A friend of mine had a traumatic experience last term. A public house – that shall remain unnamed – charged her five quid for a pint of London Pride. She was too English to complain about being mugged in broad daylight, but the idea of it rankled with me. Don’t let the advertising fool you. Beer is not a high-tech potion: the hard-earned product of modern science. Humans were drinking it before they were driving, and that tells you all you need to know; it’s water, starch, yeast and hops. The secret’s out.

The first I heard of homebrew was from the legendary Super Hans of Peep Show fame. “Sorry, lads. Locked doors. Little switch just flicks, you know? Ever since Dad locked me in the airing cupboard to monitor the home brew.” Carrying on this paternal spirit, Hilary term was all about hiding my homebrew keg in my college son’s cupboard, albeit without the element of college-family cruelty. It’s a throwback to the days when people could make and mend things; come the nuclear winter, you won’t be able to count on breweries churning out their ubiquitous amber nectar/carbonated cat piss, so learning to make your own hooch might be a good idea. Not that I care; homebrewing is admittedly the territory of both the beer snob and the indiscriminate tippler. You know you’re making something dark, frothy and bitter, but get over the delusions of grandeur as quickly as you can; you’ll be doing well if your first batches are approaching drinkable. That said, us British students are hardy types, and the attractive bit is the price of it all; once you’re set up with some basic kit (keg, airlock), a batch of 25 litres (44 pints) of beer can cost you south of £15, which goes on a tin of pre-hopped malt extract. That means we have more money to spend on, like, books and stuff, you know?

Alcohol comes with a health warning; if you try and drink that all yourself, you deserve the hangovers coming your way. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy beer. The pleasure’s mostly in the brewing rather than the drinking; I felt an inappropriately childish excitement watching it bubble away for a week. If anything, feeling like a manually competent human was an alien experience, and those of you retreating into academia might want to grab the opportunity before it’s too late. In the dismal tundra-wasteland of austerity Britain, the 35p pint is definitely something to smile about.

Some do it a lot; others moan that they never get any at all. Whether you can go for hours each night or prefer to indulge yourself in the middle of the day – perhaps even in public places – everyone does it. Obviously, I’m talking about sleep here.

Starting up a discussion of sleeping habits is a sure-fire way to get scientists grinding their teeth and grumbling about something called ‘morning lectures’, and to get arts students comparing their preferred napping techniques.

I have one friend who adheres rigidly to a self-inflicted 10:30 bedtime, while another describes himself as “dark and mysterious” because of his nocturnal working hours, but is rarely seen out of bed before noon. Then there is that peculiar breed of Oxonian: the rower, who rises and shines in time for morning outings each day with an enthusiasm bordering on the grotesque.

There’s huge variation within the animal kingdom too. Rats can last three weeks without any shut-eye; whales and dolphins don’t sleep for a month after birth; horses and cows often sleep standing up, but can apparently only have dreams when lying down. Certain breeds of snails, meanwhile, can snooze for up to three years.

For humans, the most commonly cited figure is 6-9 hours. Turning to science for an answer, I learn that our sleep cycle is regulated by our ‘circadian clock’, which is based on the light/dark cycle. This is found in all living things. It even affects metabolic rates in fungi.

The exact amount of sleep needed varies from person to person, and in young adults the ‘clock’ is shown to be set a little later, which explains why students are often night owls. It is nevertheless important, and regular disruption seems to have serious negative health effects.

Studies have shown 11 days of staying awake can be enough to kill you, though the Guinness Book of World Records states 18 days as the longest period a human has gone without sleep.

For an activity that takes up around a third of your life, and is by all accounts pretty essential to our health and happiness, it’s surprising to find that many famous figures saw the idea of sleeping as a nuisance.

Along with Margaret Thatcher’s famous ability to get by on four hours a night, there are many others who view it as unimportant, inconvenient, or even as a weakness. Scientific big dog Thomas Edison said it was a waste of time. The ever-cheery Edgar Allen Poe described sleep as “those slices of death”, and even everyday phrases such as “you snooze, you lose” send out the message that time spent sleeping is time wasted.

Some students seem to share this philosophy, managing to cope with ridiculously little sleep. I’ve always regarded them with a kind of jealousy; the extra daytime they’re getting seems so unfair. Even the classic essay technique of the all-nighter has always proved too much for me. At every attempt, somehow I can’t seem to make it past 2am – before I know it, it’s morning and I awaken to a three-paragraph essay and a deadline in half an hour. As I prepare my excuses, the only consolation is that it can’t be healthy to miss out on sleep – surely?

