Paul Daniels by Paul Daniels

resulted in a deformed shoulder. We all stood in horror as, having finished his gruesome description, he dropped the boy and carried on walking down the corridor.
    Our Art Master had been ‘hung’ at the National Gallery and the legend surrounded him of having painted his daughter in the nude. Our little boys’ minds thought that he must have kept his socks on, or where else could he have kept his brushes!
    Little Billy Pearson was the most loved of our Masters. It made a great impression on me, that despite the fact that he was so tiny, whenever he came into the room, all the boys immediately stood up. We also shut up. Upon entering the room he would walk over to his high stool, put his feet on the desk and speak slowly. We all thought he was in danger of falling off, but leaning on our wooden desks, we listened to every word he uttered.
    ‘I am William, known popularly amongst you as little Billy.’ He then turned in my direction and snapped, ‘You! Tell me the square root of 64.’
    I soon realised that the maths Master was loved because there was no malice in his abruptness and chose this technique to keep his lessons interesting. And he was deadly accurate with both the chalk and the blackboard cleaner when he spotted you talking in class.
    Maths was a difficult lesson to keep lively and the homework was even worse. Once more I fell back on my dad’s ability to overcome hurdles. Even though Hughie had left school early in order to work and help support his family, he was able to help me with the most difficult of homework problems. The oddity about him was that he would solve the puzzles by using logic. Even algebraic equations were answered in this way, withouthim having to follow the correct mathematical formula.
    ‘Shiny’ Williams sat for an entire term building a strange unidentified object, which turned out to be a television set. As he sat there fiddling with the intricate mechanism, he would expound all types of wondrous and outrageous concepts.
    ‘Today I will tell you how to get electricity for free,’ announced the Nutty Professor. ‘First of all, you must rent a flat in a high-rise building. Buying a generator, you connect it to a battery, which will give you all your lighting for free. Attach a four-bladed paddle wheel to the generator and place this outside your high-rise building, just underneath your lounge window.
    ‘Next, you write away to all the brick companies for samples. When they send you their bricks, the postman will carry them all the way up to your door. As soon as he delivers them you throw them out of the window one by one.’
    We sat staring at him in stunned silence.
    ‘Make notes, boy! Make notes, or you will not be able to take advantage of my intelligence,’ he suddenly announced glancing up from his mass of wires and knobs.
    ‘The bricks will hit the paddle, which will generate the electricity and recharge the battery. When the postman arrives at the bottom of the building, he will think that another lot of parcels have been delivered for you and he will pick them up and carry them back upstairs when you simply repeat the process.’
    This strange, round-faced, mad scientist would give a repeat performance each week. ‘Today I will tell you how to get gas for free.’
    We all sat in wonderment, notebooks at the ready.
    ‘First of all you have to buy a gas fridge and some plasticine,’ he began. ‘Now what you do is this: locate your gas meter, probably found in your understairs cupboard. An oddity of these meters is that they all “dimple” down at the bottom of thecoin-collecting box. Find the lowest point and drill a very fine, pinpoint hole, in the bottom of this metal box.
    ‘Take your plasticine and, after warming it up, place your shilling coin into the surface, press it down to make the shape of the coin. After carefully removing the shilling from the plasticine, fill the mould you have made with water and place it in the freezer part of your gas fridge.