Naughty ‘Scholars’ spared the rod

A pop group called the Scholars upset a headmistress when they dressed up in stripy school blazers and caps to pose for a publicity picture that showed them in a classroom drinking and looking at a girlie magazine.

It turned out the grey blazers with green and gold stripes were from a real school and band members ended up in court accused of defamation.

The Scholars who were often billed as ‘Southport’s naughtiest schoolboys’ (although all the members were well into their twenties) were a well-known band in Lancashire, England in the mid-1980s.

The Southport Visiter newspaper in October 1987 reported that once posters appeared the headmistress of the private Brighthelmston School sued the group for damages claiming the posters inferred that the school was attended by ‘debauched and dishevelled pupils’ and teachers who enjoyed inflicting corporal punishment. 

It turned out the blazers and caps had been bought in a local secondhand shop and were chosen because of their distinctive colours. The band thought they would go well with their mischievous ‘naughty schoolboy’ image. They said they didn’t realise they were from a real school.

The judge called the posters ‘tasteless’ but said no reasonable person would think the people in the photograph were connected with Brighthelmston and he found against the school.

As published in Liverpool Daily Post, 1 October 1987

 

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