Professor Pook

Book excerpt: Peter Pook has graced many professions in his time, and has escaped from many difficult situations. In this latest adventure he takes up the task of teaching, bringing to his duties that unique blend of dedicated hilarity and profound near-scholarship which his thousands of readers find so hard to do without. The reader is taken right into the staffroom and classrooms of Cudford Secondary Modern School, to meet the very people we knew in the happiest days of our lives—the fat boy who sat next to us, the cutie who passed us inky love-notes, as well as the fiery Headmaster, Gym Mistress, and Fräulein. Naturally, Pook’s own extra-curricular activities involve him with the female teachers, but he does what passes for his best to conceal these affairs from his pupils, who lap up anything to do with S-E-X as eagerly as the staff themselves. Educationalists will be intrigued by Pook’s unorthodox approach to teaching in the Pop Age, when he strives to impart a knowledge of English to the D stream, who often find difficulty in using even their mother tongue. The N.U.T. and N.A.S. will be delighted by this shrewd appraisal of their problems, while the ordinary reader—Pook-addict or fresher—will revel in this lesson in laughter.