DID you once savage your classmates with your astounding repartee? Then you no doubt used these zingers back in the day:
Takes one to know one
Like a young Stephen Fry, your scintillating wit was the envy of everyone around you. It took an impressive amount of mental nimbleness to respond to someone calling you a dickhead by angrily mumbling ‘Takes one to know one’ instead of coming up with an actual insult.
So’s your mum
The nuclear option for any schoolchild of the 1980s. If you found yourself being insulted and backed into a corner, your adversary better brace themselves for a searingly original rebuke. Oscar Wilde would certainly have, when called a big bellend, instantly lashed back with ‘So’s your mum’.
Whoever smelt it dealt it
Every schoolchild had this phrase at the ready for whenever someone nearby noticed that they’d accidentally farted. If you managed to shoot out this rhyme quick enough you were off scot-free, until someone else said ‘Whoever said the rhyme did the crime’ and everyone pissed themselves laughing at you.
Pen 15 Club
You were the unsuspecting dolt who happily accepted an offer to join the Pen 15 club thinking you were finally being inducted into a secret society that you’d always suspected the cooler kids were part of. Your disappointment was crushing when they just scribbled ‘PENIS’ on your school bag with a permanent marker, called you a wanker and ran away.
I know you are, but what am I?
Who needs any other insult when you can have the other person do the work for you? You could just sit back and endlessly repeat this magic phrase while your rival worked themselves into a frenzy calling you a ‘twat sandwich’. This fiendishly recursive piece of logic made you invincible.
