Sunday, May 18, 2025
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Why Oxford’s Fashion Gala was better than the Met’s  

Monty Jones
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Why Oxford’s Fashion Gala was better than the Met’s  

The Met Gala, the event most consistently capable of bringing the richest and most famous together under one roof, is intended to embody and celebrate the very best of the fashion world. Yet on this year’s first Monday of May, its peculiarly toothpaste patterned carpet hosted a disappointing assortment of rehashed looks and virality-hunting gimmicks. This was certainly a revealing insight into the current state of an industry that has increasingly prioritised paying deference to established elites and promoting overconsumption over celebrating real creativity. Those with as dysfunctional a sleep schedule and as committed a penchant for self-punishment as I, who watched the entirety of Vogue’s coverage, may have begun the next day with a degree of pessimism regarding fashion’s value as a medium. However, Oxford’s very own Fashion Gala the following night presented an uplifting alternative, showcasing a medley of refreshingly original designs without requiring the Met’s exorbitant cost or starpower.

A lot of the varied success of both events should be attributed to their leadership. Anna Wintour, since taking command of the Gala’s operation in 1995, has prioritised a conservation of the status quo over championing new innovation, epitomised in this year’s theme “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty”. Since he was a close personal friend and ally of Wintour’s, guests were invited to “honour Karl” in the gala’s dress code. Lagerfeld, a man whose past comments have ranged from fat shaming to islamophobia and covered a great deal in between hardly seems worthy of honour; the looks inspired by his legacy, and the vague nothingness of the “line of beauty” stimulus also failed to do so. The predictable nods to Lagerfeld’s signature aesthetic, in a steady stream of monochrome suits and ties peppered with ponytails, quickly grew old. The odd appearance of cats whether vaping, decapitated or naked and silver, whilst briefly amusing, similarly failed to deliver much of a lasting impact and managed to traumatise a poor dog in the process. 

  Alternatively, co-Creative Directors of Oxford’s Fashion Gala this year, Shaan Sidhu and Harvey Morris elected to celebrate another recently departed icon of fashion, Vivienne Westwood, through the theme “Buy less, choose well”. A quote from Westwood herself, its message sharply contrasts the level of excess the Met has increasingly encapsulated, whilst exemplifying Westwood’s lifelong commitment to sustainability. It also speaks to the intentionality of her designs, coupling visual spectacle and technical mastery with meaningful statements: in one of her own Met Gala appearances, she famously pinned a picture of activist and whistleblower Chelsea Manning to her dress, a degree of social consciousness sorely missed in this year’s lineup. That spirit of self-expression and innovation was powerfully captivated by the Oxford Fashion Gala’s almost twenty designers who worked tirelessly around work and exams to deliver an incredible variety of carefully crafted looks, from Miles Davis emblazoned trench coats to bare footed fairies (because why on earth would a fairy require shoes?). I myself had the great honour of wearing a suit by Tariq Saeed that has made me seriously question the inclusion of shirts in my wardrobe. Unlike the stylists to the Met’s stars, who crawled around on all fours adjusting lengthy trains and avoiding the cameras, these designers’ hard work was rightfully recognised with a final walk down the runway.

In the end, The Met Gala suffers under the weight of its own pomp and circumstance, readily apparent in its all-important media coverage. The line of reporters and photographers asking the same questions to uncomfortable-looking celebrities, who try to recollect why Lagerfeld was in fact their personal hero, makes for tortuous watching. Whilst interviews in Freud’s green room/kitchen may have been cramped, they at least captured a sense of occasion and personality; it is perhaps here where the Met falls most egregiously short. It fails to live up to its premise as a gala, intended at its core to be a celebration and what one might hope would be a good time. Yet watching the parade of A-listers awkwardly make their way up the carpeted steps, I couldn’t help but echo some of their own sentiments that they could sorely benefit from a drink. Perhaps next year they’ll give it a miss and grab one at Freud. 

Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying: Tracing the Atmospheres of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

Leo Schimmel
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Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying: Tracing the Atmospheres of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

In 1920, Edvard Munch painted his bleak Self-Portrait After Spanish Flu [Above]. It is temporally situated ‘after’ his recovery, and yet his face remains only partially pigmented, his sunken eyes still bearing the marks of trauma in their layered, faint concentric circles. The signs are there but only vaguely perceptible, sequentially conveyed by his unkempt hair and his anguished gaze – symbolic or real manifestations of the residues of illness.

Revised estimates place the number of deaths from the Great Influenza at five percent of the global population, and as many as 10 percent of young adults are thought to have died in the final months of 1918 alone. Even if one were to only consider the lower estimates, the event remains the single most deadly pandemic in human history. And yet, like Munch’s portrait, Influenza itself is almost nowhere to be found in the period, having to be recouped, as Elizabeth Outka puts it, in ‘gaps, silences, atmospheres, [and] fragments’.

