Thank ‘U’
By Simon Berry (Fgh 59)
I flatter myself that I became a sort of anti-establishment fifth columnist in my final terms at Uppingham. This urge was mainly satisfied by joining the team at ‘U’, an unofficial school newsletter produced every fortnight on a Roneo duplicating machine and selling around the School for tuppence. When I say ‘team’ it was mainly Piers Gough (WB 59) (inspiration, design and artwork) and myself (words and production) with editorial conferences snatched in the historic library with its Latin edicts in stucco on the ceiling.
The early issues (from 1958) were fairly scrappy and infrequent, bearing a roughly drawn U masthead and the toilet humour tagline ‘Clean Round the Bend’. Piers smartened up the look of it and managed to exploit a new technique for drawing freehand onto the Roneo stencils with a special fluid that had the effect of paint. I would use my Good Companion typewriter to fit the words into the spaces. The results could be spectacular and often surreal. I remember one, at the time the Chapel extension was getting underway, showing the headmaster rolling a section of column around the quad like a child with a stick and hoop. The implication was that he was becoming senile, I suppose, and within a very few years he did retire.
One of my ideas was to open a bookies’ corner on which psalm he would choose at morning assembly, giving the shortest odds on the longest ones since he seemed to enjoy inflicting those. He called me up onstage after this and asked me if I had plans to become a turf accountant. I thought he was joking and tried to enter into the spirit of the occasion. But he wasn’t. I think now it was meant to chill our satirical spirit.
During 1963 and 1964 U became very popular and incidentally provided a detailed record of what was happening at Uppingham. It also kept me occupied writing, typing, printing and distributing the product. I think we put the price up too, but I don’t remember who looked after the money which was needed to buy more stencils, paper and ink. I subsequently went on to make a sort of career in publishing and journalism and writing, thanks to my experiences on the school magazine and ‘U’.
I was disappointed to discover, on a recent trip to the school archives (thanks to Jerry Rudman, the Archivist), that there was a gap in the file copies for the Gough years. This is a loss to the School and to anyone wanting an inside view of what life at public school in the early 60s was really like. It’s possible that the missing issues for these years (around 20 of them) might have been lovingly preserved by an OU of my vintage. If so, please get in touch via [email protected].
