Political Sketch 2020
(Any similarity to any Oxford student is entirely deliberate). Anger erupted this week over allegations that the world is being run by a shadowy cabal of media stars and politicians, all of whom were at Oxford together in the year 2000. The plot was cooked up one drunken evening at the end of the Trinity term, when a secret pact was made by members of various ends of the political spectrum. They agreed to swallow their differences to achieve world domination and the ultimate end of a central student venue for the students of their alma mater....
Columns: Postcard From The Edge (Of Europe)
Let's be honest for a moment. Undergraduate life has but three shining qualities. Richard and Judy, the double-take on Neighbours, and the post-finals euphoria. It's happening in Belgium at the moment, sweeping across her universities as the sunshine follows the edges of the clouds. I see them in the streets outside the hostel. Wide eyed girls running around in capes, pretending, though they are absolutely knackered and have no meaning left in life, to be totally, orgasmically happy. Men looking free after so many years, as though they'd just been released from prison, carrying those hold-alls, and looking really hard and leathery. (Actually I think they had just been released from prison, and it would explain the police escort). People going absolutely crazy, and even putting glitter in their hair. Couples hugging in the road. Champagne, balloons, carnations, sunshine! It's like a real soap opera, and it's repeated in the evenings. As a bystander, observer, voyeur even, of those girls in something close to school uniform, my own frustrations melt away, and I am for a brief moment one of them. You see, I've been single for some time now. My girlfriend from back home has left me, and the countless hairy arm-pitted beauties I expected to seduce with my English accent, and my vulnerability at not speaking the language, have been nowhere to be seen. My friend Herdi, is thin and effeminate, and hardly the man to leave me in his shadow. I have sought to enhance the contrast by growing a moustache, akin to those beneath the nostrils of the hardest army corporals, but as we wonder from café to café around Brussels, hardly any women seem in the least bit interested. Occasionally I get the odd waitress asking me if I would like a 'Royale with Cheese' (they've all seen Pulp Fiction and think they're being terribly ironic), but apart from that, no matter how much I give women the eye, they just don't seem either offended or flattered. So I'm experiencing a real drought. Pretty soon, Michael Buerk shall be reporting on me in hushed tones. Hence I have taken to standing outside the exam buildings at 5:30 each evening, to cheer the finalists, and try to hug the occasional dancing girl, caught up in her own happy world. I think its time to go home....
Columns: Getting Thrown Out Of...
After last week's failed attempt to get thrown out of my own College, I felt that I was now prepared to get thrown out of Oxford itself. All my weeks of preparation would be required for this. Getting thrown out of Oxford is no easy task. It may be hard to get in, but it's a damn sight harder to get out again - particularly if you made the mistake of buying an OX90 ticket in London rather than the Oxford Tube and consequently have to wait that little bit longer. I realise that the last joke was a purely London-based one, but that's OK because my tutor says that no one from the North takes A-Levels anyway......
Columns: Unwise Words
Yes my people, you heard right. I exited this cruel world last week while doing the mortal coil shuffle at Fifth Avenue, and I haven't looked back since. Obviously my mother cried when she read the news in Cherwell as she thought it indicative of my lifetime of laziness that the OxStu hadn't covered the news first. Anyway once the shock of losing my corporeality had passed I came to realise that all manner of advantages could be gained from this change of state. Death may deny you the advantages of the senses, but it gifts you the kind of knowledge you can only dream about. So with this new-found learning I set about trying to discern that age old question. What is it that makes seemingly intelligent individuals obsess about kebabs once they get inside the city limits of Oxford? Be they ironic or otherwise, the number of eulogies you hear from ordinarily sane students cannot be ignored....
Columns: dis-course
I held a competition for Spamku - where were you all? You failed me, and I felt lonely, unloved and unread. Until, that is, two sublime entries were submitted by Alexa Seligman, and everything was all right again. So, as I promised, here they are:
Columns: Happy Holidays
India
Columns: Whose choice is it anyway?
Isn't it interesting how the work of Women's Committee and Pro-Choice Committee can go unnoticed for an entire year? The sabbatical officers are all regular frequenters of the press, yet the V-P (Women) politely patronised and left to one side? Does this, by any chance suggest that the students of Oxford are happy for the work of those 'wimmin' to remain behind the scenes?...
Columns: Woman Of The Week: Madonna
Who is she: Singer, Actress and general Celebrity Extraordinaire.