When the pandemic hit Ontario, William Faulkner was a cadet in the Canadian Royal Air Force. Writing home to his parents, he would bemoan the lengthiness of his base’s lockdown, and the protracted sense of time it engendered. ‘The quarantine has not lifted yet’, he wrote, ‘my hair is so long that I am going to […] put a black satin ribbon on it […] life continues on […] days of eating and sleeping and full of egregious stupidity’. Hospitals were overwhelmed, prompting the mayor of Ottawa to concede that ‘[People] are not dying because we do not know about them […] we know where they are, but have nobody to send’. Morgues, meanwhile, couldn’t deal with the number of bodies: police assisted burials in Regina, and in Norway House, bodies were left on rooftops to be buried months later. In Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, the book-length burial of Addie Bundren speaks to these protracted scenes of domestic mourning.

Lying in her death bed, there is a sense that Addie is already dead; ‘her face is wasted away so that the bones draw just under the skin in whitelines. Her eyes are like two candles when you watch them gutter down into the sockets of iron candle-sticks’. These words might  remind us of the account of one flu doctor: ‘Two hours after admission they have the mahogany spots over the cheek bones, and a few hours later you can begin to see the cyanosis extending from their ears and spreading all over the face […] It is only a matter of a few hours then until death comes’.

Yet, this state of ‘living death’ is permeable, for the threat of her return lingers:

Anse kept on looking back, like he thought maybe, once he was outen the wagon, the whole thing would kind of blow Tip and he would find […] her laying up there in the house, waiting to die and it to do all over again.

Even within her coffin, Addie’s corpse is liminal, prone to returning once more to the bed ‘up there in the house’. Notably, the imagined reprieve is merely temporary: there is no escape from death, one merely ‘wait[s] to die and [have] it to do all over again’. Arnold Van Gennep contends that funerary rituals are tripartite; ‘separation’, (the body leaves the realm of the living), ‘transition’, (the liminal period between death and burial where the body remains a corpse), and ‘reincorporation’ (where the deceased is commemorated, ‘reincorporated’ within the collective consciousness of those who knew them). In As I Lay Dying, as in the pandemic moment, the omission of burial rites denies this consummation. The tripartite ritual remains permanently suspended in its ‘transitional’ state, and the family of the unburied victim denied closure. Mid-way through carrying Addie’s body, Darl comes to a realisation:

It is as though the space between us were time: an irrevocable quality. It is as though time, no longer running straight before us in a diminishing line, now runs parallel between us like a looping string, the distance being the doubling accretion of the thread and not the interval between.

Time here becomes a material entity defined by such ‘transitional’ positioning; it no longer ‘diminishes’ but seems to proliferate in a manner suggestive of the variety of temporal experience. It is spatialised and extended, a simulacrum of the physicalised distance ‘between’ the characters. Its ‘looping’ coils, and its ‘doubling accretion’ connote a sense of elongation, as if time itself is maximally drawn out. Most significant is its conversion from linearity to ‘parallel[ism]’; time here is protracted, felt differently on either side of its ‘looping’ tucks and turns. Darl’s contention seems to resonate with Einar Whigen et al., who argue that the temporal technologies of epidemics necessitate the ‘synchronicity of the non-synchronous’. Many different timeframes co-exist here; one of the ‘living dead’, another of the living and the dead, and another still of the ‘liminal’ space between separation and reincorporation – the many synchronicities of the non-synchronous.

Darl’s use of the word ‘accretion’ is fixated upon in another way by Kathryn Olsen, who notes that it is an action that ‘often occurs through the bringing together of disparate fragments to make a whole—much in the way that the structure of [the] novel works’. Whilst significant, Olsen’s contention might be taken further to consider the manner in which accretion itself is a gradual process of accumulation. For time itself to accrete, it must first be segmented, be rendered strange and incomplete. Parallels might be drawn here with Christopher Pak who argues that pandemics themselves complicate temporal experience because ‘any discontinuity in the linear trajectory of chronological time engenders an epistemic and ontological reconfiguration of our (non)sense of time.’ Once time is ‘accreted’ it undergoes one such ‘epistemic […] reconfiguration’.

Reorienting these temporal disjuncts, the Great Influenza can now be found pattering expressively at Faulkner’s textual borders, silent but urgently present. For it is when we read for the pandemic that the pandemic begins to read for us.

Temptations Dessert Lounge – Everything sweet, all at once?

Oliver Hall
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Temptations Dessert Lounge – Everything sweet, all at once?

There are certain red flags for me when reviewing a restaurant or café; photos on the menu, a man outside beckoning you in, and all the other standards.  Another is a menu extensive, varied, and long.  This is because it usually points to one or all of a few things.  Maybe the place can’t decide what it wants to be, maybe there’s a lack of focus, or maybe there’s a lot of frozen ingredients.  While usually this results in a muddled and middling experience, Temptations Dessert Lounge in Summertown manages to avoid most of these problems.  Owner Kate has put serious investment into a striking site on Banbury Road offering everything from crepes to waffles, wine and cocktails.

