Introducing Crippen Comprehensive. My version of a typical inner city 'bog standard' comprehensive school. Interestingly everyone is wearing the uniform of my own old school, the Skinners' School in Tunbridge Wells. Don't believe me? Take a look at this link. Compare and contrast, and marvel that apart from the addition of lots of doubtless very profitable sportswear the uniform hasn't changed one bit in 30 years! It was that kind of place, a sort of home counties Hogwarts.
Note that Millie is carrying the ultimate in chic school luggage - the Tesco carrier bag.
The graffiti in panel 3 must be the politest ever seen in an inner city. I'm not sure that Kylie Minogue was ever very big amongst the graffiti crews of South East London.
I had a tradition of naming the schools in this strip after murderers for some reason.
While we're on the subject of names, we learn Millie and Richard's surname for the first time in panel 4. Millie got her name from the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie. The original title of the strip was Secondary Modern Millie, a Secondary Modern being an archaic kind of school for children considered not bright enough for a Grammar School education. Richard was called Richard because he was sort of a Dick. The surname, Neville, came from the cricket ground in Tunbridge Wells. Little did I know there was a real Richard Neville - one of the leading lights of the underground scene in London in the 60s, and one of the defendants in the Oz trial. I must have passed under his radar. Phew.
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