Page 13 - Oundle Life October 2022

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instantly obsessed with music.
He tried to form a band with fellow pupils,
though nothing ever came of those early efforts with Dickinson on bongos – the only instrument he could get his hands on! The seed had, however, been planted: Bruce Dickinson first discovered he wanted to be a rock star while at Oundle School.
Being a future rock star in the making, Bruce Dickinson naturally caused some trouble at the school. On one occasion, while feeling rather irked by his house master, he spotted a sign
in Oundle Post Office window offering horse manure for delivery. ‘I decided to deliver two tons of horse sh*t to my house master’ he wrote in his 2017 autobiography. Dickinson called the number in the advert and had the whole steaming mess dumped right outside Sidney
House. Said house master was not amused. But the straw that broke the camel’s back
came in 1975, when Dickinson urinated into a pot of runner beans that was being cooked for a celebratory dinner for the same house master and several other authority figures from the school. This time he was expelled, and Oundle School’s loss was rock music’s gain. Within six years, Bruce Dickinson would join Iron Maiden and the rest is musical history.
Stuart Barker is a professional writer and author. He has a keen interest in local history and likes nothing better than riding round Northants visiting historical sites on his motorcycle.
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