Until recently, Ali Woods was, as one reviewer put it, PR man by day, comedian by night.

Better known to his QE contemporaries as Alister Heywood (OE 2005–2012), he first made a name on TikTok and then gained a big boost when his debut solo show at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe sold out amid five-star reviews.

Now, underpinned by his huge online following, he has given up the day job and become a professional comedian.

The very first time he was involved in performing comedy was at York, where he was reading English & Related Literature. He was part of a university ‘improv’ group called The Shambles. He then first did stand-up in London in 2015 at open mic nights. In 2017, he was runner-up in the Leicester Square New Comedian of the Year competition and was short-listed for a BBC New Comedy Award in both 2017 and 2018.

Alister won Hackney Empire New Act of the Year 2020 – Evening Standard writer Bruce Dessau’s quotation in the headline is from that time. He has appeared on BBC Radio 4, TalkRadio and TalkSport, alongside hosting his own podcast, All I Do Is Fail.

All of this was achieved while he was simultaneously working in PR: he is working his notice as a New Business and Marketing Executive for the Propeller Group (a global PR, content and events agency) and finishes on 21st December.

Alister was planning to do his debut full stand-up show in 2020, but was thwarted by the pandemic. Instead, during lockdown he started making videos, which soon went viral. Today, he has 153,000 followers on Instagram and 113,000 on TikTok. His online comedy sketches under the tag @aliwoodsgigs have gained millions of views and likes, and featured on LadBible and Buzzfeed UK. It is by using this audience that he has now managed to turn professional.

In his comedy, he presents a mix of the ‘everyman’ and the ‘modern man’, displaying sensitivity and a genuine interest in men’s mental health, which gives him a great perspective on the modern ‘lad’ culture. He speaks on topics such as football, the environment, and many social causes close to his heart.

Typically outspoken, he is keen to encourage those interested in creative work to pursue it and get the career they really want: “You can do it, believe that you can. I’ve done it and I’m not even funny!” It was not, he said, an aspiration that was really valued in the QE of his time. “I was never encouraged to take creative work seriously, it was seen as a facilitator for cover letters and CVs.”

Alister, who was among the guests at this term’s OE Association Dinner, therefore feels a special impetus to encourage today’s pupils if they hold similar interests.

“You can work really hard to end up in a job you hate because you thought it was the safe option,” he says. “I would like to communicate to current QE boys that creative arts are a legitimate pursuit which requires the same work as any difficult degree or discipline or career, and will truly be worth it. If you are passionate about it, and you’re willing to be consistent, put yourself out there, learn from your setbacks and not to give up: it will be the most fulfilling journey you’ll ever make.

“Don’t be afraid to take the risk. Believe that you are able to succeed in a competitive, creative field.”

• You can view Alister’s videos at his website.

As current Year 12 pupil Darren Lee gets ready to take over as School Captain in our 450th anniversary year, we asked the 400th anniversary Captain, Iain Lanyon, for his memories of that momentous year.

He began by saying that he had in fact had other plans for the first half of 1973…

“I stayed on after my A-levels in 1972 to take Cambridge entrance exams in the autumn. I was, I think, the youngest in my year, so I wanted to take a year out,” he said. “In the end, I stayed the whole academic year 1972–73 as School Captain: it was the 400th anniversary and there was so much to do! Prefects were responsible for much of the discipline and organised all school break times and the junior assembly. I had to combine school work with part-time paid work (I was from a one-parent family and on free school meals). I worked in the doubles bar at the Red Lion pub and remember ‘Tiger’ Timson [Classics teacher Percival Timson] coming in for a drink each evening before catching the bus home – double White Horse whisky with Malvern Water.

“My favourite memory of the 400th anniversary was organising the School fete. I persuaded the school to hold a joint fete with the Girls’ School and for the proceeds to go to the new Marie Foster home for multiple sclerosis about to be opened in Wood Street. I worked with the new comprehensive intake of QE junior boys to save enough Green Shield stamps to buy an early type of mobility scooter for the home, and the fete also raised over £1,200 for the home – that’s over £17,000 in today’s value.” He has a copy of a letter from Marie Foster herself thanking him. “She was an amazing woman!” The colour photo in front of the Main Building shows him collecting a prize on Founder’s Day 1973, while he is in the front row, centre, in the prefect team line-up.

Iain was a keen sportsman. He was captain of the athletics team and played rugby on the left wing in the First XV, also playing for the county in both sports. He was the Borough of Barnet schools 100 metres sprint champion for two years. “My time of 11.2 seconds was a record that stood for several years, I think.”

In 1973, the School was approached by a local college to see if there was a QE pupil who could teach the English Language course. “I was sent along. I remember being the youngest in the room full of people needing an English qualification for their careers. The administrator came in and apologised that the teacher hadn’t arrived, so I had to put up my hand to say I was their teacher!”

