Michael Jayston

Michael was born in Nottingham and educated at Becket Roman Catholic Grammar School, West Bridgeford, where he was known as Jimmy (his real name was Michael James) and where he was caned some 130 times. While that might have been a record, the one that went into the record books was scoring 60 of the under-13 football team's 120 goals in a season. In between canings and scoring goals, he acquired a great love of literature and the English language from a teacher at Becket Grammar School, which he left at seventeen with an A level in philosophy. He initially worked as an accountant with the coal board. Before he took his accountancy finals, he left the Coal Board and went to work in the Nottingham Fish Market, where the language he learned was a revelation to him.