Speaking to a few Oxonians who have already been through the grimness of Finals, I heard of one History student who fell asleep during one of his exams, only waking up at the end. One Oxford law graduate told of an incident where a fellow student stayed awake all night before their first exam, felt that they did badly, and then walked for several miles still dressed in sub fusc before they were eventually found. Happily, this story ends on a positive note, as the student went on to complete Finals the following year and did very well. The graduates I spoke to added that most students start being more sensible about getting enough sleep as exams approach, with any problems being down to last-minute nerves.

What is perhaps more worrying is the huge number of students who turn to ‘sleep substitutes’. On the way to Prelims last year, one of my friends spent the journey necking Red Bull and another passed around a packet of Pro Plus, cheerily telling us how they’d spent the previous night unable to get to sleep. The long term effects of missing out on your forty winks can be scary, with sleep deprivation linked to heart disease, weakened immune systems and Alzheimer’s.

That’s all a long way off now, and many a student would still prioritise the elusive First over the humble recommended 8 hours sleep. A caffeine boost every so often isn’t likely to do much harm on its own, but the Great British Bedtime Report (apparently that’s a thing) suggests we underestimate the importance of sleep, and rest in general, with statistics showing almost half of Britons are kept awake by stress.

There’s no question that a lot of people take academia seriously here, arguably rightly so, but the idea that evading sleep entirely is the best way to achieve this seems bizarre. Myriad health risks aside, let’s not forget that your best ideas may come to you while sleeping; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein were both based on the authors’ dreams. So was the Twilight series, come to that, but I’m still going to use this as justification.

Personally, I’m yet to work out if I’m a morning or night person (sometimes leading me to wonder if I’m even a person at all); but if nothing else, I am most definitely a nap person. It’s great preparation for a stint in the library – scientists say a 20-minute nap gives the same energy boost as 2 cups of coffee – and works equally well before a night out.

In Year 5, I was hugely jealous when my best friend moved abroad and told me French schools had mandatory afternoon naptime, and I can’t wait for my own siesta-filled year abroad in Italy. As Hemingway put it, “I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake.”

If you’re finding yourself feeling constantly tired though, there may be a serious cause, with anaemia and diabetes being the most common. But before you venture into the world of online diagnosis – rather like an especially morbid Choose Your Own Adventure book with pregnancy and cancer as the only possible outcomes – take a look at the more obvious options. Essay all-nighters, the sticky-floored allure of Bridge or a crippling 4OD habit are far more likely culprits than river disease.

There’s a huge amount of money to be made from the lethargy of the population, so a lot of scientists focus on ‘studying sleep’, something which, incidentally, sounds like a great excuse for the next time I get rumbled in a mid-lecture nap.

Something excitingly called The Sleep Council seems to have collated much of this research. To my disappointment, I find I’ve just missed National Bed Month (March), a part of their campaign to spread awareness of how to sleep well. They also offer tips on choosing a bed, diet, and the intriguingly titled ‘sleeping tips’. This all seems like an awful lot of attention to something the majority of us take for granted.

A lot of their tips for a better night’s sleep probably sound fairly obvious; keep to a regular schedule, take time to relax before going to sleep, avoid food and caffeine after a certain time of day. How easily these things can be slotted into an average student’s timetable is another question.

Perhaps your college has generously bestowed on you a neighbour with a penchant for late-night guitar practice and a room with paper-thin walls, or perhaps you’ve found yourself in a relationship with a snorer or sleep-talker. But there’s still hope; some factors are within our control.

Working in bed during the day probably won’t help. If you’ve been shunted to a college room which forces you to be particularly inventive about furniture choices, this may be difficult, but it will be less easy to relax if you come to associate it with stress.

Whatever you do, definitely don’t sleep snuggled up with your books. Osmosis is not a legitimate revision method, and chunky textbooks and lever-arch files weren’t designed for use as a pillow. On the flipside, more recent recommendations also advise against getting ‘too much’ sleep, which can apparently carry health risks of its own.

The general gist of it all seems to be that if you manage to keep some sort of regular routine and aren’t going to bizarre extremes to fend off sleep, you’re probably doing alright. But enough of that, all this science is making me sleepy. Night night. 

They wear plastic bags on their heads. Their smash hits consist of a song about a horse and one about the IRA. They go by the names ‘Blindboy Boatclub’ and ‘Mr Chrome’, collectively known as ‘The Rubberbandits’. Their act consists of comedy and music, which primarily satirizes  the stereotype of the Irish chav (or ‘skangers’ as they are known in Ireland). Heard of them? The answer’s probably no, unless you come from Ireland, where they are very very popular.

