Popular Culture
The British sitcom Green Wing features a fictional game, Guyball ( /ˈɡiːbɔːl/ GHEE-ball), which parodies the obscurity of public school pastimes such as the Eton wall game. It is introduced by Guy Secretan, who learned the sport at the fictional school Whiteleaf (/ˈhwɪtlɪf/ WHIT-lif). The object of the game is to throw balls in a "Topmiler", a wicker basket on top of a leather flying helmet. However, the rules of Guyball are never fully explained, and are designed to be as confusing and as difficult to understand as possible. Fans of the show have however created their own rules, and the game was occasionally played 'for real'.
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, the Ankh-Morpork Assassins' Guild has a far more sadistic variant of the "Wall Game", and is essentially an extreme hybrid of rock-climbing and dodgeball.
In the first of Charlie Higson's Young Bond novels SilverFin, the young James Bond comes to Eton and learns the rules of the Wall Game.
J.V. Hart's young adult novel, 'Capt. Hook', also features the Wall Game. The young Hook, an Oppidan at Eton College, plays in the St. Andrew's Day competition.
The game was a subject of the 1987 book, The Sports Hall of Shame, by Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo.
Read more about this topic: Eton Wall Game
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“What culture lacks is the taste for anonymous, innumerable germination. Culture is smitten with counting and measuring; it feels out of place and uncomfortable with the innumerable; its efforts tend, on the contrary, to limit the numbers in all domains; it tries to count on its fingers.”
—Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)