Why school's never out for Jermain

Promoting the Standard's Sport for Schools campaign, he is great with the kids. Probably, concedes Jaylan, it's because he's a bit of a big kid too.

A 14-year-old pupil, Jay Jose, looks terrified to have been asked to interview Defoe for the school magazine, but soon they're nattering away like old mates.

Defoe: "Do they still have the school doughnuts?"

Jay: "Yeah, chocolate ones." Defoe: "Seriously? Man, I used to love them doughnuts."

Jay: "I suppose you're not allowed to eat them now."

Defoe: "You're joking. Course I do." Jay tells him his older brother once managed to tackle Defoe in a primary school match. "Really? Did we win?" asks Defoe. "Yeah, you won 9-2." "And did I score?" "Yeah, about five." This, apparently, was routine for the schoolboy prodigy.

Next, a couple of the school's best footballers are introduced to him. One is Defoe's young cousin, Anthony Edgar, who's on West Ham's books. The other is Alex Stavrinou, a 14-year-old who, like Defoe before him, has been snapped up by Charlton.

Defoe looks at Alex standing there in his smart brown school blazer and sees himself. "Yeah, that was me, full of ambition. The years go by so quickly yet it just feels like yesterday."

Defoe was only here for three years before attending the Football Association's national academy at Lilleshall yet insists: "When people ask, 'How come you're so down to earth?' I say a lot is to do with my school and what I learned there, the discipline, the hard work."

He was raised on a council estate in Beckton. "Things didn't work out between my parents so I was brought up by my mum and spent a lot of time with my nan who lived near the school. It was a rough area where there was a lot of violence, but I didn't get involved in anything like that. It was a hard upbringing, but football was the only thing that was important to me, a kind of escape."

So was St Bonaventure's - or St Bon's as everyone calls it. A massively popular, over-subscribed Roman Catholic school with a 70 per cent-plus intake of youngsters from an Afro-Caribbean background, its reputation remains golden in these parts.

If London's Olympic bid chiefs wanted to show the evaluation commission a working model of inner-city, multiracial harmony in the area where the 2012 Games would be staged, offering an international sporting success story to boot, they should have come here.

It takes in a high percentage of special-needs kids and youngsters from impoverished backgrounds and still boasts exceptional exam results.

Its Ofsted report talks of an "outstandingly effective" school where "behaviour, personal development and relationships are all excellent".

Defoe simply shrugs: "It must be one of the best in the country." It also happens to be a football school par excellence. Former pupils include Chris Hughton, John Chiedozie, Nigel Callaghan, Martin Ling and Amos Foyewa, not bad for a school whose kids have to travel three miles to Wanstead Flats - "the field of dreams" they call it here - just to find a grass pitch.

FOR Defoe, already snapped up by Charlton and making a name with the famed boys' club Senrab which moulded stars such as John Terry and Ledley King, the playground was his kingdom. "I'd get here at

7.30am to play and was worn out before school started. Then it was hard to concentrate on school work; I used to sit in class and dream of the bell so I could go outside and play football." This dreamer's air apparently didn't impress his maths teacher, who told Defoe's formidable mum Sandra on a parents' evening that, lovely lad though he was, he shouldn't think only of "football, football".

Mum responded that she would back his "special talent" all the way. The following week, he scored six before half-time in the Newham and Essex Schools Cup Final. Er, perhaps Sandra was right, the maths teacher conceded.

Defoe points out the window at a net-surrounded area of tarmac they call "the cage" where only the big year 11 kids were allowed to play football, not shrimps like him.

Despite the ban, he used to sneak in with his cousins, a little one wreaking havoc among the big boys. Now, unable to resist a kickaround with present pupils, he can't help laughing: "I'm still not as big as some of this lot."

But today the metaphorical cat is out of the bag. Defoe's been spotted going into the school gym by a bunch of excitable big lads who are ready to storm in.

They are held back by a teacher's booming voice. Inside, Defoe chuckles: "Yeah, Mr Skelton always could be a bit scary."

Aware of the pandemonium he's causing, Defoe just smiles. "This place is a part of me. It's important to come back here, it reminds me where I'm from. I grew up, a young boy playing football in the streets.

"Things have happened so quickly for me - playing in the Premiership, playing for England - but it's still the same old me really."

Long may it remain so.