STARS WITH CLASS
It’s back to school. MARION McMULLEN looks at the celebs who have taught pupils a lesson
1 The hilarious star of Taskmaster and Cuckoo, Greg Davies, left, spent 13 years in the teaching profession before switching careers to comedy when he was 32. The former drama teacher found fame as the legendary Mr Gilbert, the psychotic head of sixth form in The Inbetweeners. He also played a drama teacher in Channel 4 sitcom Man Down, shooting scenes in the very classroom where he had taught in real life.
2 Former maths teacher Romesh Ranganathan burst on the scene in 2013 when he became a panel show regular, but really found fame when he teamed up with his mum to discover his roots in Sri Lanka in the hilarious series, Asian Provocateur. He grudgingly admits his mum was the breakout star.
3 Vocalist and songwriter Sting had worked as an English teacher and soccer coach for two years before finding worldwide music success with his postpunk band The Police. In those days the Message In A Bottle and Roxanne singer was known as Mr Sumner (his real name is Gordon Sumner) by pupils at St Paul’s in Cramlington.
4 Guitarist Brian May was a maths teacher back in the 1970s before he joined rock legends Queen. He taught at Stockwell Manor School in Brixton in London and said: “I used betting on horses to teach statistics which perhaps you wouldn’t normally do.”
5 Vicar of Dibley star Dawn French trained as a drama teacher before teaming up with Jennifer Saunders as a double act. She once said: “What I would really like to do when I am really decrepit and old would be just to sit and be a classroom assistant and help little kids to do reading.”
6 Harry Potter writer J K Rowling taught English as a foreign language in Porto in Portugal while she was working on her story about a boy wizard at Hogwarts. She taught at night and worked on The Philosopher’s Stone by day before she returned to the UK in 1993.
7 One of Mr T’s early jobs was as a gym teacher in Chicago before he became better known as B A Baracus in 1980s American series The A-Team. The TV tough guy was also employed as a bodyguard for a time, with clients including boxing champ Muhammad Ali and singer Diana Ross.
8 He’s best known for portraying plucky underdog boxer Rocky and invincible Vietnam veteran Johm Rambo, but movie star Sylvester Stallone also worked as a PE teacher at the American College in Switzerland early in his career to make some extra money while he studied drama.
9 Prior to becoming one of the music scene’s most famous shock rockers, Kiss bassist Gene Simmons taught sixth grade at a school in New York’s Spanish Harlem. As a ploy to encourage his students to read, he said he used to replace all the Shakespeare texts with comic books.
10 X-Men and Greatest Showman actor Hugh Jackman spent his gap year in England at Uppingham School in Rutland. He worked as a PE, English and drama teacher before returning home to Australia to get his Bachelor of Arts degree in communications.
He once joked at the idea of an 18-year-old Aussie teaching English to English kids.