When you first walk in, it is impossible to ignore the associations with the large dessert chains that have established themselves in recent years.  From the large ice cream counter to the booth seating, it somewhat screams Kaspas or Treatz.  Pleasingly though, there are key points of difference.  Everything here is lighter, both in colour and general atmosphere.  Everything is cleaner and, perhaps most importantly, everything is friendlier.  These are the hallmark attractions of a local business and to go alongside it, Temptations has a private space available for hire as well as a quaint garden ideal for soaking up the summer sun.

That aforementioned menu is nothing short of massive and upon first inspection daunting.  It starts with crepes, waffles, and croffles (more on them later), before moving through personalisation options, cookie dough, dessert jars, cakes, cheesecakes, sundaes, ice cream, afternoon tea, affogatos, ‘classic desserts’ (think apple crumbles etc.), fondue, fruit, shakes, smoothies, and cocktails.  As I said, first impressions are somewhat terrifying.  However, that sheer variety does leave room to cater to all manner of dietary requirements.  There are entirely separate menus that detail vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free offerings.  This is a great change from the standard note at the bottom that suggests dietaries are a second thought.

The first thing that we tried was the Deluxe Pistachio Waffle.  That start was strong and this was undoubtedly my favourite thing we had all afternoon.  The pistachio crème here was the star of the show but the waffles were also of high integrity.  It had that perfect balance of a crispy exterior and a spongy centre to soak up just enough sauce to add flavour alongside some melted white chocolate, but not completely absorb everything.

Next came the croffle and it might be best to listen to the accompanying podcast to get a full understanding of this one!  Essentially, croissant dough in a waffle iron results in all the good bits of a waffle combined with the flaky pastry of a croissant.  Gimmick?  Perhaps, but it is a genuinely great and novel dish.  Our Lotus version with vanilla ice cream was full of the sweet and sugary goodness you’d expect but at £8.45 and given its size, you will almost certainly want to split it.

Cookie dough is my weak spot in these kinds of places and Temptations’ options are seemingly endless. Almost all of them come in at less than £8 and we got to try the brand-new white chocolate chip spin.  Served with strawberry ice cream and fresh fruit, the balance of flavours was spot on and screamed summer.

Here though, I do want to make a point about the ice creams in general at Temptations.  This is perhaps the place where the number of options on the menu has a negative impact.  Don’t get me wrong, there is no shortage of options and kids will be excited by the seemingly endless list and colour combinations.  If you are looking for hand-crafted and deep-tasting gelato though, this isn’t it.  Perfect for children perhaps, but all the flavours that I tried were overly sweet and artificial.

In a nice switch-up from your standard dessert-café menu, cheesecake plays a big role here.  A slice of the classic New York is £6.50 and as good as you can expect from a non-homemade offering.  For just 45p more, you can add any variety of flavours from Oreo to Mint Aero and that might be where the best value on the whole menu is to be found.

Shakes and sundaes are of course present too and the latter are real showstoppers.  Our strawberry crush had fruit, Chantilly cream, meringue, white chocolate, and of course ice cream.  Think Eton mess plus ice cream and you are in the right ballpark.  Shakes are incredibly thick and again available with every flavour combo you could think of.

Overall, Temptations Dessert Lounge strikes me as somewhere still finding its feet.  Some dishes like the croffles and waffles are great and would have me coming back time and time again.  The environment, service, and garden are all immaculate and a more than pleasant place to spend an after-school afternoon or Friday evening.  With a little focus, this is somewhere that can really fly and without any real Summertown competition, I think it just might. 

St Hugh’s and Oriel score 0 on latest sustainability ranking

Andy Wei
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St Hugh’s and Oriel score 0 on latest sustainability ranking

The Climate League of Oxford and Cambridge (CLOC) has just released its 2023 ranking of Oxford colleges. St Hugh’s and Oriel are the worst performing colleges, both scoring 0% out of 100% on CLOC’s marking scheme. The top college, St Antony’s, managed to score just above half of the total points available at 59.3%. 

CLOC team member Maria Klingsheim said: “Our ranking is strict because responding to the climate crisis requires extremely ambitious and comprehensive action.” She added that “if a college receives 50% it has done well relative to other colleges, but still has a long way to go before its climate efforts are of the standard required …”

Since the University of Oxford’s Sustainability Strategy doesn’t apply to colleges, inaction on the part of “globally influential, but also extremely wealthy institutions” risks going under the radar. CLOC sees itself as a “response … to a persistent lack of college-based climate action and opacity about the work that is being done by the colleges to mitigate climate change.” The aims of the ranking are to add pressure, push for transparency, and centralize information. 

The CLOC ranking is primarily based on a questionnaire sent to every college in addition to publicly available information. This year, 17 colleges responded. Therefore, the best performing colleges, including Kellogg and St John’s, tended to have clear and publicly available sustainability documents as well as taken meaningful steps such as divesting from fossil fuels. Colleges with “little, if any, information on their climate efforts,” such as Queen’s and St Catz, are severely punished. According to CLOC, these colleges “must urgently demonstrate their seriousness on sustainability.”

