(Torquay) Grammar Snobs Thread

I suppose being Bristol Born I don't really count on this thread but if your talking of being snobbish then I better keep quiet about going to Clifton !

.......and I bet you went to Cam-BRIDGE............

...Boooom Tsssssh..........

We called the blue and white 'temporary' building the Wendy House, no idea why.
I once puked out of the window from the first floor, as if you wanted to know.

Can't remember feeling that the school became elitist when we moved to Shiphay.

We had the pre-visit in '81 and, I think, it was a great idea; it gave the Sixth Form 'volunteers' an extra chance to intimidate you I believe. Or I've made that up as your brain does with old memories. Did I tell you I was the best sportsman TBGS ever had ...

I’ve been lent a copy of the TBGS Centenary history covering the period between 1904 and 2004. This is a handsome publication subtitled “A Century of Education Achievement”. Others, I imagine, may happily devise rather more pithy sub-titles for the merriment of themselves and others.

Further to Mr_W’s amazing recall of the old school buildings at Barton Road I was pleased to see several images of the old....er....institution retained for posterity. Unfortunately the panoramic view is spoilt by a page fold:









Gerald Smith – “Crunch” – Head 1966-1981





And, lastly, Vera Fraser-James - a local and county councillor as well as school governor – who is alleged to have once uttered “Comprehensives: over my dead body!”. Here – under the caption of GROUNDBREAKING AT SHIPHAY – Dame Vera is seen with Crunch and some carefully-selected pupils (“no hippies!”) at the ceremony marking the start of the construction of the new school. A moment in history indeed:

and me ex kirkstead boy,audley park crew and tbgs trying to beat the crap out of me for my dinner money,which in the 60s was about sixpence ;D

Reading this week’s Herald Express I was shocked and saddened to learn of the death of Vernon Savage.

Vernon, the son of a long-time Devon General employee of the same name, was in my year at secondary school where he was commonly known as “Sav”. I can’t remember our paths crossing too often in the classroom but he was invariably at school football matches. There was a keenness within him to be regarded as the team’s biggest supporter. I may have been a rival.

And Sav was always happy to talk about football with one proviso. It had to be about Manchester United. As for music, it could only be The Who. Any other band or team didn’t concern him unless, with football, it was a side that had just lost to Manchester United. If your team got beat by them, he’d be in your face the following day. As for Torquay United, we were never on his radar. He thought we were the pits even though, in our early days at the grammar school, we had one of the best sides in our history. Of course, in response, we didn’t make life easy for him. From Manchester United winning the European Cup towards the end of our first year it must have been grating for him to see them relegated just as we finished the sixth form. Not that Torquay United’s fortunes improved over that period.

Looking back, I guess the main memory is of travelling to the Manchester derby in April 1973 by coach from Torquay. This had been organised by Sav’s dad and was something of a prelude to the Torbay Reds, of which Sav became a leading light. You can read more about that involvement, as well how an extremely young Sav came to be photographed with Duncan Edwards, at www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk/Tributes-lynchpin-Man-Utd-club/story-14080273-detail/story.html

It’s thirty-five years since I saw Sav and I’ve no idea how we would have communicated as adults. The very thing that some people would have thought we had in common may have divided us. His football wasn’t my football or visa versa. I know from acquaintances that Sav was a regular on Manchester United’s European trips. I know too that one of my friends – a person with a marvellously sunny attitude to life and football – mentioned to Sav how wonderful it was that Torquay United had returned to the Football League. Sav, continuing the habit of a lifetime, displayed indifference in response. That, as we know, says much about football loyalties in Torbay. The irony is that – with Sav moving to the area at the age of four or five and living there more or less continuously since – he was probably far more of a Torquinian than I ever will be. Another irony is that one of the last results he would have heard was probably that of the recent FA Youth Cup match. Perhaps he gloated in similar fashion to the way I gleefully received the news from Basel. Such is football.

But for Sav, dying last weekend, Manchester United will forever be in the Champions League. Just like, to his chagrin no doubt, so are Manchester City....