Grumpy Guide to Schooldays is a brand new, one hour special from the makers of Grumpy Old Men and Grumpy Old Women in which our class of Nineteen Sixty Irate cast their curmudgeonly minds back to the-far-from-best days of their lives. In a show which takes our moaners back to when all that ill-temperedness started, GEOFFREY PALMER narrates recollections of total tedium, putrid spotted dick and the art of getting away with murder, ably assisted by a thoroughly ticked-off register of surly students, including: RONNI ANCONA, ED BYRNE, BOBBY DAVRO, RUSSELL KANE, SHAPPI KHORSANDI, ALISTAIR MCGOWAN, NEIL MORRISSEY, AL MURRAY, MARK RADCLIFFE, PENNY SMITH and JOHN THOMSON.
We all remember the sadistic games teacher, double Maths on a Monday morning and the horror of cogitating Latin verbs. But if you are of the Grumpy persuasion, then school based sufferings strike a particularly petulant resonance…As MARK RADCLIFFE recalls, they were a mix of sadism and insanity, with class-based boredom akin to “watching Madonna in Evita”. MARK STEEL agrees: “the biggest problem was that they made you learn stuff.” Things were not any brighter for RONNI ANCONA who wonders if ‘the best days of your life’ fanatics actually “spent the rest of theirs in Russian gulags”.
The shared snifflings are bountiful. Ranging from AL MURRAY’s gym-based shame of “being at the back of the queue with the fat boy trying to avoid climbing the rope” to the dinner ladies at NEIL MORRISSEY’s school who invented “blamange for cement replacement in the war”. But whilst there some goody two shoes like PENNY SMITH, who thought that “everybody else in the world was having a good time whilst I had to do my homework”, there was always one, at the back of the class, causing trouble. Such as teenage tearaway SHAPPI KHORSANDI, “who stole Neil Kinnock’s daughter’s school report with the intention of selling it”. So whilst schooldays were defined by ritual humiliation, stolen schoolbags and relentless regimentation, - as Grumpy Guide to Schooldays demonstrates - the lessons also equipped us for a life of jumping over ropes, fleeing an angry mob and practicing the invaluable skill of looking interested, when in truth, you were bored out of your tree.
Grumpy Guide to Schooldays is a Liberty Bell production. The film is produced and directed by PIP BANYARD, with STUART PREBBLE the Executive Producer for Liberty Bell and GILLY HALL the Executive Producer for the BBC.
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Grumpy Guide to Schooldays will transmit 5th September on BBC Two at 21:00
What the press said about Grumpy Guide To Christmas:
“Thank Santa for these keeping-it-real curmudgeons - and it’s now a mixed-gender complaints fest - who snarl in the face of festive bounty, traditions and gift-giving..”
Ruth Margolis, Radio Times
“The show that has elevated spleen-venting to an art form.”
Vicki Power, ‘Review’ The Daily Telegraph
For more information, please contact Roxie Maskall or Dan Lloyd at Avalon Public Relations on: 020 7598 7222 roxiem@avalonuk.com or danl@avalonuk.com
Liberty Bell Productions
Liberty Bell Productions, which was formed in autumn 2002, is based in Newcastle and London, and specialises in the production of television documentaries and features, factual entertainment, current affairs, drama-documentary and youth programming. Recent productions include: Life and Death on the NHS (ITV1), Portillo on Thatcher: The Lady’s Not For Spurning (BBC FOUR), The Alastair Campbell Diaries (BBC TWO), Three Men In Another Boat (BBC TWO), The Grumpy Guides to… (BBC TWO), Grumpy Old Men (BBC TWO), Grumpy Old Women (BBC TWO), Why We Went to War (More 4), Don't Get Me Started (Five), Real Life: Beating Breast Cancer (ITV1), The Meaning of Life (BBC ONE), and The Widow’s Tale (BBC TWO).
WHAT THE PRESS HAVE SAID ABOUT PREVIOUS LIBERTY BELL PRODUCTIONS
Life and Death on the NHS
“A startling, beautiful documentary following the experiences of a clutch of patients in hospital: a simple idea related with colour and subtlety and it was incredibly moving without ever exploiting its subjects…This wasn’t a political documentary and it wasn’t a feather-brained confected set-up. It was sober and tightly edited documentary making. It didn’t patronise you, it simply showed three diverse experiences of patients and the professionalism and skill of those doctors and nurses who helped care for them - and O’Brien directed it with the brevity and sensitivity of whatever the television equivalent of fine short storytelling.”
Tim Teeman, The Times
Portillo on Thatcher: The Lady’s Not For Spurning
“Gordon Brown and David Cameron should watch it. Tony Blair should get a hold of a tape and reflect on what might have been. Media bosses who only commission films if they portray politicians as corrupt and mad should take note also… I know people with only a passing interest in politics who were gripped.”
Steve Richards, The Independent
The Alastair Campbell Diaries
“Just as DVD extras allow you to see the human fallibility that lies behind the polished exterior of the finished film, Campbell’s diary fills in the engrossing trivia of off-stage politics… it is completely engrossing.”
Thomas Sutcliffe, The Independent
The Widow’s Tale
“This complex and moving film is one of the television highlights of the year so far.”
Andrew Male, The Sunday Times
Grumpy Old Men
“The whole programme put me into an uncharacteristically, seethingly good mood… Wonderful stuff”
A.A. Gill, The Sunday Times
