May I Have Your Attention Please?

by James Corden

  It was a low for all of us. This was our last year of PE and we were in a group we didn’t want to be in with people we didn’t want to be with. We were the shit, the leftovers; Danny DeVito to everyone else’s Arnold Schwarzenegger. And boy, did they know it. The girls were sniggering at us and the boys of the A and B groups were shouting out how crap we were. Mr Atkinson told everyone to stop, but even he said it with a wry smile.

  Depressed and downhearted, we made our way to the changing room and as we walked in, Craig Thompson thought it would be fun to trip up as many people as possible. Alex Carver did his usual ritual of grabbing a discarded towel and whipping as many people as he could round the legs, which all the other bullies thought was hilarious.

  From then on, every PE session became a game of trying to be the person who wasn’t picked on. Or whipped by a towel. It’s not that it even particularly hurt, it was just the embarrassment of feeling helpless whilst people attacked and laughed at you. I often became the butt of these jokes: it wasn’t real, out-and-out bullying; it was more that there were very real times when I wasn’t popular. I would feel it, not just in PE, but throughout my days at school. I was so often the joker that when the joke turned on me, it would feel like the whole school was ganging up against me. It would come in cycles: one minute I’d be popular and the next I’d be an outcast. I don’t think this is an unfamiliar feeling at school, and I’m pretty sure that most people feel this way in their youth at one time or another, but for me, it would often feel as if it was all or nothing. I was either in with everyone or I was out.

  Back to the changing room: Mr Atkinson came in after us that first morning and was met by a chorus of dissenting voices. Alex Carver piped up first. ‘Sir, this is bullshit! Why are we in the pricks’ group?!’ Ever the charmer.

  Jez Pope was next. ‘Yeah, sir. Whose idea was this? Why are we in with the swots and the fatties?’ The dissenting voices became louder and louder until you could barely hear yourself think. Everyone in the class was upset – mostly at the embarrassing way we thought the announcement had been handled.

  Once he’d managed to calm us all down, Mr Atkinson took the towel from Alex Carver (who in the heat of the previous exchange had even tried to whip his own legs) and started to speak. He stood with his wide-legged stance, hands on hips and addressed us, like a general to his troops. ‘You are not the lesser PE group of the year. You are not the misfits, the outcasts or anything else the others were calling you. You are unique; you are the trail-blazers; you are the first of your kind. You, each and every one of you, are this school’s first ever rugby team.’

  We all looked at him like he was mad. Our school had never played rugby, were never taught rugby and we didn’t even have a rugby pitch, or posts for that matter. We played football and occasionally cricket. As the voices of dissent started up again, Mr Atkinson spoke. ‘Look around you. Here in this room we have the perfect makings of an exceptional rugby team.’ I checked around the room and saw Will Harvey, whose glasses had steamed up as he took a big breath of his inhaler. ‘We have fearless power and strength.’ Mr Atkinson pointed to the group of bullies. ‘We have size’ – he gestured over towards Chris Briggs, Simon Phillips and me – ‘just what we need to make up a terrific front row of a scrum.’ He smiled then as he turned his attention towards the small, skinny group of nerds huddled in the corner. ‘And as for you lot, you’ve been running away from bigger boys for years. You’re perfect for the backs.’ Even the nerds themselves smiled at this bit. ‘Believe me, boys, we can do this. Together, we can become a force at rugby. That’s what our PE classes are going to be about. You’ve not been omitted from the other classes; you’ve been selected – hand-picked because I believe you have what it takes.’

  I was near punching the air by the end of it. It was such an inspiring speech that I imagine even the hardest members of the group must have swelled with pride a little. I certainly felt it. I had no idea how to play rugby, but in that moment I wanted to learn. I’d played football for the first team twice and, on both occasions, let’s just say that I’d been ‘not very good’. So ‘not very good’, in fact, that when we were low on numbers for one match, Ross Birbeck was picked instead and he was in the year below me. It was shaming. But this was our chance to be a team, our chance to shine. ‘Right then,’ Mr Atkinson said, clapping his hands and motioning everyone to get changed, ‘let’s get out on that pitch and have a go!’

