A heAd stArt IN lIfe

AGRAMMAR school in Guernsey has decided to abolish the role of head boy and head girl. Some school or other was bound to do this sooner or later. Instead of these gender-specific titles, the school will henceforward have a chair and vice-chairperson to lead a committee called – wait for it – the Student Voice Leadership Team. One can only groan in despair at this utterly ridiculous jargon.

The idea is that head girl or boy is gender-stereotyping and thus on the way out because the head (make that senior learning enabler) wants to sound all gender neutral and down with the kids.

Becoming head pupil – or whatever it’s to be called – is not as simple as it once was. You often need these days to get elected by both kids and staff, do video interviews and so forth. But there are perks. At Hogwarts, for example, it still comes with privileges – you get to use the Prefects’ Bathroom!

Head girls and boys – or school captains – have been part of the fabric of British life since schools were invented. But how easy are they to spot?

You might not think what with his recklessly combative approach to the medical profession that Jeremy Hunt was a former head boy – but he was. At Charterhouse.

Easiest is Margaret Thatcher who was head girl of her Grantham grammar school during the war. Of course she was! Firm, fair and bossy, she then went on to become head girl of the United Kingdom, a job she approached with the same crisp, no-nonsense quality she demonstrated at her school assembly announcements.

Of her colleagues in Cabinet, the other outstanding school head boy was Douglas Hurd, the Spitting Image puppet with the Mr Whippy cone of hair.

He was whippy in other ways, too, as he was allowed to flog boys at Eton, one of the perks of being head boy. But he was once accused of being a downstairs-only head boy in the Downton Abbey world of politics.

hIS Tory colleague Sir John Nott wrote that Hurd was really just the Foreign Office’s resident Jeeves. “There is something of the good butler about Douglas Hurd… measured, detached, correct, always a safe pair of hands. One wants occasionally to find Hurd smashing china, tipping soup down a dowager’s cleavage but it never happens.”

Head pupils need to be conciliatory, mature and unafraid of public speaking. But the great danger is that they’ll never get over it. At my boarding school the head boy returned a term or two after leaving to talk to the assembled boys about what life was really like in the big wide world.

With his floppy hair and old school scarf he seemed to us like a shining god. Twenty years later I was horrified to see him shuffling out of a south London off-licence in his bedroom slippers, laden with strong lager, his best days clearly well behind him.

It comes as no surprise – to me at any rate – that the great Joan Bakewell was head girl of her school in Stockport. It served her well. I’d also have put money on fellow northerner Jenni Murray – with her natural air of self-importance – being head girl at her school in Barnsley; but actually she wasn’t. So perhaps it’s not as easy to spot CREAM OF THE CROP: clockwise from top left, Rebecca Hall, TV’s Phil Spencer and Clare Balding, Meghan Markle, Winnie Mandela and Jeremy Hunt the school high might imagine.

What about actors and performers? Phil Spencer, property expert and TV star of Location, Location, Location, seems to have the selfassurance you would expect as a former head boy of his posh school Uppingham. So does his co-star Kirstie Allsopp – a former head girl you might think but in fact a mere prefect.

One tends to think of thespians as arty, anti-establishment mavericks who would never be entrusted with a senior position at school.

Yet film star Rebecca Hall was head girl of the elite Roedean, just as her theatrical father Sir Peter Hall was head boy of his school. Jenna Coleman, a Blackpool girl, was head girl at her Lancashire school where she is remembered as a terrific role model.

She was in Doctor Who, a haven of former head boy time lords. Matt Smith – the 11th Doctor Who – was head boy at Northampton School achievers as you For Boys. The ninth doctor was Christopher Eccleston, head boy at his Salford school. Being head pupil seems to have given these actors ambition and confidence, even if Eccleston is convinced acting is a middle class conspiracy determined to keep him out.

More surprisingly, ditzy Kate Winslet was a head girl too. Kate may have been nicknamed “blubber” at school but I don’t believe, as she has claimed, that as an aspiring actress she was taken aside by a member of staff and told she might do OK “if she was happy to settle for the fat girl parts”.

The school which entrusted her with the head girl job is naturally very hurt. Kate’s tale of victimisation is just the sort of dubious anecdote actors love to tell in the glare of publicity when they’re blubbing over a just-won Bafta. Head girls don’t do that.

Downe House is where the Duchess of Cambridge is said to have left after allegedly being bullied and its former pupils include her sister Pippa Middleton, Lady Gabriella Windsor, model Sophie Dahl and comedian Miranda Hart. It’s little known, however, that Clare Balding was suspended for shoplifting before she became head girl at the school, a turnaround you have to admire.

BEING trusted by a school when you’ve been caught at the exit of a shop with a packet of Maltesers (or whatever it was) stuffed up your jumper takes some doing. But it shows a spot of youthful criminality can even be a good pointer to a promising career.

Mind you, crime is natural to many school careerists. Winnie Mandela was a brave part of the struggle against apartheid though she seems to have a deeply criminal streak. She ran a gang of lawless kids who did her bidding and she Daily Express Thursday April 19 2018 was a great advocate of necklacing – ie, burning alive – traitors to the cause. I bet she became head girl of her high school because the teachers were so utterly terrified of her.

Meghan Markle was head girl of her Catholic high school in the US. That’s a good sign. A dependable streak in a new member of the royal firm is vital. She seems happy with her childhood.

How unlike poor old Charles who – as the new series of The Crown has made abundantly clear – loathed his school Gordonstoun. Charles became head boy and one hopes it brought him a bit of respite from the bullying.

One of the greatest attributes in public life is not believing your own hype. A great example of this is Georgia Toffolo, known as “Toff” to fans of Made In Chelsea and I’m A Celebrity. Being head girl of her school didn’t go to her head and nor has her TV celebdom. Interviewed on This Morning, Georgia expressed genuine surprise that Holly Willoughby even knew her name.

That’s the thing about head boys and girls – you’ve no way of knowing how they’ll turn out.

‘To secure the top job these days you often need to get elected by both kids and staff, and do video interviews and so forth’