While the top colleges are those most willing to engage with CLOC, this may be a feature rather than flaw. In the last iteration of CLOC, St Antony’s scored 0%. However, former GCR Sustainability Officer Clement Amponsah conducted an assessment into the poor performance and worked with “an open and supportive college administration” towards building a working plan that addresses CLOC’s criteria. Their efforts go to show that significant progress is possible, especially when “the warden, bursar, and green impact team are very passionate about sustainability which makes the implementation of projects much easier from the student side.” However, they too caution that this is still very much “a work in progress,” but hope that their public efforts can “inspire and inform other colleges.”

St Antony’s Warden, Professor Roger Goodman, told Cherwell that their ambition is to reach net-zero emissions “as soon as practically possible.” Their new Environmental Sustainability Officer, Dr Ellen MacDonald, told Cherwell that she’s “excited to be working for a college that has already committed a lot of time and effort to their sustainability goals.”

However, the Student Union’s recently published sustainability tracker corroborates that St Antony’s progress, and enthusiasm about sustainability, is much closer to an exception than the rule. Only a minority of colleges have publicly committed to any sort of target for net-zero carbon emissions, much less employ dedicated environmental staff. 

CLOC team member Anna Bartlett says, “We hope our relationship with colleges and the university leads to real change.” Oriel did not respond to a request for comment, while St Hugh’s said it would need to wait until its next Governing Body meeting in two weeks.

Wadham wins national Climate Quiz

Olivia Boyle
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Wadham wins national Climate Quiz

Wadham College has been crowned the champion of the National Union of Students’s Feburary Big Climate Quiz. The quiz was part of the sustainability campaigns of the Student Switch Off (SSO) and Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS). 

The competition between colleges and halls of residence placed Wadham first nationally. Liverpool’s Melville Grove Houses and Pershore’s Worcester came in behind in second and third place. No Cambridge college placed in the top ten. 

This is a proud moment for Wadham, as Environment and Ethics (E&E) Officers for the Wadham Student Union (SU), Grace Stephens and Becky Tekleyesus told Cherwell. They were “really proud that Wadham won the national Big Climate Quiz. It shows just how engaged the student body is with climate and sustainability issues.”

Alongside reports of colleges’ general inaction in responding to the urgent state of the climate crisis, Wadham has had continued interest in sustainability. The E&E Officers continued: wWe’ve seen lots of interest in other events during Green Action Week and Fairtrade Fortnight as well! There has also been a clothes swap this term that we hope to make a larger event in coming years. From the college side, Wadham has been working on a sustainability strategy with more ambitious targets and initiatives, with new ideas and progress being discussed in the Sustainability Working Group.”This success is welcomed, but, there is more to do as Wadham’s E&E Officers stated to Cherwell: “the Wadham SU is happy with all strides being taken to improve Wadham’s and the uni’s approach to becoming more sustainable, but we are always pushing for more ambitious action to tackle the severity of this issue.”

Some habits die hard: the truth about Oxford’s Coffee Culture

Freya Jones
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Some habits die hard: the truth about Oxford’s Coffee Culture

The baristas in Cornmarket Pret know my coffee order on sight. My friends rarely see me without a strong black Americano in hand. You might say I’m an extreme case, or express concern that coffee can be such a fundamental part of my personality. But is my love of caffeine really so rare, or merely symptomatic of a wider Oxford coffee culture which affects us all?

To find out, I did some digging into the coffee habits of the average Oxford student, including our key motivations for drinking the stuff, our patterns of consumption, and its bearing on our daily activities. After polling over 300 Cherwell readers on social media, the results have been strikingly diverse, showing that Oxford students have a far more complex relationship with coffee than you might expect… 

Why do we drink coffee?

First, I asked participants to identify the primary purpose of their caffeine consumption. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a student population weighed down with intense academic pressure, 71% of respondents said they mainly drink coffee to help them work. Well, as far as I’m concerned, it’s true: few things beat coffee for getting you through a gruelling 9am tutorial. At the same time, however, this reaffirms the place coffee has come to occupy in “hustle culture”. Many of us see it as a performance drug rather than something purely enjoyable, which we accept without thinking here in Oxford.

Perhaps this explains my surprise when some cafés I’ve visited abroad haven’t actually served Americanos. Indeed, cafe latte only seems to be the status quo in quite a lot of European cities, and my compulsion to chug black coffee through the day has been looked on with varying degrees of incredulity by the continent’s most artisanal baristas.

For some Oxford students, however, all hope is not lost, as 25% of survey respondents said they primarily drink coffee when meeting friends. This reveals a more refined and continental attitude to coffee, and we can’t deny that this is nice: for many, gossip about nasty tutors and relationship drama is infinitely enhanced by a chocolatey cappuccino or oat milk latté.

But the third “key motivator” for caffeine consumption among Oxford students is arguably the most interesting, with the remaining 4% confessing that they mainly drink coffee for political advancement. Yes, as Oxford Union hacks well know, “to coffee” is a #VERB. These political grifters and officership aspirants have generally mastered the art of hustling (requires coffee) with the aim of winning friends (also requires coffee). And thus, without Oxford’s abundant landscape of well-situated cafés, who knows? Election season may be at risk of grinding to a halt altogether…

Coffee or sleep?

