HOWZAT

“Nowadays as teachers we are told never to use sarcasm with children.”

Eddie Davis, a book-keeper, said: “I was a little sod at school: definitely one of the Cockneys. I left at 15 with no qualifications and now I am going back to college to study accountancy and business management.

“I am doing all the things I should have done at school, but quite a lot of the working-class kids there have done really well. It was a fantastic school and the best years of my life.”

For Sybilla Agassee, now a solicitor in Essex, the memories of school are still vivid but so is the sense of grievance that neither she nor her schoolmates got the acclaim that they feel was due to them. She said: “I remember being peed off that we could not be on the video or Top of the Pops. There was even talk of me pursuing a singing scholarship but it never went anywhere.”

Meeting Mr Abbott and Ms Mellor outside the school gates, Trudy Gunner said: “I remember like it was yesterday. I was in the choir. I wasn’t really aware of having a good voice but I don’t think any of us did.

“I remember being in the studio and being asked to belt it out as loud as we could. I didn’t even know who Pink Floyd was at all but my brother was very excited.

“Until today I had lost contact with all of the other children. It has been great to catch up with some of their news, and if we can make a few quid from the royalties, then that’s great.”

The man behind the legal claim is Peter Rowan, an Edinburgh royalties expert, who has been trying to track down the former pupils for two years.

Mr Rowan, who has signed up eight claimants, will lodge their claims, backed by Professor Maden, with the Performing Artists’ Media Rights Association, which distributes money from broadcasters.

There will, however, be no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Mr Rowan said: “They will not be getting more than a few hundred pounds. But it’s also about the recognition. They never got that in 1979. They deserve it even if it has taken 25 years.”

BLASTS FROM THE PAST

Virginia Swingler (now Mirabai Narayan after converting to Hinduism) works as a learning mentor in a school in Camden, North London

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Foxy Knoxy snared by her lust and her lies
• Britain is the land of the shrinking family
• Zac Goldsmith: Not such a green god