“I still hankered to be back on the racecourse, but getting the funds for yet another assault on the ring was proving difficult. Could I track Sting down?”

“Although I now call him ‘Sting’ to his face, I can still distinguish ‘Sting’ from ‘Gordon Sumner’.”

“I turned on my heel and left the building. With only £4.76 in the bank, and my subscription to ‘Men Only’ due, things were looking bleak. Seeing that Keith Moore had apparently purloined Sting’s money, though at this time, he had not been yet convicted of the offence, it seemed to me that he was a better bet for a loan than Sting was.”

“As we walked to Fr Walsh’s office, Sting asked me what I thought our punishment might be. I had just been beaten for the missing page fiasco, and he told me, straight-faced, that his last thrashing was because his dad was a milkman.”

“Caning was a way of life at the school, and the boy, Sting and myself, even at an early age, had our fair share of thrashings.”

“When Sting arrived on Tyneside in November 1992, to receive his degree, he informed me that it was no longer me who was the skint one.”

“In the school suggestion box, brought out at times, Sting put in a scrap of notepaper advising the authorities to ban the ‘slipper’, advising everyone to wrap rags around their feet.”