I’ve just re-discovered this book on Amazon. I lost my copy years ago. In pre-twitter pre-blog era, John-Paul Flintoff, a former student at Holland Park, decided to write about his experiences. He has written some background here: http://www.flintoff.org/comp-a-survivors-tale
He got a bit of flack for it – it’s not exactly a documentary. It’s based around his own recollections of life at the school in the 1980s but it makes it sound like a zoo – which it wasn’t.  Crazy things happened – but it wasn’t the wall-to-wall chaos described here.  Comp is still fun to read – especially if you worked there.

Before publishing, he visited the school in ’97 to talk to teachers at the time. One of them was me. On these two pages (from 2/3 down on the left) he describes my physics A level lesson where, as Head of Year 7, I also had some students parked around the classroom on internal exclusion. Those were the days. Funny to read it now. ‘Moderately trendy glasses’; that always cracks me up. The cheek of it!  But I’m pleased that I was reported to be teaching some proper physics.  As for the ‘miscreants’.. well, that system was never going to work.

Continued….(note bottom of right hand page – I was going on about being in bands then; not much has changed.)