My cousin went to the same school Pete McCarthy mentions in that book. When I was about eleven, I used to go on holiday with the school outings - they used to let me tag along cos I really got on with my cousin - even though I wasn't a Catholic they'd let me go, and we'd wind up at Eucharistic Congresses and the like. I'd be genuflecting like a good 'un, just to get in the swim of things.

When I read the book, I sent it off to my cousin along with a note saying - I don't remember the De La Salle teaching brothers being the sort of cane wielding psychos that McCarthy describes.

My cousin wrote back saying, 'Actually Al, they were much worse - you only saw them in a holiday mood. The Headmaster would have been thrown out of the Gestapo for excessive cruelty. Other pupils I kept in contact with, had nightmares about the place into their thirties.'