Comedy in Ireland has a long history, as you would imagine in a country with so many pubs. We’ve seen many Irish comedians achieve much success over in the UK – Ardal O’Hanlon and Dara O’Brien spring to mind, and then there’s the recent BBC hit Mrs Brown’s Boys, with its own brand of gross-out, yet sidesplittingly excellent gags.

Ireland also provides a fertile ground for satire – and this is made assisted by two easy targets – the Catholic church and its political system. Both have had ongoing corruption scandals and both have contributed larger-than-life figures who can be easily made fun of for the public’s enjoyment.

Blindboy and Mr Chrome (real names Dave Chambers and Bobby McGlynn) have  had something of a following in Ireland ever since the early 2000s, when they gained cult status through recording prank phone calls in their native city Limerick and distributed the CDs  to friends. 

In 2010 they achieved national recognition after gaining a slot on the prime time television show  The Republic of Telly —  one of RTE’s (Ireland’s national broadcaster) premier comedy series. In the same year they achieved YouTube fame with the viral hit ‘Horse Outside’.

Moreover they are due to make it big in the UK this year. At the Edinburgh Fringe festival  they received rave reviews, and earned some coverage on BBC3. At the end of last year they put out a pilot TV show for Channel 4.

All encouraging, and it looks like we can expect to see them build on the cult following they’ve already built up over here. Expect  good things if you haven’t seen them yet. Father Ted appeared in the 1990s on RTE,  before going onto Channel 4 and both acts have been directed by the same person  — Declan Lowney. Indeed the pilot show is the first Irish production at Channel 4 since Father Ted.

I’ve been told that the Rubberbandits interview better when they answer to questions in character.“[The idea] literally arrived into my head one day when I was 17, I was in the shower. We’ve never questioned the name.”

You might have thought that this would have something to do with their plastic headgear.  But no:  “It’s an existentialist statement concerning the inevitability of Death and the futility of Happiness, and it also means that no one knows what we look like.”

I move on to ask them about their rise to fame and eventual appearance on Irish national  television. “We started off as street performers. We would feed small bits of metal to trained gulls and  then catch them with kites that had magnets attached. Onlookers would offer us scraps of food and clothing as a reward for our magnetic gull bothering.”

 “One day we caught the attention of ex-Westlife member Brian Mcfadden, who immediately insisted that we move into his house, such were our gull charming talents. It was on Brian’s suggestion that we got our first break on Irish Television. Gulls are  considered racist on Irish television because they look a bit like skinheads so we did songs instead.”

By now you should already have a taste of their brand of comedy. Surreal, irreverent and  yet absolutely hilarious — it’s a perfect mix. The sketches on RTE feature a segment on visiting various Irish cities and towns. Their  take on Limerick is by far the funniest. This is after all, where they grew up. Blindboy and Mr Chrome met each other here while still at school — and satirising Ireland’s ancient city  forms a running theme in their act.

I  inquire about how important the city is to them. “We technically only live in Limerick at certain parts of the day. We have a large house which sits exactly on the borders of where counties Limerick, Clare and Meath intersect. The television is on the Limerick side, so we are only in Limerick when something good is on TV.”

Some of their work has shocked audiences, for instance “Up the Ra” — a send up of sectarian Celtic football chants. I ask whether they think this kind of satire is inherently controversial. “No it’s an accurate document of Irish History. Are you calling Irish History controversial because it differs to what you were taught in England?” The Rubberbandits are unafraid to poke fun at themes in Irish politics. The politics of  Ireland has received much international attention in recent years, what with the recent Eurozone crisis. I ask them how they would handle the situation.

“That’s easy. You put the names of all the Eurozone nations into a big hat. Then pull out  two names. Lets just say it’s Germany and Italy.

“Then you introduce a law that forces  the Germans to behave like Italians and the Italians to behave like Germans. Imports  and exports between the two countries would skyrocket. With the Germans importing  Moustache wax from Italy and exporting Lederhosen to Italy and vice versa. If every EU  country had a special relationship like this then there would be definite economic growth.”

And their current government, led by prime minister Enda Kenny?

“Enda Kenny isn’t real, he’s digital like Shrek. Ireland just pretends to have a Prime Minister to the rest of Europe watching us on television. Our real leader is an elderly Goat who lives on a mountain, political decisions are based upon the length of his beard.”

The height of the Eurozone crisis provided the backdrop for their biggest hit so far in 2010. If you’ve heard about the Rubberbandits before, its most likely because of their Youtube hit, ‘Horse Outside’.