But what does this reliance on coffee – whatever its reason – actually do to us as human beings? Determined to answer a question my wellwishers ask periodically, I wanted to set this in the context of what Oxford students think about sleep. When asked in a concurrent poll, 77% of respondents said they don’t feel they get enough sleep during term. In fact, 56% (159) of a total 287 students asked say they get less than the recommended eight hours of sleep per night.

And while I don’t have precise statistics for how much of a direct impact coffee has on this, I did receive a number of comments in response to the overall poll which elucidated:

“Coffee is a necessity to survive here” – 3rd year, St John’s

“My espresso machine is as vital to my functioning as my laptop” – 2nd year, Merton

“I would fall asleep in labs without it” – 2nd year, Oriel

One student even told me: “Corpus has a free coffee machine… it’s like the Hunger Games!”

Speaking from personal experience, it’s hard to deny that Oxford’s love of coffee is inextricably linked to our penchant for regular all-nighters at any cost. 

Favourite coffee shops?

So which establishments profit from our love of coffee and which are Oxford students’ favourite haunts? I personally have no clear-cut answer in this regard. As a firm believer in art of the political (or journalistic!) coffee, I’ve actually drawn up a “Coffee Map” of Oxford, which helps me choose where to meet people based on security, atmosphere, and intimacy of location.

However, there are some places which can’t go unmentioned. Pret a Manger, for starters, is a staple of many students’ existence: with three of them in the town centre to choose from, this outcome was unavoidable. As of last year, we even have a designated Facebook community (OxPret) which was set up to quickly inform other coffee lovers about which store has ice at any given time, and other such things.

As such, Pret will always occupy a special place in my heart; not only does its £30 per month subscription help you to get hooked on up to five barista-made drinks per day, but it works out as amazing value for money once you do so. (Without it, five single espresso shots would come to £11.75 per day at the current rate.)

31% of survey respondents evidently reached the same conclusion, saying that they’ve had a Pret subscription at some point in the last year.

Nonetheless, Pret has also gained a reputation for being a little basic: with the Cornmarket outlets becoming a thoroughfare of zombified students every rush-hour, it’s not always the best place for a sophisticated, sit-down coffee.

Of the other, more picturesque options around the city centre, 34% of the 88 students who told me their favourite coffee shop rated Jericho Coffee Traders as a clear winner, with Gulpfiction, Blacksheep, Queen’s Lane Coffee House, and Coffeesmith’s also receiving honourable mentions.

I was pleased that this reflects my own tastes exactly; Pret gets me through the day, but JCT’s “Adventure Blend” is my guilty pleasure. Perhaps this was inevitable – as an Oriel student living right next to JCT, I’ve been there since Day One and haven’t looked back.

Together, these polls show just how rich and multilayered Oxford’s coffee landscape is, and the number of different student perspectives I’ve heard has been fascinating. So, regardless of whether you think I’m an obsessed caffeine addict or a fulfilled coffee enjoyer (not mutually exclusive, by the way), I hope these insights give you something interesting to read over your morning latté.

Open Minds, Open Conversations: An Interview with the LOAF Podcast

Sophie Magalhaes
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Open Minds, Open Conversations: An Interview with the LOAF Podcast

I knew vaguely of the podcast run by four of my fellow Christ Church students before interviewing them for Cherwell. It takes hard work to balance any extracurricular alongside an Oxford degree, and I have immense respect for those who manage to pull it off. When I saw via Instagram that the boys of LOAF (Lukas, Ollie, Adam, Faris) had recently interviewed a dame on their podcast, I thought it would make for a fascinating insight into the workings of student-run podcasts, and perhaps, get to know the people behind the voices I didn’t know very well. They enthusiastically agreed to an interview. I have to admit, they had me surprised by the sheer grit and cheerful camaraderie in their approach to this newly discovered educational endeavour.

Podcasting is a versatile platform for students to share their interests and perspectives with a wider audience. This is how the LOAF podcast started out in its initial stages this past Hilary, or a ‘drunk night-out idea’ as the group laughingly shared. After successfully applying for an Oxide slot, the four boys took to a microphone in the comfort of their own accommodation, sharing their distinctive characters and jovial dynamic with an external audience. In a few short months the quartet have doubled down in exploiting the platform to be a professional space for intellectual discussion and influential speakers. but not at the cost of friendly banter. 

When three out of the four podcasters welcomed me into their large room in Christ Church’s Peckwater Quad on a sunny Sunday evening, they were chipper and keen to discuss their creative child. Prior to the interview I’d listened to a handful of episodes. It was their pilot episode on Spotify which sparked my interest the most, although now recently archived. At the core of LOAF is a relatable and lighthearted friendship. Ollie, enthusiastically chatting whilst tossing around a football, describes himself as open and loquacious. Lukas brings the podcast to a more professional standard; after a period on the Oxford Union committee he claims he is happier using his public speaking skills on this intimate platform under his own creative direction. Adam is the creativity behind the scenes, devising imaginative ways to market on social media and gain a wider listenership.  The three boys all agreed that Faris adds a different dimension to the podcast, grounding the group dynamic with a healthy introspective lens. 

