My Pooleys (shamefully out of date at 1 Dec 00) says in bold type "Caution: High performance aircraft carry out circuits in both directions. Therefore there is No deadside and No overhead joins are permitted."
Is yours even older than mine BG?
No overhead joins does not of course mean you can't overfly. It just means you can't let down into the circuit from overhead. If you haven't been before and want to check it out it's perfectly OK to overfly above 2000 ft aal to have a look, turn on to a suitable heading, remaining above 2000 ft until beyond the ATZ before descending and turning to join the circuit.
AIP is of course the authoritative source in case of discrepancy.
I wouldn't get too upset that the guy on duty couldn't give you the attention you wanted. He probably had circuit traffic that required attention and it's unreasonable to expect IWM to overman on the basis that it might get busy. We did after all get discount!
And wasn't it a fine day out to boot?
Mike
PS We weren't relying on my out of date Pooleys. Rustle, who is much more organised, had printed out the AIP info.