  That would have been the perfect finish, right? All of the motley crew, jogging out onto the field with our shoulders back and heads set forward. You can imagine the slo-mo shot of it, like astronauts walking out to the rocket. Except, out of the nineteen or so boys sitting in the changing room, only five had their kit.

  Mr Atkinson wasn’t pleased. He turned to Craig Thompson first: ‘Why haven’t you got your sports kit?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ Thompson replied in his low monotone.

  ‘Well, do you know where it is?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘You don’t know, or you don’t care?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  Mr Atkinson was understandably starting to get frustrated. ‘You don’t know much, do you?’

  Thompson looked at him straight in the eye and repeated, ‘I don’t know, sir.’ You had to hand it to Craig Thompson some-times: he had a way with words. It’s fair to say that some teachers at school were a little frightened of Craig. He was so big he was almost a caricature – like the type of bully you’d find in Grange Hill, the one who used to pick on Gonch because he was ginger. Craig was tall and stocky and built like a fridge. He had an electric shaver that he used to carry in his rucksack and he could often be found at the back of the class having a shave. When the teacher asked him what he thought he was doing, he replied that he hadn’t had time to shave that morning. He was twelve at the time!

  I remember one lunch break he just walked into the staffroom and started making himself some toast. He did it with such self-assurance that it was only when he asked Mrs Spiller where the Marmite was kept that any of the teachers even realised he was there. He was a maverick – a scary maverick. One summer’s day, aged fifteen, he actually drove his dad’s Vauxhall Carlton to school. Seriously. He parked it in the staff parking bays. His dad called the police to report it stolen and, minutes later, was incredibly embarrassed when his son pulled up outside as he was on the phone. He didn’t just ignore the rules; it was like he was completely unaware of them.

  He could be horrible if he wanted to be. Sometimes he would just walk up and say, ‘Corden, you fat bastard,’ then punch me in the back of the head and walk on. Once, and only once, did I challenge him. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but basically I tried to level with him and say it wasn’t cool of him to be doing this. While I was talking, he was blankly staring at me, and then, from nowhere, he spat the most disgusting greeny right in the middle of my tie. It was horrible. Having said that, I don’t think he was aiming for my tie, so it could’ve been worse.

  Mr Atkinson must have given some thought to the fact that some, if not most of the class would have turned up without their kit. So he decreed from that point forward that if we didn’t have our kits, it would be an immediate detention, and if we forgot them twice in a row, it would be a double detention, which meant lunchtime as well as staying for an hour after school. He meant business.

  With lots of us kitless, he called off practice and instead wheeled in the big television/VHS combo to show us videos of rugby matches, pausing now and again to point out formations and various set plays. He pointed to specific players and asked different individuals to watch how and where they moved around the pitch. The fact that we were contemplating something new excited me. Though, looking round that room, I was worried about whether we could make this team happen. Chris Briggs was so interested that he was playing Super Mario Bros on his Game Boy, which he’d cleverly hidden in his scrunched-up jacket. He only got found because, while Mr Atkinson
was explaining line-outs, he shouted out, ‘Luigi, you piece of shit!’ at the top of his voice. He got the first of many detentions given out over the coming weeks.

  Over time, and mainly due to Mr Atkinson’s passion about making us a team, we started to get swept up in the excitement. Everyone in the class had become more inquisitive, more interested in what he was trying to do, more focused. It got to the point where, during one lesson, when Mr Atkinson was showing us scrum positions, Craig Thompson asked a question. (I honestly think this may have been the first time in his school life he’d done such a thing.)

