I wasn’t an easy kid to get to school and I don’t have positive memories of my early school years. I went to Christ Church Grammar School, a boy’s private school in Perth, for 11 years. It felt like an eternity. My brother Dan went there, too. He was two years above me.

Mum would say that when Dan left the primary school for senior, it correlated with my really blossoming. I think she thought the absence of Dan was good for me, but he was - and still is - my best friend.

The other reason I might have come alive at school a bit more was because of a particular teacher. Mr McPherson, my form tutor, was the person I identified with and gelled with. He was tall and laconic, funny and kind. He had a real presence.

I responded to teachers who were funny and dry. Sometimes they were so deadpan that some kids couldn’t tell when they were joking and when they were serious. But I loved the irony - I use it in my work and when I parent my own children now. I’ve always been attracted to it.

Mr McPherson wasn’t as caustic as some of my teachers. Now, Mr Burk, who taught RE, was a really Dahl-ian character. “Minchin!” he’d bellow. “If I see you talking again, I will pull out your tongue, wrap it over the fan there, tie it in a knot, put it back up your bum, out through your mouth again and sling you out of the classroom.”

Mr McPherson, on the other hand, came along at the right time for me at school. It was 1986. I was young in my year - I was immature, and in Year 6 I just “clicked in” a bit. I was at the top of the primary school, I was starting to come into my own. He’d throw dust cloths at people - all that chaotic pantomime stuff that you want when you’re a young boy. The excitement and the drama were brilliant.

He didn’t have to discipline us. Occasionally, he’d get furious, but that was very rare. Mostly, he’d have his feet up on the desk. He was comfortable in his own body and in his authority. I can’t remember everything that he taught us, but I know that time in his class made me feel happy at school.

I really believe the teachers you love are circumstantial. Some of my high school teachers maybe sparked my intellectual development - and Mr Burk loved my cringeworthy poems - but the thing about Mr McPherson was that he made me laugh. He allowed us to be a bit cheeky too, which is what you want when you’re 11 years old.

Even though I don’t feel like my schooldays were the best time of my life, I’ve always respected authority and I always assumed the authorities at school were right. I felt a bit scared of adults and teachers, but that’s childhood for you, right?

In the early days of my success, just after I won the Perrier Best Newcomer award at the Edinburgh Festival in 2005, I was in touch with Mr McPherson. To everyone’s surprise, I’m now a person of interest at my old school. They’ve even called me one of their “legends”.

I think people expect me to have been a rebel at school, but I really wasn’t. I went back recently to give a talk. I advised the boys to get an education and then rebel if they wanted or needed to after they’d left. Education is a weapon and a tool in life.