'Professor' Jimmy Edwards and 'Whacko!'

'Professor' Jimmy Edwards, with his trademark handlebar moustache, was a popular comic actor of the postwar years, appearing on stage, TV and in films. He is best remembered for his starring role in the TV series 'Whacko,' set in a disreputable boys' school by the name of Chislebury. The amusing programmes were written by Dennis Norden and Frank Muir and ran on the BBC from 1956 to 1960. An updated version, made in colour, was transmitted in the season 1971-72. In all there were 63 episodes although only a handful of the original series have survived in the vaults of the BBC. However, 'Whacko' is still fondly remembered by anyone who watched it in its heyday.

Episodes opened with a caricature of the headmaster sketched on a blackboard, followed by the ominous descent of a cane. Viewers then saw a sign for Chislebury School and were launched into another tale of underhand skullduggery by the scheming headmaster as he dreamed up yet another scheme to provide funds for his betting and boozing. Acting as a foil to Jimmy Edward's shenanigans was the kindly but ludicrous figure of Oliver Pettigrew, a dithering and ineffectual schoolasmer played with wonderful comic timing by Arthur Howard, seen below on the right (the part was played by Julian Orchard in the 1970s version).

A feature film based upon 'Whacko', entitled 'Bottoms Up', was produced in 1960. This is still occasionally shown on TV and climaxes with a 'mass execution,' when Jimmy Edwards farcically attempts to whack a group of miscreants with a giant cane. During an early scene in the film, we see a trio of schoolboys listening at the headmaster's door as he deals with a pupil named Wendover, uttering the immortal command 'Bend over, Wendover.' (See pictures below)

One of the most interesting aspects of 'Whacko' from the perspective of today is the way that corporal punishment is accepted as a normal aspect of school life, which as often as not has its funny side. To begin with, there is the programme's title, derived from the schoolboy slang for a caning. The headmaster is seldom without his cane as he walks about the school premises and he is only too happy to use it.

Many of the young viewers at the time would have been pupils at schools where corporal punishment was in regular use, although they would probably not have seen anything amusing about the cane in the context of their own schools. However, at Chislebury School the cane almost became a comic artifact and Jimmy Edwards' pupils usually accepted that if you were caught out you accepted the resulting whacking with good grace.