{"id":96018,"date":"2025-10-23T08:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T08:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/96018\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T08:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T08:02:08","slug":"philip-pullman-taught-me-english-at-school-and-he-was-fantastic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/96018\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Philip Pullman taught me English at school, and he was fantastic&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mr O&#8217;Connor said he had starred in one such production written by Sir Philip, where he played a villain in the Arabian Golden Age-set production.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The highlight was having to get a custard pie in the face &#8211; it was just loads of fun, really creative and a real stand out,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Sir Philip&#8217;s teaching was not all custard pies and creative writing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He [Sir Philip] was strict,&#8221; Mr O&#8217;Connor said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Once, when my best friends and I all got caught doing some sort of naughtiness, Mr Pullman gave us 500 lines each and we had to stay in at lunch break.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you now it doesn&#8217;t sound like a lot, but it took half the week and was pretty painful on the old arms.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mr O&#8217;Connor said he had starred in one such production written by Sir Philip, where he played a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-96018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}