To this day I have puzzled over a third year primary school child who, in a delirious gloating panic, ran up to one of the teachers exclaiming "Miss, Miss, he just said the 'M' word!"

It's no good. Thirty minutes thought I've given to this now, at my employer's expense. Does anyone know what the 'M' word is? - Conor

...and before hundreds of you write in (oops, too late), it's not 'minge' or 'motherfucker'. Both are considerably beyond the horizon of the seven year old's swear radar, and anyway I've checked with the author. So think on.

Sorry to be a real fucking nerd, sorry, guru, but in actual fact that's still only half the story. A true professional will minimise the time at the keyboard to avoid detection, and contract the code onto one line, with a colon.

Additionally, there should be a space at the end of the quote, otherwise you end up with "fuck offfuck offfuck..", which, while undeniably rude, is also somewhat nonsensical.

If you are a true genius, you'll know that the screen is 80 characters across, so " fuck off " (being 10 characters) arranges into neat columns, just like "fuck off" did.

Debate rages as to the virtue of neat columnisation; it does appear to freeze the screen when you run out of space, but the irregular thrashing about of a nine-wide string is a more eye-catching blur as it scrolls by, only becoming legible once the teacher strikes the required control-break key combination. Sort of like an insult time-bomb.

Wicked.

My refined type-and-run stunt would be:

10 PRINT "FUCK OFF "; : GOTO 10

RUN

Modern pupils please note, this doesn't work from a DOS prompt.

Although you could put the following on the end of AUTOEXEC.BAT:

@echo off

:1

echo FUCK OFF

goto 1

Oh, please. Amateurs. You want *real* nerdy?

Before entering the program, you'd type:
*FX13,6
and
*KEY 10 "OLD |M RUN |M"

This would ensure that the 'Escape' key was disabled, and that upon pressing 'Break', the program would be restored, and run once again. This would render the program invincible!!

Well, until someone used Ctrl-Break, or turned the machine off. The thought was there.

My version of this solved the columns problem, keeping it eyecatching in a different way

*FX 13,6

*KEY 10 O.|MRUN|M

10 MODE 2

20 COLOUR RND(7)+1

30 PRINT "FUCK OFF ";

40 GOTO 20

And other variations thereof. Including bringing in a copy of Superior Software's Speech program and adding 35 IF RND(10) = 1 THEN *SAY FUCK OFF

No-wonder I was always beaten up for being a geek.

Could also be used in various electrical chain stores (at least in the days before password protected screen savers), where the kids knew more about the computers than the assistants; i.e., all of them.

All I ever discovered was that "2B: REGISTER" had the same number of characters as "GAMMON FLAPS". Equipped with this knowledge and the BBC Micro's trusty *BREAK* key, we wreaked havoc on our teacher's proudest new program, which he unveiled in front of the entire class. I was grassed up within twenty seconds.

In the event that you had a clueless teacher and a strict programming deadline to meet, consider this program;

10 REM This is our program
20 REM The rest of it is hidden
30 REM unless you have the password
40 REM -----------

We convinced our teacher that we had infact written things into the program which stopped "LIST" working.

After a week of trying to get around this, our teacher had completely forgotten about the original program, and came back to us saying that he'd given us top marks for amazingness.

It's a well known fact that every time you get hit in the head, you lose 10,000 brain cells.

A 1984 experiment to test the efficacy of the claim yielded conclusive proof that it is indeed true. As Sam set about repeatedly hitting precocious upstart Andrew between the eyes, Andrew replied in his excruciating matter-of-fact way "No, no Sam. You've got to hit me much harder than that."

The inevitable ensued.

The joyless track elements of the Track & Field set. Ranging from a short and relatively painless 100m to the soul-crushing infinity of the 1500m, the emphasis on different pacing techniques did little to hide the fact that you were just running in a world where technology had long made running inefficient and unnecessary.

At 100m, the idea was to simply sprint the whole distance. For some this proved to be a matter of bounding heroically - for others of heavier gait, some ethereal custard would drag at our legs. Frustrating when you try your hardest and come last, so you have to feign an effortless defeat. Which is difficult when you can taste blood in your neck.

200m : Also a sprint event; so twice as many children end up red faced at the end. If the fat kid actually did sprint this one, instead of galumphing along in the oblivious lumber of the stubbornly unfit, he was prone to vomiting.