  ‘Why have they got gaffer tape round their heads, sir?’ In Craig’s deep, scary voice, the words ‘gaffer tape’ sounded pretty ominous. Mr Atkinson wasn’t fazed, though. ‘Well, there’s various reasons, Craig, and I’m glad you asked. The principal reason is to protect your ears when you’re in the scrum. The force that these guys push with can, over time, cause damage to their ears. Another reason is that, years ago, some less sporting members of the opposing team would try to bite the ears of other players in the scrum.’ The whole class winced at this news. ‘That’s where the saying “cauliflower ear” comes from. Because of the damage done to players’ ears when there was biting. But that doesn’t happen any more.’ As more hands shot up to ask more questions about a sport none of us knew how to play, the bell went to signal the end of the lesson. I can safely say we all walked out of the changing rooms more worried than when we had gone in.

  Over the next few weeks the rugby training continued. I can’t begin to imagine what we must have looked like, trudging out onto the field. We were such a mishmash of identities, so completely disjointed, and yet, somehow, for those few hours of PE, we came together.

  The training sessions were always lively. They would essentially become fights, organised fights. There’s a fine line between sporting aggression and going out of your way to drop-kick the crap out of whoever had the ball and, I can assure you, most of our team hadn’t found the line yet. Nedeem Jacobs was the smallest member of the team, an innocent-looking mixed-race boy who used to literally shake with nerves at the thought of doing PE, let alone playing rugby. I knew Nedeem pretty well because he used to do the lighting for the school plays and he was a really nice guy. He had the most magnificent head of hair I’ve ever seen on a boy his age. It would just stand up in a flat top all on its own, without any product. Completely remarkable. I looked out for him as much as I could because he got picked on a fair amount. Not because of his hair, or his race, but just because he was small.

  That’s the worst thing about being at school – anything that’s different is seen as bad. Too tall, too fat, wrong trainers, wrong bag. It was a minefield every day. But it was often worse for Nedeem and I can barely remember ever seeing him smile. He spent most of his time at school just trying to get through the day without any scrapes. It’s safe to say rugby wasn’t his sport. He was petrified of every aspect of it. Sometimes he would be in tears just watching the horrific violence going on around him. He would never try to catch the ball; he’d actively move out of the way if it was flying towards him. But Nedeem wasn’t alone: there were plenty of other boys who wanted nothing to do with the ball as they were so scared of messing it up, or getting crunched. And then, on the other hand, there was the group of boys using rugby to have an organised fight and looking for every opportunity to crunch people. Mr Atkinson knew it was up to him to somehow blend these two completely opposite sides, the two sections of the school that stood furthest apart: the bullies and the bullied. The training sessions became more organised. We would work long and hard on line-outs and different strategies and we slowly started to become … well, not a team exactly, but part of something.

  What Mr Atkinson had done was teaching at its very best. He took a group of boys who were all in some way lost and gave us something to aim for, something to make our own. You could feel its effects throughout the whole school. The bullies were less inclined to bully because they had started to see the person before them instead of just another victim. This in turn made the group of normally terrified, bullied boys come out of their shell a bit more. And me, well, I just loved being picked for something sporty. I enjoyed sport so much, but in the same way that those terrible singers who audition for The X Factor love singing.

  I’ll never forget the lesson when Mr Atkinson told us not to get changed into our kit. We were all ready for practice and he walked into the changing room and simply said, ‘Follow me.’ Unsure of what was going on, we followed him down the Maths corridor, past the Science block and into the main assembly hall. It was here Mr Atkinson stopped and turned to address us. ‘I’ve brought you here to show you something. Something that has been made and created especially for you. Each one of you is the reason that the school has done this. If you ever feel as if you’re less important than the other pupils here, come and look at this. And remember that this team is the reason it was created. Come and take a look.’

  We were all slightly confused – Craig Thompson more than usual – but before any of us could say anything, Mr Atkinson pushed open one of the fire doors and led us out onto what used to be a barren area of grass round the corner from the football pitches. All nineteen of us stopped, stared and then oohed and aahed at the sight before us. Because the land was barren no more. No, in front of us now was a full-size rugby pitch. It was brilliant, somehow beautiful, the two massive goal posts stood like iron angels casting shadows over the freshly cut pitch; its ice-white markings enticing us to run over them and give our all for Holmer Green’s first ever rugby team. It was a magical moment, only slightly ruined by Alan Turpin turning to Mr Atkinson and saying slowly, ‘What is it, sir?’ It was at that moment we kind of realised how far we had to go. But boy, did we have momentum.

