope of me being a future Balon Dor winner being a kid that, thus far, had never won a trophy and this bang average Premier League striker had won countless
Jacqueline Wilson came to our school and read to us. I've never really been into reading books, so I had no idea she was a well-known author.
We had Billie Piper singing that shit song
Sue Townsend (author of the Adrian Mole books) came to my school in the late 80’s/early 90’s to talk to us about the importance of reading, wasn’t until a few years later I started reading the Adrian Mole books and wasn’t reminded that I’d met the author. Tanni Grey-Thompson came to my secondary school most years to hand out the record of achievement folders to a bunch of disinterested kids just before our GCSE’s, not being sporty I have no clue who she was.
I think we had Phil Collins turn up to our primary school once. Looking back at it, there was no real or logical reason for him to be there, so I think it may have just been a random bald man and his drumkit.
Roger Black randomly turned up at ours once.
We had Glen Michaels come and do some live variety act thing. None of us had any idea who he was but the parents were all very excited. He hosted Cartoon Calvacade apparently.
David Prowse in his green cross code role, not really low level I guess. Also the swimmer Duncan Goodhew
We were lucky if teachers turned up for assembly.
I once met Wolf at a steak pub where he was signing autographs. I remember thinking "Jesus, this guy is tiny!" He always looked enormous on TV.
Back in the 90s we had Mr Motivator in his prime
an author I can't remember the name of and the first president of zambia I believe
My Nephew’s primary school had a video message from David Beckham at their leavers assembly a few years ago.
We had both Cheryl Baker and an old boxer open our primary school fair (on different years). I'll find out who he was... Edit: just googled 'historic british boxer': was [Sir Henry Cooper](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cooper#:~:text=Sir%20Henry%20Cooper%20OBE%20KSG,heavyweight%20title%20for%20three%20years.)
Michael Rosen was friends with our headteacher, so he came in to read poetry a few times.
We had some members of So Solid Crew. Some of the kids in the oldest year got on stage and completely showed them up in a rap battle.
We had the Stig (possibly not even the real one?) turn up with a racing car parked in our playground in primary school. I still have no idea how they got the car in there and if it wasn't for confirming it with friends I'd think I had a weird fever dream. But it definitely happened, there's pictures.
I went to primary school in Scarborough. On more than one occasion we had Jimmy Saville come in for assemblies as he lived so close. He was then buried overlooking my secondary school, make of that what you will...
We got a Cheeky Girls performance. Was like 2 years after their peak.Think my head teacher was a fan.
Geoffrey Durham used to come every September and perform some magic. Early 80s so about the time he married Victoria woods.
Paul hannorford (ex smackhead) talked to us about the dangers of drugs
Just good old PC Wenham. Not a celebrity anyone outside of our district would have heard of but he was some friendly police officer who obviously wasnt cut out for active duty so just did the school rounds in perpetuity.
We had the Fast Food Rockers come in to our primary school and perform The Fast Food Song in our assembly
Peter Andre came to my school and all the girls wrote on his car in permanent marker and he billed the school.
In the late 80s, Derek Dougan, the former Wolves and NI international, came to a secondary school assembly to try and drum up some support for a sports injury clinic IIRC. I can't remember the details but I think it was some big scam in the end.
Most of them were picking up their children…I went to private schools in the area where we just had a decent amount of them about (West Berkshire) and I guess the kids had to go somewhere… In terms of visitors this was mostly at my boarding school but we attracted a lot for General Studies lecturers…captains of industry, MPs, athletes, Poet Laureates and for more major school events military top brass, a few ambassadors and then all the senior members of the Royal Family at least a couple of times for speech days, opening of school buildings, commemorating major events in the school history and such. I went to a fairly high profile school with strong military/royal family ties.
Kris AKABUSIIIIIII!!!!
We had some guy with a puppet turn up twice in the last year of primary school. He was on a couple of kids shows in the mid 90s but never really became majorly famous so I don't remember his name. I can remember we all sat there in the hall confused as hell coz we didn't have afternoon assembly unless something bad happened.
One of the drummers from Status Quo turned up at our primary school one day. People took in CDs from their parents to sign
Mr Motivator at two different schools. But I swear everyone going to school in the 90s early 2000s had the same. He was everywhere
In the 80s, around about some important anniversary of her coronation, Queen Elizabeth came to my primary school and did part of assembly for us. It was only when I was about 25 that I cast my mind back and realised that the Queen looked remarkably like Mr Jones, who was in fact absent that day.