Memories: Jeremy Vine caned after pantomime cow prank

Posted by Traditional School Discipline November 08, 2021

Memories: Jeremy Vine caned after pantomime cow prank

British broadcaster and journalist Jeremy Vine was aged 17 and on his last day at school when he was caned with six-of-the-best after a prank involving a pantomime cow.

He told a startled audience on his morning TV show on Channel 5 in 2019 it was the very last day of the very last term when he and a pal thought it would be a good idea to dress as a pantomime cow and run past the final school assembly of the term.

It happened in 1982 while he was a pupil at the elite Epsom College public school.

Vine gave more details in his 2012 autobiography It’s All News To Me (Simon and Schuster). “I was the front of the cow and my friend Mark Reading was the rear ... As Mark and I tried to lumber off across the playing fields the cow-head slipped, so the teacher who ran out to accost us came into view only at the outer edge of my right eye-slit.

“The housemaster had almost been prevented from reaching us because all the doors of the building where the assembly was taking place had been locked by a co-conspirator...

“Mark Reading heroically told the teacher the caning should be applied to his bottom only and not to mine, as he had been in the rear end of the costume. The offer was turned down.

“Six strokes, since you ask. And ... yes, it did. Quite a lot actually.”

Jeremy’s younger brother Tim Vine, who went to the same school, told the Daily Mail in 2011, “By the age of 13, I was 6ft tall, but I wasn’t particularly into sport – I was more interested in messing about. During house prayers one day, I signalled to Jeremy and his mate Titch to pass by the window, outside, dressed in a pantomime-cow costume. All the boys cheered and the housemaster chased this ‘cow’ down the hill.

“As Jeremy was led away with Titch to get caned, with the costume still hanging off them, he gave us an ‘I beat the system’-style salute, which was very funny. I didn’t get caned – no one knew I was the brains behind the stunt.”