"The Phantom Cock Strikes Again"


It’s amazing what you find funny when you’re thirteen years old. Most of these things happen to involve sex, nudity and bare genitalia in some form or another, so it was hardly surprising that anything involving one or more of these combinations was certain to be a hit at our school. And one spring afternoon, our lives were changed forever. The Phantom Cock had struck for the first time.

I remember that sunny day in 1979 like it was yesterday. School had just finished and we headed to the cycle sheds to pick up our bikes. As a matter of fact, so many of us cycled to school that the bike sheds filled an entire tennis court. As I reached my bike, something was different. Wrong. As in Not Right. There, chalked on my bike saddle was a crude picture of a man’s cock. And I wasn’t the only victim. There were half a dozen nobs scrawled across bike saddles in a frenzy of phallic graffiti.


Big Pink Chopper

The next day, our mystery artist had struck again, only more so. At least twenty bikes had been graffiti-ised, including an eighteen inch member on the giant saddle of one lad’s Raleigh Chopper. As the week went on, our school’s answer to Picasso got braver and braver, and by Friday, the bike shed was a sea of chalky cocks. The villain had also become brazen in his excess. There, scrawled on the music block wall behind the bike shed were the words “The Phantom Cock Strikes Again”. It wasn’t big, and it wasn’t clever. A hero was born.

By the following Monday, Cock Fever had swept the school. Not a single piece of chalk could be found in any classroom, and the staff had to break out emergency supplies. “Puds”, as they came to be known appeared anywhere where the perpetrator could spare a few seconds without being spotted. The playground was awash with them, as were walls, corridors, exercise books and the backs of lower school pupils who could be held down while a pud was chalked onto their jersey.

It couldn’t last. This was one craze that burned short and bright. The teachers had already gotten wind of the bike-puds after the Phantom Cock had carelessly chalked up Mrs Clark’s bike saddle, and a special watch was kept on the bike sheds. They didn’t have long to wait, and the Phantom Cock was unveiled as Bob - a kid from my class - who was allowed to go home for lunches, and used the time he had in the bike shed to carry out his calling.

With our leader in the cooler, it was only a matter of time before the Pud Craze was brutally suppressed. And it came during morning assembly at the end of the second week. We’ll never know who did it, but the deed had somehow been done. Bob, to this day, denies all knowledge and I believe him. It was made all the worse by the fact that we were a church school, and the local vicar insisted on preaching to us on a weekly basis. In short, we caught hell.

Someone had managed to switch the slides on the overhead projector. We were supposed to see the words to “At the Name of Jesus” twelve feet high on the wall of the school hall. Instead, we got the biggest pud in the history of the world. With plums. And hair. And a big purple helmet spurting jizz. As Mrs Clark on the piano launched into the hymn’s intro in blessed ignorance of what was projected on the wall above her head, there was a moment of stunned silence, followed by roars of teenage laughter.

I for one, was utterly helpless, tears rolling down my cheeks, bent double with hysterics. And I wasn’t alone. The cream of British youth, helpless at the sight of the world’s biggest wang. Quite a few of the girls, too, one couldn’t help but notice, not to mention one or two teachers.

Two people NOT laughing however were the headmaster “King Kong” Waghorn and the vicar. It was Wrath of God time, which was to be visited upon us regularly over the next few weeks. All graffiti on walls, books or other school and private property was banned. The bike sheds had a guard mounted, and all chalk supplies were strictly monitored. All the boys (but funnily enough, none of the girls) were made to spend breaks washing puds off walls, and the vicar came in even more often than usual to lecture us on good, healthy, clean living and the benefits of cold showers. It was hell.

Post Script: What we *didn’t* know was that in certain parts of Britain the word “pud” is actually slang for the leg or foot. So come the following term when our new Sports teacher from Yorkshire kept telling us to “stick your pud in front of the ball”, you can imagine the reaction. Remarkably, there were relatively few injuries.

Post Post Script: For your education and delight, I have created a step-by-step guide on How to Draw a Pud. Step Three can, of course, be omitted.