One night, at the age of 12, I woke up to find the Milk Tray man in my bedroom. At least, that was my first guess. A figure, dressed in black and wearing a dark balaclava, was struggling to open the window so he could get out onto the roof.

“Who’s that?” I hissed. (Do not try this at home, children. Modern thinking advises against hissing at strangers in balaclavas, but in my defence I was an excitable child who had just woken up unexpectedly.)

The shadowy figure shrugged, gave up the struggle with the window and sat down on the bottom of my bed. “It’s only me,” he said, pulling off the balaclava to reveal a school friend who should have been asleep two bedrooms away. “You see this condom?” He produced one from his pocket. “I’m going to hang it from the gate of the girls’ school.” Of course he was. Silly me.

At that point our conversation rather stalled. What is there to say to a preteenage boy in a black balaclava who prowls about rural England at night dangling contraceptives from gateposts? “Hang on,” I muttered, reaching for my dressing gown. “I’ll help you with the window.”

This sort of encounter - possibly for a bet; I can’t now remember - was not uncommon at the state boarding school I attended. My bedroom backed onto a low roof, so, on late-summer evenings, there was a steady flow of young boys - many in amateur camouflage - making their way past the bottom of my bed to the window. Occasionally I went with them to roam around the countryside (playing chicken at the sewage plant) or to swim in the outdoor pool at the neighbouring girls’ school.

I mention all this because a government education adviser has just proposed a vast expansion of the state boarding sector. Instead of taking children into care, Sir Cyril Taylor wants to cart them off to boarding school. According to reports last week, this would apply to children as young as seven. One moment you’re barely able to read Winnie-the-Pooh without moving your lips. The next thing you know, you’re digging a tunnel under the boarding house while everybody else is jumping over a vaulting horse to distract the guards.

The reputation of boarding seems to depend on which books are popular at the time. Once it was Tom Brown’s School Days, and boarding schools were places where boys were roasted over open fires to build character. I read recently of a prisoner of war who arrived for work on the notorious Burma railway. “Cheer up,” he was told. “It’s not half as bad as Marlborough.” All that changed with Harry Potter. These days boarding schools are places of magic and adventure (if you ignore the murderous attacks by the forces of darkness).

So cast aside any doubts, and put your seven-year-old down for the sleepover that never ends. It’s true that your children will spend the first term vowing revenge and wondering which ramshackle old people’s home they’ll book you into when the time comes. But after that they’ll have a ball.

My father was a single parent when the question of secondary school arose. At that time, I would return from primary school each day, pick up a key from a neighbour and then let myself in to watch Top Cat, Blue Peter and The Singing Ringing Tree. One afternoon my father, perhaps afraid of what would happen when I grew out of Blue Peter, announced he was sending me to boarding school.

My first instinct was to bargain my way out of trouble. “Does that mean I can stop having piano lessons?” I wondered.

“No,” he said. “Oh,” I said. “Do I have to go?”

“Yes.” The school we chose together was called Sexey’s, on a place called Lusty Hill. It provided me with a solid education and a cheap gag for the rest of my life.

What did I learn there? I learnt that the smell of Brut sprinkled on young boys’ dirty socks is perhaps the most repellent odour known to modern science. I learnt, by observing older boys, that drinking Clearasil acne lotion for its alcohol content is not the mark of a true sophisticate. And I learnt, rather bizarrely, when a teacher tried to sneak rudimentary sex education into a biology lesson, that the penis “is used as a kind of syringe”.

Sometimes the people you meet at boarding school stay with you, in one way or another, for the rest of your life. Jeremy Clarkson was famously at Repton with a boy called Andy Wilman, the television producer who is now in charge of Top Gear (if anybody can really be said to be “in charge” of Top Gear). New boys there were known as the Stig, which is now the name of the programme’s iconic but silent racing driver. We had a boy called Stig at our school. Small world, isn’t it?

My own children are repelled by the idea of boarding but fascinated by what I might have got up to. Especially the central role played in school life by athlete’s foot powder, which not only cured all known diseases but could be used as a deadly weapon.

If you are a boarding school pupil with access to athlete’s foot powder, you should probably look away now. For everybody else, here’s what to do. You partially fill a balloon with a mixture of water and foot powder and toss it nonchalantly above the head of your target.

Just as they are telling you to stop messing about, you burst the balloon (preferably from a distance). With practice, you should be able to cover the figure beneath in wet, congealed foot powder.

As soon as you have hit your target, you should probably run away quickly, as being soaked in congealed powder seems to make people very angry indeed. On the bright side, there’s absolutely no danger of them getting athlete’s foot.

On second thoughts, perhaps we shouldn’t send seven-year-olds to boarding school after all. They’ll only pick up bad habits.

Jeremy Clarkson is away

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