The agreeable world of Wallace Arnold: How six of the best helped form my character

I NOTE without, I regret to say, a great deal of surprise the tremendous hoo-ha that has been drummed up by the 'media' (dread word]) over the news that the old headmaster of Eton was something of a dab hand with slipper and cane. Personally, I would have been far more aggrieved had he not been. It is written in the very bill and coo of the public school ethos that a few sharp swishes of the cane and the odd informal pat with a slipper are de rigueur on a compulsory basis for junior boys and on a more optional basis for seniors.

The good news came, as is by now only too well known, in the most recent volume of the Official History of Eton College. This is of great interest to yours truly, as I myself am compiling the official history of Basters Academy ('Baste up, the Basters] Baste up, Baste up and Play the Game]'), where no lesser public figures than Lord Young of Graffham, Lord Archer, the distinguished MP Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, the Bishop of Medway, Sir David English, the distinguished West Country building contractor Mr Frederick West and my own good self were all proud to be educated.

In researching the volume, I am sorry to say I have uncovered the most distressing scandal of all: the two most recent headmasters of Basters Academy ('Baste up, the Basters] Baste up, Baste up]') have abandoned all forms not only of capital punishment but of corporal punishment as well. This means that youngsters these days may emerge after five years as old Basterds without ever once having experienced the reassuring thwack of wood on flesh. Ergo, we are building ourselves a new generation of muggers and vandals, of 'New Age' travellers, of scroungers and dossers and 'activists' and joyriders. Those of us who continue to hold dear the value of a sound thrashing will now have to travel as far afield as Kuwait, with all the ensuing paperwork and general inconvenience. Wake up, Basters. Wake up, Britain]

Deep breath, Wallace, deep breath. I have devoted no less than four lengthy chapters of my forthcoming official story of Basters Academy, provisionally titled The Baste Days of our Lives, to the general topic of punishment. These chapters detail the immense amount of time and effort taken over the formulation of a deeply compassionate attitude to beating. Our gracious founder, the Very Reverend Welt, a great liberal in many respects, ordered that no young gentleman should ever be subjected to six of the best without first being permitted to plead his innocence. In the same way, during the course of my entire five years at Basters (1947-52) only three boys were hanged, and only one of them for a felony of which he was later 'proved innocent' (dread words]). Of the remaining 600 pupils, only 12 (all persistent offenders) still find themselves confined to wheelchairs, and many of the two dozen or so mentally disturbed have carved themselves active roles within the larger community.

I myself was regularly beaten by the headmaster, housemasters and kitchen staff at Basters, and I feel only a sense of gratitude, for it did much to form my character and to make me the columnist I am today. As Captain of Jeffries House - named after the distinguished High Court Judge, an old alumnus of the Academy - I was painstaking in the taking of pains. Personally, I always preferred the carrot to the stick, for a carrot, first dipped in varnish and then administered in short-sharp shocks to the small of the back, can prove infinitely more painful.

Needless to say, there will always be the odd cry-baby who squealingly complains that such fair but robust treatment has given him a chip to carry round on his shoulders for the rest of his days. Such people - Burgess, Maclean, Paxman, Philby - have uncertain careers and eventually emerge in the cold light of day as a severe discredit to their public schools.

As I wrote to the editor of the Times only last Thursday, 'Sir, I have had the honour to have been beaten with the greatest courtesy and professionalism by a number of our leading public school Headmasters, often at my own request and in the privacy of my own home. I remember them all with a pleasure tinged fruitfully by pain. Yours faithfully, W Arnold (House Captain, Basters, 1947-52).'