Teaching has remained part of his life ever since: “Firstly graphic design and communication, and now as a part-time voluntary mentor for English Literature Oxbridge candidates at Camden School For Girls.”

After Iain finally handed over the School Captain’s mantle to Maxwell Ball, who took over in the Autumn Term of 1973, he went on to his own English Literature degree at Warwick. After that, he worked in arts marketing at the Royal Opera House. “I then became a graphic designer, working for theatre companies, which has been my career for the past 40 years.” He is creative director of his own company, Kean Lanyon Ltd.

Iain lives in Crouch End. “Several of us still meet up on Founder’s Day each year at the Black Horse, then go on to the School fete. This year we were given a guided tour and saw the new swimming pool for the first time. ” It is, he reflects, quite a contrast to the days when he and his classmates would stand shivering on the edge of the outdoor pool, with PE teacher Eric Shearly cheerfully pouring scorn on their reluctance to enter the water.

Queen Elizabeth’s School had the best A-level results of any state school, according to the influential Sunday Times Parent Power survey’s first post-pandemic rankings published this weekend.

QE is the also the best boys’ state school in terms of GCSE results for 2022, the survey found.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This confirmation of our record-breaking A-level performance caps a fantastic year for QE. The achievement is all the more remarkable since this year’s leavers were disrupted throughout their time in the Sixth Form by the pandemic: my congratulations once again go to them – and to our staff – for showing such flexibility, hard work and fortitude in the face of repeated national lockdowns.

“The year began with us enjoying our new status as the Sunday Times’ Schools Guide 2022 State School of the Year – a title which is distinct from the Parent Power academic rankings and recognises overall achievements across all aspects of school life.

“2022 has also seen: the opening of our fantastic new Music building (The Friends’ Recital Hall and Music Rooms); the securing of 35 places at Oxford and Cambridge; the publication of an Ofsted report which found QE to be ‘outstanding’ across all areas, and this month’s royal visit by HRH The Duke of Gloucester. It has truly been Queen Elizabeth’s School’s annus mirabilis!

“My best wishes go to Wycombe High School, who will soon take over the crown as 2023’s State School of the Year.”

The Parent Power table was based on 2022 public examination results, with schools ranked by the percentage of GCSEs awarded A*, A, 9, 8 & 7 grades, and of A-levels graded A*–B, with the A-level results double-weighted. In first place was QE’s Barnet girls’ school neighbour, Henrietta Barnett, with 98.8% for GCSE and 97.3% for A-levels, while QE was just behind in second place overall, with 95.7% for GCSEs and 98.3% for A-levels.

The 2022 QE A-level cohort also set a School record for the proportion of grades at the very top (A*) which this year reached 70.7%.

The upper reaches of this year’s Parent Power state school table are dominated by grammar schools, with the top 28 schools all fully selective – a fact expounded by the Parent Power editor, Helen Davies.

“The trends may not be new, but they are reinforced: selective grammars are dominating…and those schools that push extra-curricular activities and wellbeing are thriving inside and outside the classroom,” she wrote.

After winning plaudits at Harvard for his performance in a 24-hour ‘hackathon’, 16-year-old Soumil Sahjpall’s entry in an online follow-up event took third place, beating off competition from university teams worldwide.

During his trip to the US, Soumil rubbed shoulders with Ivy League students as he developed blockchain software for cryptocurrency TRON in a coding marathon. His app earned him an ‘honourable mention’ from the judges, who placed him in joint-ninth place out of 55 teams.

He then entered the TRON International Hackathon 3.0, an extension of the in-person event, which featured more than a thousand competitors from across the globe. Soumil said he was proud that his third place was the result of a vote by “a cryptocurrency community of thousands”.

Assistant Head (Pupil Destinations) James Kane said: “Our warm congratulations go to Soumil. He showed significant commitment in entering these competitions in the first place; he then demonstrated great skill and put in a huge amount of hard work to achieve international success against competitors several years older than him.”

TRON, a leading cryptocurrency with a current market value of $5 billion, set a brief to develop a dAPP, or “decentralized app” – that is, software that runs on the blockchain, as opposed to on a server hosted by technology giants such as Amazon or Microsoft.

The in-person hackathon at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, featured a 24-hour period dedicated solely to developing the dAPP. In addition, Soumil attended workshops, and there was time allocated to presenting and pitching to judges.

Because of his age, even taking part represented a success: the organisers cleared him to compete, based on his performance in previous hackathons. Altogether, 55 projects were presented by some 200 young people, most of them six or seven years older than Soumil.

“I found out about this hackathon with relatively short notice, so I competed solo,” he said. “I was relatively confident in my abilities and knew I’d still be having lots of fun, so that was all right. The average team size was around four members – with a maximum of five – so I was at a disadvantage.”

