Mr Majeika
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Mr Majeika was the title of a series of children's books, written by Humphrey Carpenter, and also a children's television series starring Stanley Baxter. The stories have also been broadcast on radio. The first volume, Mr Majeika, first published in 1984, was followed with Mr Majeika and the Music Teacher, Mr Majeika and the Haunted Hotel and The TV Adventures of Mr Majeika.
The focus of these stories is Mr Majeika, a teacher at St Barty's Primary School (a typical English primary school of the time). However he is no ordinary man, as is apparent when he flies into Class Three's boring lesson on a magic carpet, (which he then turns into a cycle, confounding the headmaster); Mr Majeika is a wizard! ("People don't believe in wizards nowadays, so naturally they don't often pay them to do some work."). He thereafter astounds them with magical trickery which bring lessons to life, whether it is providing chips during dinner for all the children, or turning the nasty Hamish Bigmore into a frog for his insolence. Whatever the consequences, Class Three are sure that with Mr Majeika around, they won't be bored again!
In the televison series, the Mr Majeika character is an irrepressible wizard, sent to England (called 'Britland') from the planet Walpurgis because he has failed his O-level sorcery exam for the seventeenth time. He drops into the sleepy village of Much Barty, finding a post at St Barty's School as Class Three's new form-teacher, where he quickly befriends two of the children, Melanie Brace-Girdle and Thomas Grey.
Majeika enters into his magic with reluctance, however, because he is trying hard to behave himself on Earth, and because the Worshipful Wizard of Walpurgis is keeping an eye on him from above. (His reprimanding voice is frequently heard.) All the same, trickery becomes more and more necessary, leading Majeika, Melanie and Thomas into some remarkable adventures. Their fun is despised - but usually prompted - by the horribly spoilt Hamish Bigmore, a pupil so ghastly that his mere presence had caused the resignation of the previous class teacher and frightened off the 79 applicants for the post. But one waggle of Mr Majeika's oddly tufted grey hair is all that it takes for Bigmore to be put firmly in his place.
Mr Majeika prompted a surprising but most welcome return to television for one of its most talented exponents, the Scottish comic actor Stanley Baxter. The series was written by Jenny McDade. Carpenter wrote the fourth book based on McDade's scripts, The Television Adventures of Mr Majeika.
