Speaker and characters

The poem “Tich Miller” by Wendy Cope features three characters: the speaker named Tubby, Tich Miller and the collective character of school mates.

The speaker

The speaker is named Tubby (l. 12), and she presents events that have happened in her childhood, which implies that at the time of the poem she is older, probably an adult.

However, as a child she was — along with Tich (on whom she focuses) — one of the outcasts at school, bullied and rejected by their mates. Neither of their peers wants either of the girls in their sports team:

When they picked teams for outdoor games
she and I were always the last two (ll. 4-5)

However, Tubby and Tich are not friends; they are not united by the fact that they are both being rejected. Quite the contrary; they “avoided one another’s eyes” (l. 7) and pretended to be looking in another direction. This suggests that both Tich and Tubby did not want to be associated with each other because that would mean accepting they are ‘the losers’ of the school.

The narrator depicts herself ironically in those times from the perspective of her colleagues as “the lesser dud” (l. 13), which suggests that even if both she and Tich were bullied and rejected, Tubb...