The boys explained to me that LOAF cannot be pinned down to a single genre; its variety is what makes it unique. From discussing pop culture to analysing social norms, it was clear that, in their range of topics, all four boys felt strongly about their objective to challenge and educate. Recently having transitioned to a guest-focused professional approach, LOAF has interviewed a handful of influential personalities in supporting this educational mission. Latest speakers include mental health advocate Gabe Howard and ex-CEO of Royal Mail, Dame Moya Greene.

It was Dame Moya, Adam shared, whose cutting words really inspired the group. “She really gave us confidence as podcasters.” With the pull of an Oxford SSO, the gang were pleasantly surprised to discover how many influential people were willing to come and debate contentious topics or simply to offer wisdom relating to a given field.  Detailing her career path, Dame Moya stresses the importance of listening and communication – not only in forging a better relationship between employees and the union, but in getting to know people one resolves disputes and navigates changes fairly and effectively. Chuckling, they claimed they all started listening to each other more after that. 

Looking to the future, the LOAF podcasters hope to grow more confident in their ability to create stimulating discussion. The challenge they are now faced with is how to take their platform a step further. They aim to expand their network of speakers and avoid overly-politicising the podcast. To continue expanding their listenership they must remain neutral and relatable. The purpose of speaker episodes is to delve into interesting topics which are both fun and educational to listen to. The balance between relaxed banter and challenging intellectual conversations helps to stabilise a middle ground, setting LOAF apart from serious politicised platforms. At its core is a lighthearted friendship. 

You can stream the LOAF podcast on Oxide and Spotify

https://www.oxideradio.live/the-loaf-podcast

INSTA: @theloafpod

TikTok: @theloafpodcast

Food Fight! Oxford and Cambridge compete to tackle food poverty

Amelia Dovell
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Food Fight! Oxford and Cambridge compete to tackle food poverty

This summer, the long-anticipated ‘Great Oxbridge BOGOF’ will be returning for its 3rd run. The food drive competition is run by the charity ‘Because We Can’, and sees the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge take part in a friendly competition, collecting food and essential items for local food banks. This time, the food drive begins on Saturday 3rd June and ends on Thursday 15th June, with 34 Oxbridge colleges taking part. BOGOF stands for ‘Buy One, Give One Free’, and is based on the idea that when buying an essential item that a local food bank needs, students can buy an extra one and donate it towards the food drive. This simple premise has led to impactful results in the past, with over 15,000 items collected in 2020 and 2021.

The food drive has been coordinated between the Oxford SU, Cambridge SU, and Oxbridge college charity officers. The initiative itself is led by Josh Tulloch, an Oxford alum, ex-LMH JCR president, and founder of the ‘Because We Can’ charity. Having experienced food insecurity and homelessness himself, Josh began food drive competitions while in secondary school in 2014, which grew into the ‘Because We Can’ charity, which aims to use creative ways to solve social problems such as food poverty. 

The lighthearted nature of the friendly competition addresses serious social realities. The campaign comes at a crucial time; Oxford Food Hub have been struggling to keep up with an increase in demand, with many of those who used to donate to the food bank now relying on it. Their coordinator, Spencer Lawes, has said that “food stock levels have decreased yet further, and so the proceeds of this BOGOF challenge will be even more important to us and the charities we support (which is now over 200!)”. The Trussell Trust reported that between April 2022 and March 2023, the number of people that used a food bank for the first time was 760,000, with overall numbers up 37% from the year before. Out of the 3 million emergency food banks distributed in 2022, 1.1 million went to children. On a more local scale, in Oxford itself, 29% of children live below the poverty line, and the number of homeless people has increased by 400% since 2012. 

Josh emphasised the crisis as reflective of wider problems the UK is facing – the cost of living crisis, rising fuel prices, and a shortage of HGV drivers meaning that supply chains that food banks rely on are being disrupted, and the usual supply of food is running low. “There are systemic, structural issues which have been going on for well over a decade now… Just donating to Food banks, who are at the end of the line of more systemic problems, isn’t going to solve these problems.”

In an article written by the Director of Policy at Trussell Trust, it was noted that “food banks and charitable support are not the solution” to the crisis, and that only with real sustainable change, such as reforming universal credit, will the crisis end. The fact that food banks exist is indicative of the failures of the government to keep up with people’s basic needs, or increasing wages to meet rising costs. Though Josh accepts that a food drive is certainly “treating the symptoms” of the crisis, he emphasises that it is something that urgently needs to be done. Alleviating the short term problems while advocating for long term solutions is the way to go:  “We have to take two views of any problem that we see in society. How do we deal with the real hurt and the pain that people are feeling now? It’s no good to go out on the streets with placards calling for systemic change while mothers and fathers can’t feed their children. That’s where we’ve got to do both.”

