Hard on the heels of last week's tale from Ray Russell about the creation of an entirely fictional character called Winston Blubberhouse, who even appeared in the Dictionary of National Biography, Gus got in touch with his memory of the Schoolboy Who Never Was... We invented P. Snipkins as a new boy at our school in about 1976. We managed to add him to the register and someone always managed to stick their hand up at the back whenever his name was called. Somehow we managed to keep this going for about a month.
P. Snipkins signed himself up for almost every conceivable extra-curricular activity including some really obscure games options. Naturally, having failed to turn up for these he began to get into all kinds of trouble with the teachers involved.
Our final triumph was when he was given a detention for his repeated failure to attend.