Although delighted with the honourable mention – one of only ten available – for his presentation, and the $500 cash prize that went with it, he said “the real take-away from this is the experience and the people I met.” These included students from Harvard, Yale, MIT and Boston’s Northeastern University.

In the online event, the TRON International Hackathon 3.0, Soumil submitted his project, which he called ‘Project Pledger’, under the ‘academy’ track, designated for university-level students and his work was voted third.

QE actors mixed the language of Shakespeare with modern costumes and props to create a potent performance for our times.

The boys put on Julius Caesar at North Finchley’s artsdepot in the Shakespeare Schools Festival and then twice in School to Years 9 and 11 as part of QE’s inaugural Shakespeare and Latin Festival.

In his review of the play, Head of English Robbie Hyland said: “This was one of the strongest productions Queen Elizabeth’s has staged in recent years, not only due to the strong individual performances, but particularly due to the strength of ensemble performances.

“Julius Caesar is, among other things, a play about the relationships between leaders and their citizens – our production, featuring most cast members on stage most of the time, clearly demonstrated how impactful one voice can be on the many.”

First performed in 1599, Julius Caesar centres on the assassination of the eponymous Roman dictator in 44BC. In Shakespeare’s telling, Roman general Brutus joins a conspiracy led by the politician, Cassius, to assassinate Caesar, ostensibly to prevent him from becoming a tyrant. Caesar’s right-hand man Antony stirs up hostility against the conspirators, and Rome falls into civil war.

The play contains many often-quoted lines, including:

• Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look: He thinks too much: such men are dangerous
• This was the most unkindest cut of all
• Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

“Many congratulations should go to the whole cast and crew, as the actors allowed some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines to shine – from Mark Antony and Brutus’ soaring funeral orations to Caesar’s resigned acceptance of his fate,” said Mr Hyland.

The director, Gavin Lister, of Rough Magicke Drama, explained in his notes for the production that he originally considered a Godfather-style setting for the play, with the characters as mafiosi. But following the “extraordinary turn after extraordinary turn” in UK politics over recent months, it became “impossible to ignore the modern-day political turbulence and the parallel themes explored in the classical piece we had been given the gift to perform.

“That is not to say our production is specific to Britain. It is not. The unstable political situations over the course of our rehearsal period in Italy, Brazil, China and Iran have provided us with a social background in which the themes of the play can be seen playing out very much in present-day real life.” These he enumerated as “the dangers of autocracy, the clandestine bargaining that takes place in corridors of power, the brutal and clinical nature of conspiracy, and the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the people’s voice”.

“The students have embraced the themes and the concept, and they have provided more pieces of inspired drama and theatricality than I could have hoped for. For that, and for their general work ethic and insatiable enthusiasm, I thank them,” Mr Lister added.

Drama has undergone a resurgence at QE in recent years, and the School is currently raising funds to create The Robert Dudley Studio – a facility devoted to drama and the spoken word.

Many of the cast spoke of how much they enjoyed taking part in the production.

Year 11 pupil Saim Khan, in the title role, said: “Playing the hardened political genius that is Julius Caesar was a very different experience to previous roles that I’ve done and a great opportunity to try something completely new.”

Year 10’s Simi Bloom, who played Flavius, a Roman tribune (a representative elected by the people), said: “Learning how to incorporate the modern world into a centuries-old story has been really fun and interesting, especially drawing parallels between prominent figures or systems of today and those of the Roman Empire.”

Year 11 actor Uday Dash said: “I had to adapt and build Cassius into a manipulative, calculating character, which was both a challenge and a unique experience.”

Riann Mehta, of Year 12, who played Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia, said: “It has been extremely pleasant to explore a female character by stepping out of gendered expectations. Embracing feminine stereotypes has been a major development in my theatrical presentation and has been a vastly entertaining experience.”

The play was one of the highlights of the Shakespeare and Latin Festival.

The festival programme also included a very well attended lecture on Decadence in New York and Ancient Rome for senior Latinists and English Literature GCSE and A-level students given by Dr Emily Pillinger, Senior Lecturer in Latin Language and Literature at King’s College London and a talk from UCL Professor of Latin Gesine Manuwald, who explored the real-life characters of Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony and Cicero.

Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement) Crispin Bonham-Carter said: “Dr Pillinger drew out the links between Baz Luhrmann’s film of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s novel and the ancient Latin text, The Feast of Trimalchio.”

“Both academics were hugely impressed by how engaged and knowledgeable our young classicists are.”

The festival was one of a number being held at QE allowing teachers and boys to take time to celebrate a subject beyond the classroom. “Our staff are passionate advocates for the broader-world impact of their disciplines,” said Mr Bonham-Carter.