Through the grandeur of Oxford’s historical buildings and traditions, as well as the countless events and seemingly endless tasks of the typical Oxford student, students are likely to be less aware of “the reality of what’s going on in the world”, which Josh thinks only becomes more evident after leaving university. On an institutional level though, considering the amount of land Oxford colleges own in the area, and the wealth that is amassed through property and endowments, Josh thinks that Oxford could do more to help local communities. “There’s a lot of wealth – inaccessible wealth in the form of property, and accessible wealth like the endowments that colleges manage. There is an institutional disconnect, just in general, between the value that it has for the university itself, and the value that it could have for local communities.”

For now, on the student-led front, an awareness of social issues is key to improving the situation. Josh hopes that the campaign can foster long-term behaviour, for example continuing the momentum of the food drive by donating to the collections found at local supermarkets. As BOGOF develops, the initiative will be pushed towards addressing systemic, institutional issues, and may potentially serve as a model for universities across the UK, leveraging Varsity relationships until the food drive becomes a national competition. 

Reflecting on the previous successes of the BOGOF challenge, Josh said that “as soon as people know about the issue, and know it’s as simple as buying an extra can of food and donating it, they are more than willing to get involved.” Hopefully, understanding that each of our individual donations can create a big difference in the local community will meet the overall target of 10,000 items being collected this year. In the spirit of friendly competition, it also wouldn’t hurt to beat Cambridge for the third time.

Items to donate:  Tinned fruit, veg, pulses etc, cooking oil, rice, pasta, tea, instant coffee, sugar, peanut butter, honey, marmite, breakfast cereals, rice pudding, tinned custard, sweet treats of any kind, toiletries, nappies and sanitary products. 

Follow the ‘Because We Can’ Facebook page to see updates on the challenge and further resources about food poverty: https://www.facebook.com/pg/becausewecanuk/ 

“I’ve been the luckiest actor who will ever be”: In conversation with Sir Derek Jacobi CBE.

Freddie Evans
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“I’ve been the luckiest actor who will ever be”: In conversation with Sir Derek Jacobi CBE.

Sir Derek Jacobi is acting royalty, one of the most distinguished actors of our time.

His career began as a founding member of the National Theatre with Laurence Olivier. Sir Derek is famous for his roles in Shakespeare’s plays including Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet. He has starred on our television screens for half a century – I, Claudius, The Tenth Man, Frasier, Cadfael, The Gathering Storm, Vicious, Last Tango in Halifax and The Crown. His film credits include Othello, The Day of the Jackal, Henry V, Dead Again, Hamlet, Gladiator, Nanny McPhee, The Riddle, My Week with Marilyn, Anonymous, Cinderella and Murder on the Orient Express.

Sir Derek has received many awards, including a BAFTA, two Oliviers, two Primetime Emmies, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Tony. He was knighted in Denmark in 1989 and in the UK in 1994.

I started by asking Sir Derek which of his many iconic roles was the most challenging?

“They’re all very challenging. Every time you are cast, the heart leaps and then sinks to your boots because you think I’ll never make it. Lear. Hamlet. The big Shakespeare roles are very daunting when you’re starting them. To learn them, to get inside them and then to try and communicate them.” 

My next question was whether Sir Derek approaches acting differently in theatre and film? 

“Yes, because of the technical side in the theatre, one of the most important things an actor has is his voice. That doesn’t really count when you’ve got a microphone and camera there – film is more enclosed and much more inner. The big trick of theatre and the big satisfaction of theatre is that you have to get all that which you see on the screen and put it out there and make it real.”

Does he prefer one over the other?

“I did have a preference for theatre but now my preference is for camera. It’s easier and they pay more. You couldn’t make a fortune in the theatre.” 

Does he enjoy the theatre?

“Yes, because you’re sharing it. Hopefully to a large audience, anything up to 2000 people. There are people sitting many, many yards away from you and above you and really close to you and you’ve got to make everybody’s evening.”

Which is his favourite role in Shakespeare. 

“Hamlet. I’ve done it so many times. I mean nearly 500 times. In many places, in many countries, including his hometown Elsinore, in Denmark – so he is favourite and I first played him at school.”

Was Hamlet his first play?

“No, I went to the local grammar school. My first part was drag. The boys had to play the girls. If you were young and pretty, you’ve got the girls’ parts. Hamlet was my first male role in fact!”

What draws him to Shakespeare’s works?

“The best parts, the best language, often the best costumes, the best plots. Also they test you. They really do test an actor – your movement, everything, everything that makes an actor.” 

Sir Derek been a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and issues. How has the entertainment industry changed in terms of representation and inclusion, and what do you think still needs to be done?

“Oh, a lot needs to be done. The theatre has always been very open to anything transgender, certainly. When I was a child and you went to pantomime, the principal boy and the leading other boy were always girls. It wasn’t considered unusual in fact. And it wasn’t considered in any way camp or gay. Gay has always worried me. The word gay when I was growing up meant happy. The first thing I discovered when I realised that I was gay was that I wasn’t very happy. But I’m glad that now at least people can talk about it. That awful judgement has gone. Mostly gone, which is good.”

He has also done voice acting for animated films and TV shows. How does Sir Derek’s approach to voice acting differ from live-action acting?