This was released in the same year that they first appeared  on television. It climbed to the No. 2 position in the Irish charts, and almost beat Matt  Cardle to the Christmas No. 1 spot. In the UK it reached the far more modest position of 130.

The song describes an (eventually successful) attempt to win over an attractive bridesmaid  at a wedding in Limerick, with the promise of a ride home on a horse. The song lyrics are very explicit. It features 17 uses ofthe word ‘fuck’ —and as like much of their material, it’s not shy about referencing drug abuse.

I ask them where they got this bonkers, yet brilliant idea. “We have an ideas tree, the seeds of which we found in an old library book. “When we want an idea, we eat a piece of fruit from the ideas tree. Ali Campbell from UB40 has one too.”

Naturally this hit catapulted them to success and earned them a massive internet  following.  “We both bought bottles of champagne and then smashed them off each others heads.  Then, while recuperating in hospital we ate nothing but bowls of money, despite doctors orders.”

And so I turn to the final question – is the UK ready for this act to take it by storm? Their  material is controversial, explicit and bizzare – but at the same time, it’s ludricously funny,  razorsharp satirical and just downright silly. What’s not to love? They’ve been to Oxford before, and they’ve played at the O2. Could they see themselves ever studying here? “I suppose, if you videotaped it.”

There are quite a lot of rather amusing videos on the internet, but this week only one has been all over my news feed like a Guardian article (my preferred simile for irritating digital omnipresence). It’s of teenagers at Coachella being ‘tricked’ into feigning familiarity with ‘imaginary’ bands.

“Those foolish hipsters,” cry my peers. But I for one applaud throwing off the shackles of Western objectivity. I’ve been an aficionado of imaginary bands long before anybody had never heard of them. Here’s why.

The criteria for a band’s ‘existence’ have morphed beyond recognition as popular music swallows countless lithe bodies into its maws of doom. Bands now first exist on paper. Take ‘One Direction’ – they existed as spasming synapses in Simon Cowell’s mind before the ideas found young flesh to inhabit.

The boundary between subjective and objective has been tied into so many knots that the certainty offered by entirely imaginary bands is beyond anything that material flesh-space can offer us. In virtually all respects, the visceral experience of the fictional Dr. Schlomo and the GI Clinic is more real than a live concert from Justin Bieber. And not just because Dr. Schlomo has never been late to a gig.

Who can say what’s ‘real’ or not, in a world where voices are auto-tuned to perfection? Why are my Facebook friends still clinging to their copies of The God Delusion, decrying young people supporting bands that there’s no ‘evidence’ for? Just because I can’t ‘scientifically’ prove a band has ever produced a record, doesn’t mean that my experience of them is somehow lessened. Also, if it’s “not about the music” any more, then by logical extension (trust me, I do PPE) anyone who claims you need the music to exist is wrong.

These pioneers are just trying to avoid cultural collapse as the black hole of Western culture implodes, watching automatons twitching jerkily (like jerks) on MTV. The only real bands left are in our heads. They’re pretty obscure – you’ve probably never heard of them. And that’s the way I like it. 

After breaking you in gently with foreplay last week, I hope you’re now good and ready to be filled in on the most pleasurable and complex sex positions around.

We’re skipping past all the amateur stuff because quite frankly no one needs a sex column to teaching them how to hump. So make sure you’ve been doing your squats and stretches to guarantee maximum pleasure and minimal embarrassment.

Having decided that the sex position the ‘Iron Lady’ was far too inappropriate for current investigation, I decided this week to try out a position aptly named ‘X-rated’.

The boy lies on his back in an X position while the girl slowly eases herself onto him to assume backwards cowgirl. From there, the girl extends her legs backwards towards her partner’s head, with her torso moving forward to the space between his spread legs. This all seems very well and good; you feel like a pro manoeuvring into this spread-eagle arrangement, but once you are there the actual thrusting part is rather tricky. The girl grabs her partner’s ankles and pushes and pulls to slide herself up and down his body. If you haven’t been bench pressing with the boys, this position can be rather physically intense on the ol’ arms; perfect for blitzing bingo wings but not ideal if it results in rampant arm cramp worthy of a time-out.

However, in addition to the female arm workout, there are several drawbacks to this position – including a somewhat backward-bending penis (not the most comfortable for the boy), lack of thrusting power (resulting in rather weak stimulation for both of you), and a traumatic risk of feeling like a beached sea lion stranded on your partner’s torso. The more passionate the sex, the more likely this tickling sensation will transform into the dull stinging of friction burns.