LOVE 'em or hate 'em, you will never forget them.

Whether it was five or 50 years ago, your old teachers are forever ingrained in the memory.

Come on, think back. You remember with fondness or hatred the people who shaped your young lives. You can't forget the mannerisms, the nicknames, the canings or the kindness.

The pupils at Fulford School who have just voted their geography master the nation's 'coolest' teacher will obviously remember him and his exciting tales of his world travels with great fondness.

We had a Boilerhead, an Elvis (he was our physics teacher and he was the young Presley's spitting image), a Hutch and a Bongo.

At primary school we had an elderly teacher who smacked us so hard across the palms, he would snap his yard-long ruler in two. If we were in a painting lesson we would ease the pain by brushing water on the hand.

We would shoot up our hands to be pencil or milk monitor for the day, in winter struggling to remove the milk crate from the cast iron radiator just before our 'cool' drink was brought to the boil.

When it came to music, and dishing out the instruments for the day, we would burst to get the instrument we wanted, "Please, miss. Please, miss!" If she turned that beautiful smile on your seven-year-old face and gave you the tambourine, what utter bliss. So why did I always end up with the triangle?

One of my teachers was absolutely gross. He would stand at the front of the class with book in one hand, shamelessly picking his nose with the other, rolling the resulting harvest on his trouser leg, unaware of what he was doing and what we were sniggering at.

To this day, one of my colleagues cannot bear the sound of rubber plimsolls on a wooden floor. That was the sound he heard from the one shoe on his games teacher's foot as the raging educator took a 20-yard sprint across the gym to deliver a cruel thwack on the buttocks with the other 'plimmy'.

Nowadays, it seems, a teacher can be jailed for asking a pupil to sit up straight or pay attention.

So if you think some teachers were cruel, imagine the cruel memories they must have of us. We had a teacher with a terrible stutter, and the whole class would pipe up in chorus to help him finish the word he was struggling with for what seemed like an eternity.

We had a young woman teacher of German who was not cut out for the profession. She would first shout, then swear and finally run off in a flood of tears. And ours was a good grammar school. Later I heard she had moved into the translation business.

Then there were the sophisticated women teachers with the provocative, hip-swinging walk down the school corridor, always reeking of perfume and popular in the staff room.

There were also those who could have been world champions if there had been an Olympic sport for flinging the blackboard rubber, which was not rubber but wood and hurt like hell when it was delivered with perfect aim at a young forehead.

We had a teacher who one day would deliver a lecture to a pupil caught smoking behind the bike sheds, and the next day would post a youngster on guard duty on the stairs while 'teech' had a crafty drag in his store cupboard mid-lesson.

There was the games teacher who kept pigs to supplement his teaching salary. Imagine the fun, frolics and stink when he would pile an entire rugby team in the back of his pig van to take us to a Saturday match.

And I have old school friends - grown women now - who still hate the old deputy head because in the swinging, mini-skirted Sixties, she insisted every school skirt should reach below the knees.

But have you seen some of the kids these days? Boobs bulging out of open-necked blouses which reveal half their back while their hipster trousers show off a stripper's thong - oh, and smoking while text messaging as soon as they reach the school gates.

But there were teachers who displayed extraordinary kindness, such as the wonderful woman teacher who invited us to pop round to her home for tea and cakes any time. These days, she'd be reported and arrested.

And, as you have such fond memories of them, your old teachers will naturally remember you. Or do they?

"Old pupils are often offended when I don't remember them years later," confided one old timer, still wearing his leather elbow patches. "Well, there were hundreds of them and only one of me."

Updated: 10:10 Tuesday, March 16, 2004