“That’s the best. You don’t have to worry about makeup or clothes or anything, turn up however you like. It’s all in the voice, all in the words. You can either animate to a cartoon where they can see a character and your voice is coming out as that character, or you read a book and you become all the characters in the book but they didn’t see anything – what they see is in their imagination, which is helped hopefully by your voice.” 

Which of his many awards is he the most proud of?

“I think the one that I won last week – the Olivier Lifetime Achievement Award. It was a lovely finish to a life in the theatre.”

He has played historical figures and fictional characters. Does he approach each type of role differently, and how do you prepare for a role when the character is based on a real person?

“Basically, you learn the lines. You put your frock on. You put your makeup on. You get on there and you do it. To get all arsey-farcy about it, it’s not for me anyway. It’s not my approach.” 

But he did it for Hitler?

“When you play someone like Hitler it was actually quite easy – you put that on (the moustache), you do that with your hair, you do a bit of that (the Nazi salute) – its such a caricature – of all the things I have ever done, that was the biggest, in a sense easiest caricature because when I met the director and I was casted – you know I said, “There is nothing Hitler about me, I mean nothing?” Vocally he was interesting, and I am very interested in voice, so that was OK, for the rest it was caricature. It was a silly face.” 

So he didn’t have to do major background research for it?

“Not really. The very first scene I did was a speech to 1,000 people which was very interesting because they put me in an office for two weeks watching videos of him. He did a speech in Nuremberg, and he stood up very tentatively and covered his crotch with his hand, he pulled the table, and he hadn’t said a word – thousands of people. He cleared his throat, pulled it (the table) a bit more towards him, coughed again and started speaking. Hardly anybody could hear him. You could see the audience all went forward to hear what he said. By the end of two hours he was ranting and screaming – it was an extraordinary performance. He was an actor.”

Who is his favourite actor or director that he’s worked with?

“Well, I suppose one of the favourites, actor and director was (Laurence) Olivier, who was aware of actors’ problems, actors’ weaknesses, actors’ fears, actors’ terrors. Because he was one of us. He was wonderful. I think he was best. Sometimes you end up saying to yourself, I’ve got to please him otherwise he will shout at me; but Olivier coaxed. And always at the end, he gave you the confidence that ultimately, you could do it. He trusted you to get that, trusted you to do it. And that was wonderful. Oh and Ken!”

Kenneth Branagh.

“He has an actor’s instinct; he knows how fragile most actors are.”

What would Sir Derek say about his career?

“I’ve been the luckiest actor who will ever be. In my own view, I am the luckiest actor.

I have never had to ask. It’s always been given. I’ve had opportunity after opportunity. I’ve been in the right place at the right time. I’ve never had to hustle. I feel very humbled about that because I know a lot of actors who don’t have that kind of journey, and I’ve had it for a long time.” 

But he seized the opportunities when they came?

“Yes, I’ve seized the opportunities and by doing so, I’ve grown as an actor. I’ve learned as an actor. I’ve expanded as an actor. But that is, again, a great gift that somebody blessed me with.”  

What advice would Sir Derek give to aspiring actors, and what is the key to a successful acting career?

“Don’t do it if you want to do it, do it if you have to do it. You’ll need courage. You’ll need resolution. You’ll need strength. You’ll need a good memory. If you get the opportunity, for goodness sake, enjoy it. Never rubbish it. Never run it down – because you are blessed. Not only you have the talent, but you are given the opportunity not to only show that talent but to improve it. That’s usually in the gift of someone else – the ones who are dishing out the job. 

The theatre is so exciting. Really, really exciting. Terrifying. You stand in the wings on the first night of Hamlet. You’ve got three and a half hours of that – that’s frightening and if you ain’t frightened, you ain’t no good!”

EXCLUSIVE: Gabriel Macht, Ed Norton and Patrick J Kennedy amongst final group of Union speakers this term

Anika Gupta
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EXCLUSIVE: Gabriel Macht, Ed Norton and Patrick J Kennedy amongst final group of Union speakers this term

As the Oxford Union nears the end of Trinity Term, Cherwell can exclusively reveal 4 additional speakers.

American actor Gabriel Macht will be speaking at the Union later in the term. Macht is best known for playing the confident, high-flying, ambitious lawyer, Harvey Specter, in the hit-series Suits. In this, he famously co-starred alongside Patrick J. Adams, Rick Hoffmann and Meghan Markle (Duchess of Sussex).

Additionally, American actor Ed Norton is also amongst the list of speakers. He is notable for his leading performance in the mega-hit 1999 drama Fight Club.

American politician Patrick J. Kennedy is also set to speak. He is a former Congressman, who served as a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2011. He is also a leading global mental health advocate.

As well, the Union will welcome Georg Friedrich Prinz von Preussen. The German businessman is the current head of the Prussian branch of the House of Hohenzollern. This was the former imperial ruling dynasty of the German Empire and Kingdom of Prussia. He is the great-great grandson of the German state’s last emperor Wilhelm II.

These new speaker events were not previously published on the TT23 Union term card, of which highlights can be found here.

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