  Our first match was barely two weeks away and we had started to have extra training sessions after school. But, as we found out, it’s quite tricky to have a decent training session when only seven of the team remember to turn up. I remember feeling very disheartened by this, but Mr Atkinson never let his head drop. He was taking a huge risk, spending the school’s money on a rugby pitch that lots of people – his colleagues included – thought was a waste of time. But he never let that message get to us. He kept on telling us that we could, and would, become the pride of the school. Amazingly, over time, this belief did slowly seep into all of us, and one day as many as nine of us turned up at after-school training. I still wasn’t 100 per cent on every aspect of the game, but I did know that I was only allowed to throw the ball backwards, which was more than Alan Turpin had managed to figure out. He just couldn’t for the life of him get his head around any aspect of the game. I mean, none of us could really, but with Alan … sometimes in training you’d look up for someone to pass to and he’d be there, trying to tie two worms together.

  Despite this lack of basic knowledge, our first match day finally arrived. We were playing Sir William Ramsay Upper School, which was based about six miles from our school. Like us they had only recently formed a team, so Mr Atkinson thought it would be good for both teams to play against each other as our standard was similarly crap.

  The whole day seemed to build towards 4 p.m., to this Clash of the Titans. The bullies had a strange, serene quality: they weren’t stealing anyone’s lunch, or trying to throw Nedeem’s bag on top of the Science block. They were quiet – a braver man than myself might even go so far as to say they were nervous. The game was all any of us could think about: our first match, the possibilities, the potential to be heroes. The start of a brand-new era in our sporting lives. (I’m saying this as if everyone felt this way. I’m sure they didn’t. This was what was happening in my head, because I wanted everything to be like either Grease or Dead Poets’ Society.)

  The bell rang at the end of the day and I made my way to the PE block. I could hear some noises coming from the changing rooms. ‘Aha!’ I thought to myself. ‘It must be my team mates doing some sort of Haka dance to really bring the side to
gether.’ I walked a little faster because I didn’t want to miss out on any team-building experience.

  Excitedly, I burst into the room, only to find Alan Turpin and Jez Pope rolling around on the floor punching the crap out of each other. Not only that, they were being cheered on by the rest of the team, and Simon Phillips was even leaning in and throwing cheap shots onto the back of whoever was nearest to him. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I looked over at Nedeem Jacobs who was huddled in the corner, close to tears, and realised I had to stop this, for the good of the team.

  ‘Stop! STOP!!’ I shouted as I leapt into the circle, grabbing Jez Pope and yanking him off Alan. ‘What are you doing?’ I said theatrically. ‘We are supposed to be a team! We can’t be fighting with ourselves. We have to support each other and take our fight out there onto the pitch!’ In my head uplifting, inspiring music was starting to swell – this was going to be a speech that this team would still be talking about when they were old men. This would also, I imagined, put forward a good case for me being handed the captaincy, which meant it would be me lifting the inevitable trophies we’d win at the end of the year. ‘This is our first match. We should be getting in the zone. We are no longer individuals – we’re a unit. And we stand side by side as we walk out onto that turf, knowing that every single one of us is ready to do what it takes to bring home a victory!’ I felt incredible. I was sure the whole room was being moved to tears by my speech; that this would be a defining moment in the life of this team and they were all about to break out into a slow hand-clap that would grow into a deafening round of applause. What actually happened was Alex Carver, who was standing on the changing room benches, shouted, ‘Shut up, Corden, you fat prick,’ before he leapt from the bench and elbowed me in the back. I fell on top of Alan Turpin and then I heard the always terrifying shout of ‘BUNDLE!’ Within seconds there were seventeen boys piled on top of me and Alan.