Thursday 10th July 2025
Blog Page 1509

The 21st Century Freak Shows

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It is well-known that we have a taste for the peculiar. Children clamour over the Guinness Book of World Records; the queues outside Ripley’s Believe It Or Not snake down Piccadilly Circus and our Facebook newsfeeds teem with YouTube videos of the bizarre. Still, we tell ourselves that this is a tame enjoyment of the strange, not the cruel sniggering at, for example, a carnival freak show. And yet television programmes which centre on fat people seem to be the twenty-first century incarnation of such freak shows, appealing to our lustful schadenfreude and exploiting physical form in the name of entertainment.

Fat Families, Secret Eaters, Obese: A Year to Save My Life: a plethora of programmes to remind armchair athletes that a penchant for Doritos is a mere peccadillo compared to the grotesque habits of these others, who unwittingly eat themselves into oblivion. Overweight people in these programmes are consistently portrayed as lazy, stupid and gluttonous, and the vilification that ensues is permitted under the guise of health awareness. The assumption that being heavy correlates with being unhealthy goes unquestioned. Private medical consultations are nationally broadcast with the weak justification that this infantilisation is benevolent in aim.

Some programmes emphasise the importance of nutrition, but patronising reminders that celery sticks are healthier than crisps do little to educate about dietetics, or look into why people have chosen to ignore these well-known guidelines. If any psychological issues are raised, they are dismissed with a cursory reference to ‘comfort eating’.  Struggles to adhere to prescribed diets are treated with condescension, or perhaps a voyeuristic trip to the home of someone entirely incapacitated by their weight. The curtain is lifted on the seriously dysfunctional and then dropped again swiftly. It’s enough to know that they’re out there.

Another remedial option is exercise, a commendable pursuit to ameliorate physical and mental wellbeing. Unsurprisingly, however, producers know that 40 minutes of steady jogging round the park would make tedious television. A competitive element is introduced: let’s have the fatties put through their fatty paces and whichever of their fatty faces hasn’t shifted the pounds will be sent home. I watched a series of The Biggest Loser USA. Its Willy-Wonka-meets-PE-teacher approach of discarding the failing contestants until the laurel wreath can be presented to the champion is pretty addictive. At moments the programme is moving, but the humiliation endemic in it is distasteful and nasty. Watching adults crumple into self-abasement at public weigh-ins is uncomfortable viewing. We should flinch, wince and cringe, but not at the contestants.

Yet, perhaps the most insidious example of this genre is the programme which professes to seek balance: Supersize versus Superskinny. For the uninitiated, an obese person and a severely underweight one are invited to swap eating habits to encourage food-related anxieties to surface. The producers supplement this ‘journey’ by following a group of recovering anorexia patients as they attempt everyday challenges like supermarket shopping and choosing food at a buffet. While engagement with these issues is important, the way that progress is expected from the patients each week fails to appreciate the non-linear nature of eating disorder recovery, which can be affected by internal factors and other circumstances. Relapses form a part of this ebb-and-flow recovery process, and the pressure to appear to be snacking for victory in the weekly segment must be agonising.

NHS research in 2007 suggested that 6.4% of the UK adult population display signs of eating disorders. The media focus on size must be considered, and Supersize versus Superskinny has been accused of broadcasting ‘thinspirational’ content.  The repeated images of underweight people, with reference to precise measurements, have made it onto many ‘pro-ana’ websites, offering unhealthy paradigms for weight-loss. Although the programme stresses the dangers of extreme eating habits, Channel 4 declares its target audience age to be 16-34, which includes the age bracket most vulnerable to eating disorders: 16-19.

Nevertheless, Supersize versus Superskinny remains a symptom of a wider problem. The elusive, perfect, ‘real woman’ shape means that women are constantly assessing themselves to ensure they have lost weight in ‘the right places’. The dream of being ‘real’ is an ideal that seems kinder than that of the hollow-cheeked catwalk model. But it’s still not enough. When the capricious eye of the media decides that a celebrity is ‘embracing her curves’ as opposed to ‘piling on the pounds’, the assumption that her womanhood is in her dress size is insulting. Fat is a feminist issue, yes, but imagine if it weren’t. We will only have truly abandoned the freak show mentality when we consider all body shapes valid and cease to engage with the ‘fat, thin and normal’ cataloguing we see all around us.

