I woke this morning to news via a text message that one of my old English secondary school teachers had passed away. I don’t know how he died, what the circumstances were, I just know that he is no longer walking the Earth. 

It’s strange how later in life you mostly remember the teachers who treated you like shit, the ones who went out of there way to make you look stupid. My English teacher was one such bloke. During creative writing exercises, the cruel bastard would always rip apart my fertile imagination in front of the whole class, not just telling me how stupid my stories were (usually they involved ghosts, and abandoned creaky old houses) but how pathetic a writer I was. 

He never seemed to help any student, but to just constantly take the piss.

What is most ironic is that I was thinking about this old teacher of mine last night, whilst watching the razor sharp and funny political satire In The Loop on DVD (released in the U.K. on August 24th) which has quickly become one of my favourite films of 2009. Peter Capaldi’s scene stealing, should be supporting Oscar nominated performance as crazy Scottish Alastair Campbell esque spin doctor Malcolm Tucker is an inflated version of my old English teacher. 

He would swear in the same way. Clever, witty but always highly threatening put downs. That harsh Scottish voice, even whilst trying to say something kind would still sound like the most terrifiying thing you would hear all day. He never said the put downs in the same charasmatic way as Tucker and I can’t imagine he swore at all during class, and it’s probably just my mind remembering it worse than what it was, but Capaldi’s performance just kept reminding me of him last night. 

OWF’s Gareth Bunkham wrote a long list of the best Tucker put downs during the film’s theatrical run in the U.K., which is just about as funny a read as you will get on this site.