400m : The four hundred metres was the shortest track event to involve a measure of pacing yourself. The fact that you didn't have to sprint with your fingers splayed out like cocktail sticks stuck into a potato was amply counterbalanced by the fact you were running twice as fucking far.

800m : On a course that is a 300m circle, as was ours, this distance allows for the humiliation of "lapping". Watching the sport billies sail past and honking their disdain was irritating enough, but they would also sit down at the finish line and slow applaud the late arrivals.

1500m : Certainly the most annoying race from the mathematical point of view, falling pointlessly short of the 1600m that would have made a perfect geometric progression. After five laps of the 300m circle, it was more than a division between fast, slow and comical. Some would be lapped once, some lapped twice or more. Those getting lapped only once would secretly look down on those getting lapped more often; although they couldn't openly ridicule them, as Sport Billies are very territorial about bullying. The 1500m event would essentially boil down to the entire group watching the extremely unfit and obese kid do the last two laps on his own. A genuine Slim Fast moment.

With the advent of affordable pocket calculators (and pre "Daley Thompson's Decathlon") we devised a game of Track and Field that could be played anywhere, but usually in Maths lessons.

The game was a race to 100 on your calculator, by pressing '1++' and then the 'equals' key.

Longer events did take place but the '100m' was always a favourite.

Sometime at secondary school I invented the following method of escaping the horror of Track + Field:

1) don't give a shit that you come last


2) walk.

After about a week, maybe a quarter of the whole class had joined in this wonderfully un-knackering protest. I suddenly hit upon the idea when I realised that even a bollocking from the teacher for not trying was vastly preferable to actually running the damn race.

The combination of my bike lock which I let my friend know so he could borrow my bike to cycle home for a shit at lunchtimes. Such trips were vital to him as he was desparately paranoid about catching aids or gay from the school facilities.

One day, however, I changed my combination and neglected to tell him. The first period after lunch, he stormed up to my desk with his face wet with tears. Slamming his fists down, he screeched "Thanks a fucking lot, Green, I had to shit myself today".

My astonished response was never heard, as it was drowned out by the laughter of some 20 other pupils. A cautionary tale for anyone willing to take responsibility for the toilet habits of others.

The length of Simon Baptist's penis, which he told everyone at every given opportunity. Not in a "My dick's bigger than yours" kind of way, but in a "wow, i'm really happy with the way this has turned out" kind of way.

It's a fantastic time to be alive when someone gets the piss taken for having a bigger dick than yourself.

Game in which you flick a 2p coin at your friend's knuckles and they flick it at yours. The first person to draw blood on all knuckles was the winner.

Missing with the coin and hitting an already bleeding knuckle didn't help you to win, but it did hurt your opponent more.

The position at the front of a double decker bus, on the right hand side, when you drive through a low-hanging tree. The impact of the tree branches against the bus gives the exciting impression of a 3-D ride to the thirteen children crammed into the one seat, who will scream “3-D RIDE!” as they tumble dangerously to the floor.

One morning the window of the bus actually broke and showered me with safety glass. (I wasn't cool enough to be sat at the back).

Having decided that that was embarassment enough and not being injured in any way (it being safety glass), I said nothing until one of the other boys announced it to the form in registration.

So, I was carted off to be "looked after", as though I was some frail thing suffering from the trauma of being showered in something safe. The coup de grace, however, was being sent back to my form with a nice cup of sugary tea.

"It must have been serious, she's got a nice cup of tea."

Role-playing shorthand for rolling three six-sided dice, generating a number between 3 and 18. You use this to generate your "stats" when your character is being created. On no accounts use this term in the real world. People outside your circle of escapist victim friends will not be understanding. Also, never point out that one dice is a die, actually. There's enough bullying without formally asking to be punched.

Incidentally, can anyone explain to me the shorthand difference between 2d10 generating a number between 2 and 20 (addition) and a number between 1 and 100 (taking one die as tens, one as units, double zero as 100)? Actually, if you can remember, something's probably wrong, and I'd rather you didn't contact me. Shoo. Get out.

Oh, and thanks to the many (four) people who have told be that the correct notation is 1d100, and that there was actually a one hundred sided die for this very purpose, resembling a golf ball. Now, I want you to tell me the name of this shape.