Interview: Jamie Cullum

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Jamie Cullum returns this week with his sixth offering, Momentum, which he proclaimed in an interview with Cherwell, is a “songwriter’s album”. Since 2010’s The Pursuit, Cullum has married ex-model and novelist Sophie Dahl, been involved in Sky One’s Must Be The Music as a judge and continued his role as a host of his Radio 2 late night jazz show. A busy man, he himself admits that a “biographical element” may have “creeped into Momentum” due to his altered perspective on things in the last four years.

With only two covers on his new album, including an adaption of Cole Porter’s ‘Love for Sale’ complete with Roots Manuva and the iconic 90s bassline, this marks a significant departure, especially from his 2003 breakthrough Twentysomething which had nine out of fourteen of its tracks as cover versions. For Cullum, this “doesn’t mark a conscious move away” from his earlier work, but more a “focus on songwriting”. 2003 was “still a world of CDs” and now that the internet has taken over, “everything in some way, is a sort of niche”. The ability to record and distribute your own music, practically from your bedroom, seems to have had a profound effect on Cullum, who is now more involved in his own creative pro- cess than ever before.

With his own self-named ‘Terrified Studios’ at home, Cullum can practically wander out of his own bedroom and record a take, something he actually did on new track ‘Sad, Sad World’ to get “that husky tone”. This sense of spontaneity is reflected in his live performances, known for their improvisational nature and although Cullum’s “a bit more tired” now, he still has “that surge of adrenaline” he can’t quite describe. The constant presence of his own home studio which he admits “sounds a lot grander than it is”, has “really allowed [Cullum] to diversify” with a much more personal offering.

Cullum has always been known for his expansive musical knowledge, showcased on his BBC Radio 2 show. According to many sources, he turned down a place for History at Oxford. However, Cullum admits this has been vastly exaggerated over the years and that he was merely “on that path, but felt like it was some- one else’s” deciding to “do something a bit different” by going to study down the road at Reading.

Nevertheless, Cullum’s experiences at university made him the musician he is today: he was part of a £1m bidding war between major record labels even before he’d left Reading. He “played a lot of gigs for most of [his] finals” which apparently “did something to [his] brain” that apparently helped but which he “definitely wouldn’t recommend”.

On the question of collaboration, he answers “definitely Beyonce!”. In general though, he’s just “gonna trust [his] guts”. 

Review: The Great Gatsby

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Romeo and Juliet, Australia, Moulin Rouge: Baz Luhrmann loves a challenge. But has he bitten off more than he can chew with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby?

It was always going to be a tall order, and arguably a task that should never have been undertaken. The story begins with Nick Carraway, who finds himself in Perkins Sanitorium reliving his first encounter with Gatsby. A few minutes of archive footage and rather a lot of voiceover later, it’s all champagne and hip-hop music as we’re swept amongst the masses in Gatsby’s back garden (well, back field, complete with fountains and swimming pools, obviously). These opening scenes are just a bit too hectic, almost as though production had about ten packets of Haribo too many and chucked in fireworks and dancing and every extra they had – to the point where it’s difficult to know where to look first.

Sometimes it’s best to keep things simple, and the beginning of this movie is a prime example of this. To add to this we have Tobey Maguire providing a voiceover which, if you’ve already read the book, is more than a bit annoying. If we wanted an audio book, we’d go out and buy one. The first part of the movie plays like a sugar-infused sparkle-fest, moves very fast and feels more like theatre than screen. Do not, however, be perturbed.

Based on the start, this film could have reduced a highly regarded piece of literature down to a riotous party, and an animated reconstruction of twenties New York. Mercilessly it doesn’t. By the time we meet Gatsby, everything takes a slightly calmer turn. DiCaprio proves himself a natural choice to play Jay Gatsby, the mysterious and filthy rich neighbour to Nick Carraway, and owner of what can best be described as Disneyland for alcoholics and flapper girls. As we begin familiarising ourselves with the walking complexity that is Gatsby, Carey Mulligan steps up to add yet more confusion to the mix. The problem is that Daisy Buchanan is Gatsby’s one and only. They met when he was a soldier and, despite falling head over heels, circumstances pulled them apart. Daisy married Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), her rude and arrogant husband also known as ‘the polo player’. Tom counts being unfaithful to Daisy as one of his hobbies, and this is the injustice at the heart of Fitzgerald’s story: here are two people who should be together, but they just can’t seem to get it right. It’s through their portrayal of this struggle that Mulligan and DiCaprio really prove their acting credentials, and Gatsby earns its place opening the Cannes Film Festival this month.

