From the Waters vaults to the V&A...

Highlights from the forthcoming exhibition

Cane & punishment book

“It’s the cane and punishment book from my old school, the Cambridge and County High School for Boys, which Syd and I attended, along with [Pink Floyd cover designer] Storm Thorgerson. It is now a sixth-form college. Aubrey Powell [creative director for the exhibition and longtime collaborator with Floyd and Thorgerson] went down there and found they’ve got a little museum. Imagine keeping something like this. The headmaster, A W Eagling, was the one designated to mete out corporal punishment. He was very ineffectual. I mean, it didn’t hurt. It was pretty feeble. It was a symbolic gesture. I am in the book, of course. ‘Six strokes for fighting’, apparently. In 1959, when I was 16 years old.”

Inflatable pig

“The first pigs were made by a German company called Ballon Fabrik for the Animals cover. Then we made more for the tour. There was a nuclear family: a businessman and his wife and two and a half children – the last kid was cut in half. And there was a fridge that was inflated and burst open and all kinds of worms and s--- came out of it. I’ve revived the pig for the new show, but it’s a different design. It has Trump on it. We’re going to play Pigs (Three Different Ones) from Animals, and the pig will make an appearance. It’s called the piggy bank of war. Tax dollars go in and bombs come out of its arse. He has dollar signs over his eyes. So The Donald is going to be very upset. I hope.”

Headmaster drawing

“It looks like something I might have done. I think it says, ‘You pathetic weed. You’re useless and hopeless. I spit on you, education.’ Wow. I love it. I resented the authoritarian nature of the hierarchy in the kind of grammar school I attended. They were still pretending to be Tom Brown’s School Days. So there were prefects, and a pretension towards that retrograde society that existed in boys’ public schools. How do you get your education? Where do you learn about love? Not in a school like that.”

The touring van

Pink Floyd’s Bedford van, used for touring. “I don’t think that van lasted long. It probably got left somewhere, because soon after that I remember a Thames 400 15 cwt. We used to do the M1 a lot in that, with Pete Watts driving. Pete was our roadie, who sadly OD’d and died in 1976. I remember coming back from Hull, suddenly aware that we’d stopped. The engine was still running. I woke up and Pete’s sitting there. We’re in the fast lane of the M1, completely stationary. I said, ‘Pete, what the f--- are you doing? We’re going to die! Drive on!’ He said: ‘I can’t. I’m waiting for the light to change.’ The railway runs alongside the M1 at that point, and he was so stoned, he’d seen a red light and just stopped in the middle of the road.”