Have you ever had any shark in your life?
[Dream target date 1975]

When we were about 14 years old, a new boy called Kevin McGuinness started at our school. His parents ran the village fish and chip shop. You would imagine this made him extremely popular given the opportunity for free chips, but he never quite made it into any of the regular schoolboy gangs.

He was short and stocky, with black hair that looked like it had been rinsed in last night's chip oil, and he always had his nose in one of those pocket-sized war comics.

His pubescent voice was really strange and during normal conversation it shifted octaves in a wild, uncontrollable manner. One day he tried to impress a large group of us with one of his pointless worldly wise stories. But as he did so, his voice moved into a really high register and out squeaked 'Have you ever had any shark in your life?'

We asked him to say it again and true to form it came out in a squeaky Minnie Mouse fashion. In that instant, McGuinness became innorexably linked with that phrase and 'Have you ever had any shark in your life?' entered school folklaw.

Soon, kids everywhere were repeating it like some mad TV catchphrase. Needless to say, McGuinness was none too pleased whenever he heard it.

Eventually he escaped the taunts eight year old boys and took refuge in the violent pages of his war comics. In this world of U-boats, Spitfires, desert rats and concentration camps, Kevin pictured himself as a fierce prison-camp Commandant, inflicting willful acts of cruelty against his enemies.