Male celebrities I can think of.

Prince Phillip – caned at school
Prince Charles – caned at school
Boy George – caned at school
John Stapleton – caned at school
Tony Blair – caned at school
John Major – caned at school
Paddy Ashdown – caned at school
Winston Churchill – birched at school
Malcolm MacDowell – slippered at school

There`s many more but I can`t remember at the moment.

Paul

Some new male references that have recently been published:

Vic Reeves (comedian): His book “Me:Moir” contains an extremely colourful, entertaining and ultimately rather moving account of the slippering he received at his (mixed) junior school in the early seventies.

Rupert Everett (actor): His new autobiography “Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins” describes the daily slipperings which were dished out at his eccentric boarding school. (Talking of eccentric boarding schools, Everett is reprising the Alistair Simm headmistress role in a new St Trinians film, so let’s hope he turns up on set with an appropriate implement!)

Keith Allen (father of pop star Lily Allen/ Sheriff of Nottingham): In a recent interview with “The Times” he went into considerable detail about his canings at Brentwood School in Essex. The headmaster, who is named, used to run up to cane pupils:

“He actually put a little hop and a skip as he came across his study. And it hurt. Even with the books it hurt. It was a cane and a very whippy one and it would come around the books and hit me on the top of the thigh. Those were the days, eh?” (Strangely, it is not explained what the reference to ‘books’ in this context actually means. An over zealous sub-editor?)

There is then some discussion (and disagreement) with the interviewer Andrew Billen, who by coincidence, went to the same school, about whether this headmaster took pleasure out of caning.

Pesumambly what Keith Allen meant was he had exercise books down the back of his trousers but the tip of the cane wrapped round and still caught him.
I would guess he didn`t take a cane to his daughter`s backside judging by her alleged liking of parties, drink & drugs.

Paul

I would agree that this is almost certainly the explanation, although I’d tended to assume that this practice was confined to the pages of the Beano! Several pairs of underpants maybe, but surely on bending over, even slim bendy exercise books would be blatantly obvious. Perhaps the practice was tacitly condoned for less serious offences.

The singer “Sting”, lead singer of the group “The Police” received frequent floggings at his catholic school.
He received a total of 42 strokes of the cane in a single term, a school record apparently.

Paul

Three not very masculine men.

Paul O`Grady – caned at school
Dale Winton – caned at school
Boy George – caned at school

Richard E.Grant (British Actor) – caned at school.
Murray Walker (Motor Racing Commentator) – caned at school.

The singer “Sting”, lead singer of the group “The Police” received frequent floggings at his catholic school.
He received a total of 42 strokes of the cane in a single term, a school record apparently.

Paul

Sting had quite a bit to say about his canings too:

“Six of the best” is a quaint euphemism for the ferocity of this excruciating torture. One is normally “sent up” to the main building after lunch. On the left as you enter is the school chapel, where a lingering trace of incense from Wednesday’s Benediction gives the air in the narrow corridor an unmistakable fragrance: it is the sanctified odour of ritual sacrifice. There is usually more than one victim waiting in a sorry line outside the office. The school settles into an eerie silence as afternoon classes begin: the clock in the hall is ticking slowly; we wait like the condemned, not daring to speak. We continue to wait, and wait, and I know from past experience that this is quite deliberate psychological torture.

I project myself into an imagined future, years hence in the urbane security of adult life, where I can look back upon this trial and others like it with a detached and amused nostalgia. “One day, this won’t seem so bad,” I tell myself, and this trick will work for me in a number of stressful situations, but only up to a point. The school clock is still ticking and the office door creaks open slowly. Sometimes, I’m called first, sometimes in the middle, sometimes last. Perhaps it’s best to get it over with, or then again, if you delay, there’s always the chance that the good father may be called to a telephone and cancel the whole disciplinary session because his mother has just died, or perhaps an earthquake will shake the school to its foundations, and I imagine rescuing a grateful Father Walsh from the rubble of his office.

But despite my imaginings, it’s a heroism of a different kind that is required here.

“Take your jacket off and put it over the chair.”

The study looks out over the playing fields, where I can see a football being lobbed into the air and a straggling line of cross-country runners. No one seems to have a care in the world out there.

“Bend over, facing the window.”

Sometimes, with some foresight, you can be wearing an extra pair of underpants beneath your grey flannels, but this is as rare as it is unlikely, and an exercise book down your trousers only works in the comics. There is a sudden swish of air in the room behind you and then what feels like a cut from a rapier across the cheeks of your arse. The shocking pain reflexively has you standing bolt upright and winded.

The man on the crucifix by the window averts his eyes from the torture; is this really being done in his name? Whish! Up you go.

That even the threat of this barbarity is effective in keeping us compliant, quiescent and largely obedient is not in question. It is brutally effective. I just wonder whether those who suffered this painful indignity ever turned out the way they were supposed to. My suspicion is that, if we were to evolve into responsible and law-abiding citizens, we would do so despite this treatment, not because of it. Any idea that I would become an unquestioning and uncritical follower of the church’s wisdom flew out the office window as the final swipe found its target at the seat of my resentment.

A telling account by Sting this. It makes me wonder if my opinions are wrong and that time has softened the effects of the dreaded rattan.

“Sometimes, with some foresight, you can be wearing an extra pair of underpants beneath your grey flannels,
but this is as rare as it is unlikely, and an exercise book down your trousers only works in the comics”.

Good to see that Sting has obviously been reading this thread.(See my post of October 23rd.)
I shall have to consult my lawyers though.