Public Interest.co.uk

When I was at Prep School in the seventies we were taught by a pretty eccentric bunch. Or maybe they just seemed eccentric. Quite a lot of them had pretty awful tempters too, being terribly nice one moment, then completely fly off the handle the next. And, at least one of them was eventually hauled off by the filth after being rumbled as a paedophile.
But the nicest, most normal of the lot was Mr. Woolmer. He never flew off the handle. Maybe that's because he didn't do much teaching. That is, teaching of the normal sort. I'm pretty sure he did do a spot of Geography, but that could be my memory playing tricks, Geography being the class that was always taught by the sports teacher.
So sport was what he did, and sport was what he did so well. Curiously, I don't remember him teaching me any cricket at all. He probably did, indeed he must have done, but I just don't remember it. He was, however, a bit of whizz at soccer, and brought in a league system that completely transformed the sport at the school. Even then he was an innovator.
One thing I also remember was that I often heard the conversational aside: "You know, they say he'll one day play for England".This struck me, even then, as unlikely. He was about twenty-five, was a medium fast bowler of no great shakes, and batted at about number 8 for Kent. Indeed he hardly even played for Kent. How else could he spare the time to teach us?
Still ( so what do I know? ), one summer he did play for England, in a one day match. Scoring 0 on debut, and barely bowling, against the Australians, I think. I expected his international career to die then and there, but he came back, more or less dropping the bowling, and became an obstinate batsman who saved the day on at least one famous occasion.
But it was as a coach that he became a real star. He seemed just as polite in interview as I remember him, and I could never believe he was as sweet and polite with real, adult cricketers as he was with us schoolkids. He was hugely popular at school. Everybody liked him, and he didn't have to try.
So that's my Bob Woolmer story. The number of times I must have told people, whenever he came up in conversation, or when he was being interviewed on tv or radio, I would say, "He used to teach me, you know".
I won't be able to do that any more.