After a rocky start, this movie settles into a well-crafted, modern version of F Scott. Fitzgerald’s original story. There are a few gripes, such as the return of the voiceover and the dodgy use of floating text which makes it look slightly like a Waterstones’s advert, but there was a definite effort to stay true to the story and portray the dilemmas of the characters in a real and relatable way.
In preparation for his first meeting with Daisy after many years, Gatsby fills Nick’s living room with flowers and then asks ‘Do you think it’s too much?’ This really is representative of the whole movie. It’s bright, shiny, chaotic and overflowing with madness of the highest order. It’s not too much, old sport: yet again, Luhrmann’s got it just right.

Review: The Fall

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The BBC’s latest drama transports us to Belfast, where the unsolved murder of Alice Monroe is proving something of a conundrum for the slightly blundering police department involved. But this isn’t a comment about police incompetence, nor is it a whodunit. This five-parter is something far darker and more interesting. The thing is, whilst we’re watching Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, who has been called in to review the case, we are also watching Paul Spector, a counsellor with a secret pastime. The first time we meet Paul, he is clad in black and breaking into solicitor Sarah Kay’s house. However this is not a simple case of robbery or even murder, which becomes evident as he goes through Sarah’s possessions and takes photographs with an apparent interest in her underwear. We follow Spector around Sarah’s house, interspersed with scenes of Sarah leaving a bar on a Friday night, until the tension becomes unbearable.

The Fall will have you disturbed and addicted in equal measure. It’s not so much about who did it: it’s smarter than that. It’s about psychology, obsession and that little bit of you that refuses to believe that the bogeyman could turn up on your doorstep dressed as a normal person (and that, without looking closely, you’d step aside and wave him right in). The way we alternate between Paul and Stella, cutting off the scenes as we learn about them bit by bit, makes for continuous unsettling viewing. The characters are not your conventional classic murderer and classic cop. Gillian Anderson (The X Files, The Last King of Scotland) shows off her acting abilities as Stella Gibson, giving us a glimpse of this complex, lonely and determined figure who is all the while trying to get inside the killer’s head. Jamie Dornan (Marie Antoinette, Once Upon a Time and the face of the Dior Homme campaign!) proves himself the king of creepy as Paul who, on the face of it, is a completely ordinary man. He has a wife and children, works as a counsellor and displays everything but psycho-killer tendencies. This is why it works so well.

The Fall plants the seed that we don’t necessarily know everything about everyone, and then stands back to allow that thought to grow into a deep sense of unease. It is this unease, plus the intrigue and desire to understand, that will have you chilled straight through and unable to take your eyes off it. This is not one for the faint-hearted, but if you can, you must watch this.

Oxford in suspense for Corpus tortoise fair

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The Corpus Christi tortoise fair will be taking place this Sunday, one of the most highly anticipated events on the Oxford calendar. Every year, all the tortoises residing in Oxford colleges come out to compete in the tortoise race, the main event of the fair, each making a run (or rather a meander) for victory. 

It was in Trinity Term 1974 when Steve Brand, a student at Corpus Christi and a representative of RAG, decided to organise a tortoise race between a few of the Oxford colleges, including Somerville and Oriel. Blue Peter also got involved and entered their tortoise, Freda, into the race. Corpus Christi received quite a fright, however, the day before the race when their college tortoise, Christie, was reported missing. To everyone’s relief, Christie was found safe and sound in the Cloisters Quad the next day. With regard to the race itself, the Pelican Record of 1974 relates: “Christie, obviously off form after a harrowing night, came third after 21 grueling minutes and 40 seconds.” 

Lily Aaronovitch, the current tortoise keeper of Corpus Christi, appears confident about this year. She says Corpus’ tortoises, Foxe and Oldham, are “very much in love and this has distracted them in the past. Odds should be good for Foxe but also for them having intercourse during the race.” 

Another entrant for the race this year is Sampras, Christ Church’s tortoise. Kishan Koria, the tortoise keeper at Christ Church, says of Sampras: “An understated intellectual colossus (with an IQ of 160+) it has been rumoured that Aesop’s fable was indeed based on Sampras, as was Lewis Carroll’s academic paper on logic ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’.” Kishan adds: “He has been inspired by the Olympics towards a victory for the College who are right behind him.” 

