As the new term gets under way, we look at the stars in their school days
Remember the days of the old school yard? MARION McMULLEN does her homework on celebrities in the classroom as a new term finally gets under way
GOLD star for you if you can remember your old school classmates... Sir Paul McCartney was a classroom doodler and his old school exercise book was covered with little drawings. The Beatles star used the 22-page book during English literature lessons when he was a teenager at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys.
The book sold for £46,800 at auction last year and Paul’s doodles ran alongside his essays on classic books like Thomas Hardy’s The Return Of The Native and John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Fellow Beatle John Lennon went to school with comedian Jimmy Tarbuck and broadcaster Peter Sissons and they were all pupils at Dovedale Junior School in Liverpool.
John later went to Quarry Bank High School in the city, but was described as a “class clown”. He was often given detention – once racking up three in one day – and left when he was 16. He failed his O levels and was only accepted at Liverpool College of Art after pleas from his headmaster and his Aunt Mimi.
Rolling Stones bandmates Sir Mick Jagger and Keith Richards met when they were both pupils at Wentworth Junior Primary School in Dartford, in Kent in 1951. Mick went on to Dartford Grammar while Keith Richards went to Dartford Technology College, e, but they ran into each other at the local railway station in 1961 when n they both happened d to be carrying guitars.
One of James Bond star Daniel Craig’s early acting roles was playing one of the ugly sisters with classmate Richard Kelly in a production of Cinderella at Hilbre High School. He was s 16 at the time and his Wirral l drama teacher Hilary Green said: “The pair of them were absolutely hilarious and had the audience in stitches every night.”
Fellow 007 star Pierce Brosnan began his school days at St Anne’s Primary School in Navan in Ireland. He has said: “I left school at 15 feeling fairly useless and not really up to scratch in my education.”
Welsh-born Oscar winner
Who could ask for more?: Judy Geeson with rising star Mark Lester
Bond for greater things: Pierce Brosnan Catherine Zeta-Jones attended Dumbarton House School in Swansea and the Arts Educational School in Chiswick and was performing from an early age.
She was 14 when she impressed former Monkees star Micky Dolenz and successfully auditioned for a chorus role in a musical tour of The Pyjama Game. By the time she was 15, she was appearing as the lead in musical 42nd Street.
“I was a chorus girl,” she said, “that’s all I ever wanted – to be on stage. I would queue for auditions and then change my costume or put on a different leotard and audition again. It might take me two tries, but I always got the job.”
Former East-Enders actress Bonnie Langford was born into a family of performers – her mum was a dance teacher and her great aunt was a ballerina who performed with Anna Pavlova.
Bonnie first came to the public’s attention in 1970 when she was six years old and won talent show Opportunity Knocks singing The Good Ship Lollipop and gained her Equity acting card a year later.
She went to the Arts Education and Italia Conti stage schools in London and found early TV fame as the precocious Violet Elizabeth Bott in Just William in the late 1970s.
She later found the precocious tag hard to shake. “I wasn’t at all,” says Bonnie. “In fact, I was quite shy. And it’s the same now. That probably goes against most people’s perception of me being showbizzy and doing cartwheels down the street, but I’m not really that comfortable with standing on the red carpet and having people look at me.”
Scottish singer Lulu was just 15 when she brought out her debut single – a little song called Shout. Born Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie, she went to Thomson Street Primary School and Onslow Drive School in Glasgow and could often be found singing in the playground.
Lulu returned to the classroom to make her film debut in the 1967 movie To Sir, With Love, and also sang the theme song, which went straight to number one in the States.
H Hollywood star Sidney Poitier pla played the inspiring teacher who ch changed the lives of his working class stu students in London’s East End.
Actress Judy Geeson was 19 when she s starred in the film with Lulu and she went back to her old school, the Corona School in London, to present prizes to the current pupils. They included a nine-year-old Mark Lester who was w working on the new film version ve of the Lionel Bart musical Oliver! Ol
Mark M later returned to education when wh he was 28 and remembers he was wa the oldest student at the college. He said: “There were kids doing three A-levels. These kids were in their teens t and they learn really fast. Of course, I had to slog away a lot harder.”
Prince Charles was educated at Hill House and Cheam prep schools, then Gordonstoun, which he left in 1967, to go to Cambridge. In I 1969 the Prince of Wales took time ti out for a nine-week course in the th language and history of Wales at University U College Aberystwyth.