Take One Glamour Girl, Add An Oxford College, And Stir Into A Tabloid Frenzy.
The profile of Lincoln College scaled new heights last month when it obtained the remarkable distinction of becoming the first Oxford college to get its own spread in The Daily Star. More suited to the sedate pages of academic journals than the frenzied attention of the tabloid press, the college occupied the thoughts of sex-hungry Daily Star readers nationwide when it became embroiled in a bizarre row over whether a glamour model should be allowed to come and pull pints in the student bar.
To the public – whose vision of Oxford rests more upon caps and gowns than cleavages and Gstrings – the revelation that students here occasionally tear themselves away from the 69th chapter of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall to peruse the ‘gutter press’ must have come as quite a shock. The fact that students actually partake in these tabloid japes when they should be quaffing port and/or dictating orders to minion butlers, can only have made matters worse.
What is it about Oxford that has embedded it so firmly in the national psyche and consequently the British media? And why is it that any kind of deviation on behalf of students from an Oxford stereotype is treated with a formulaic blend of mockery, patronising humour and, in the broadsheets, a twinge of disappointment? The answer lies in this university’s status as a national institution – a privilege it shares with Buckingham Palace, afternoon tea and Garth Crooks from Match of the Day.
What all these esteemed features of British life have in common is that they belong to each and every one of us. Oxford news is national news – particularly if it subverts the stereotype. “Students at Oxford University are being handed free condoms by firemen bearing the safety message: Let this be the only fire you light tonight!” The Sun sensationally revealed in a September 2001 scoop.
With fire safety campaigns at other seats of learning clearly falling woefully short on the pun front, it was left to Oxford to dominate most of page 15 of Michael Howard’s favourite red-top that morning. The humour doesn’t lie in the side-splitting play on words, but rather in the absolutely hilarious notion that students at Oxford could be shagging each other.
After all – as every gipsyhating, paedophile-bashing Sun reader knows – the truth is that the most titillation you’ll ever get in Oxford is a sly glance at Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the Rad Cam.
The same ‘story’ at any other university would have been nonsensical because the behaviour that is apparently so newsworthy if it takes place in Oxford – students getting drunk, having sex and generally acting in a manner not befitting a geriatric professor – is precisely what everyone expects from normal students. And this penchant for assuming the best – then celebrating the worst – of Oxford student life is not just restricted to the tabloids.
In early March 2003, when the furore over the Iraq war was reaching its climax, the BBC’s erudite online news editor was faced with the agonising choice of covering the ongoing search for WMD, dramatic developments in Israel and Palestine, or a bomb in the Philippines that killed 18 people the previous day. Instead, he made the insightful decision to concentrate on a drinking ban imposed on Teddy Hall undergraduates.
In a high point for investigative journalism, the BBC initially announced that the ban was put in place due to “deplorable incidents” taking place in the college – incidents that the writer, who is not named, clearly thinks too disturbing to detail on a website easily accessible by under-18s.
Leaving his readers to ponder on whether taxpayer-funded students were busy engaging in sadomasochistic orgies in the chapel or ritual killings of freshers in the JCR, our intrepid journalist eventually comes clean: “The Dean of St Edmund Hall imposed the ban after the cloistered college was regularly defaced with vomit.” To recap the article: students, aged between 18 and 21, got drunk, threw up and are now in trouble. It’s hardly Pulitzer Prizewinning stuff if we’re honest.
But what’s even more galling is that again, the same set of events anywhere else in the country constitutes an average Friday night, not cause for a national media outcry. So what of Oxford’s latest foray into the tabloid press? Ian Brownhill, a Lincoln lawyer, enters a Daily Star competition to win a glamour model for a day to serve in the student bar and gets on the shortlist. The plan goes tits up when he approaches the college dean to get permission for Lucy’s trip.
The college, which clearly needs to review its PR policies, refuses to allow Lucy on the premises, sparking a battle of wills with the college’s JCR and the unwelcome scrutiny of Britain’s most illustrious newspaper. “They felt [the press coverage] would make a big deal of Oxford stereotypes and was bound to be negative in some way”, explained Lincoln JCR President Alasdair Henderson. Oh, the irony.
Within days the college finds itself bombarded with requests from Star journalists to justify its decision to turn down the model’s visit. Henderson, the Student Union, and even the University’s blissfully-ignorant press office are all on the receiving end of phone calls from a paper more accustomed to exploring the intricacies of Jordan’s breasts and Coleen’s wardrobe than in chasing after Oxford dons.
“Two reporters even turned up unannounced and took photos of the college and quizzed students entering and leaving the lodge,” Henderson told this newspaper. The college clearly underestimated The Daily Star’s tenacious desire to keep its readers abreast of the issues. Aweek later, the college’s hopes of brushing the affair under the carpet were well and truly busted when the paper splashed the story over a full page.
Its full-frontal assault on college authorities features quotes from students, comments from Lincoln’s rector and strangely for a paper that prides itself on a long tradition of journalistic accuracy – a picture of nearby All Souls.
According to the article, the college’s reason for denying Lucy her Oxford sojourn was that the whole concept was sexist and vulgar – an accusation the liberalminded Star goes on to refute, vitriolically condemning Lincoln College professors as “prudish” and “dusty”. Lincoln’s hierarchy should have known that the golden combination between Oxford and sex would prove irresistible to the press.
They now found the tabloid press crawling all over college, and they hadn’t even reckoned with the students. News that the tabloid pin-up – who is so popular that there is allegedly a religion called ‘Pinderism’ devoted to her – would not be welcomed into the bosom of Lincoln bar inevitably went down badly with students.
“Obviously I was a bit gutted; not to say that Lincoln doesn’t have many beautiful undergrads, but missing out on the £500 behind the bar was a disappointment”, rued Brownhill. Thankfully, the JCR quickly proceeded to take revenge on the college authorities, unanimously voting to make Lucy Pinder an honorary JCR member.
If she accepts the accolade she will be joining an eclectic yet exclusive list, which also includes Boris Johnson, Prince Philip, Diedre (The Sun’s agony aunt), Mehdi (local kebab man), Simon Faulkner (Lincoln bar manager), and Liz Hurley. She will also be permitted, should she so wish, to attend the twice-termly JCR meetings.
Whether Lucy can tear herself away from her red-top duties to join the hectic fray of JCR politics, or for that matter to make use of the extensive gym and laundry facilities on offer, remains to be seen. Meanwhile the fallout from the whole affair seems to have finally come to an end. “The whole thing was very funny indeed, and Lincoln is proud to be, I think it is safe to say, the only Oxbridge college ever to be on page 3 of The Daily Star”, reflected Henderson.
“But it probably would have been better if either it hadn’t happened at all, or Lucy came to a local pub, like The Mitre or Turl, as I and the college didn’t appreciate being put on the spot and having to cover for a misunderstanding over allegations of sexism.”
After Lincoln’s fleeting flirtation with Lucy, what does the future hold for Oxford’s relationship with the media? In recent months the university has sprung up everywhere, from FHM (which featured New College’s Sam McCullough as one of its ‘High Street Honeys’) to the more mundane Times, which bemoaned the imminent loss of places available for British undergraduates.
Press attention on the university shows no sign of abating, and with journalists refusing to be shaken from their conviction that we are a unique species among British students, anybody from Oxford who momentarily forgets that they are a national treasure and slips down the pub like any normal student only has themselves to blame.
21st Apr 2005