This year’s competition promises to be tough, with all reptilian entrants training hard for this one occasion. Philip Brooks, the tortoise keeper of University College, says of their tortoise Percy: “He…hibernates in a Budweiser fridge each year; after 3 months he emerges well rested and a little bit drunk.” Though Percy has not yet won before, Philip says “there’s an extremely high chance of him winning this year due to the training regime he has been undertaking; he’s the first in at Iffley gym in the morning and the last to leave.”

One new entry is St. Peter’s tortoise, Aristurtle. The college’s tortoise keeper, Madeleine Herbert, says: “He is very unlikely to win – I had him on the lawn at St Peter’s to practise the other day and he mainly just sat there, and then walked in a very slow circle.” But she continues: “He is very cute though, so I think he will win hearts if not the race!” 

Joining Foxe, Oldham, Sampras, Percy and Aristurtle will be the aged Emmanuelle from Regent’s Park (rumoured to be over a hundred years old), the two newcomers Archibald and Theodore from Wadham, and Zoom and Shelley from Worcester college. Having won last year, Zoom is definitely one to watch. Teddy Hall have entered one of their students who will come dressed as a tortoise and compete with the tortoises by trying to eat a whole lettuce before any of them can reach the finish lettuce. The last, but notable, addition to this year’s tortoise fair is Magdalen College School’s terrapin called George. 

All proceeds from the Corpus tortoise fair will be going to Helen and Douglas House, a hospice caring for children and youths with terminal illnesses.

Il Barbiere di Siviglia

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Opera Lyrica’s production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) by Rossini, performed in the chapel at St Peter’s, was a pleasing venture by a company which aims to improve the accessibility of opera to the public and provide opportunities for those who are keen to get involved. The cast of singers came from around the world, and certainly merited a platform for their talents.

The production was very conventional, featuring the masked characters central to commedia dell’arte, an Italian operatic tradition. The costumes were also opulent and traditional, which meant that the stage itself could be left rather sparse, with touches to suggest a period setting rather than using an overly complicated and cluttered set in such a small venue.

Jorge Franco Bajo, who played Conte d’Almaviva, the romantic lead, brought much charm to his character, and his lovesick pleas to Rosina (Colette Lam) perfectly conveyed the adoration which – seemingly normally in the opera world – can stem from merely glimpsing a girl on a balcony. Rosina herself was played in a scheming and flirtatious manner, which gave depth to the character. The scenes of her pouting and primping at her dressing table contrasted greatly with Dmitry Yumashev’s Don Bartolo, a successful portrayal of the grumpy and cantankerous older man. The most famous moment in the opera is probably when Figaro (Alexandru Nagy) declares his own importance in a piece of music which is beautifully humorous. Paloma Bruce gave a wonderful performance as Berta, whose lovelorn lament both moved and amused. The role of Don Basilio was played subtly by Bragi Jónnson, who brought together the other characters in a scene in which they all attempt to make him leave – mirroring the experience, I’m sure, of most people when a rather boring guest refuses to leave one’s room in college.

Overall. the cast and production were very successful. I hope that Opera Lyrica continues to bring opera to Oxford with many more productions of this calibre.

Preview: Alice in Wonderland

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A surreal experience is guaranteed to anyone who takes up their invitation to Oxford’s maddest tea-party, accessible, so a little caterpillar tells me, only via a rabbit hole (read here: garden path transformed with a little Wonderland imagination). To be hosted in a cosy corner of the Trinity lawns, you adventuring Alices will find a quaint cluster of tables, laden with teatime treats all for your indulgence, and a decidedly schizophrenic group of fellow guests. I am, of course, in circuitous fashion referring to a new dramatic adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s vintage classic Alice in Wonderland that promises to populate Trinity’s lawns with all those favourite oddities, the Mad Hatter, March Hare, sleepy Dormouse and that fearsome Queen of Hearts demanding all heads to be lopped off.

With teatime being shared between audience and characters, the sense of participating in a theatrical experience rather than merely being passively privy to it is bound to be exciting as characters spill out of Wonderland, maybe even planting themselves among the audience, as the familiar story of confident Alice unfolds. The “fourth wall”, then, if not exploded through will be made decidedly unstable as the audience partakes in their tea, in the stage party. Boundaries are unsettled further as two parties seem to occur together, as we are shuttled between the Liddells’ celebration of their daughter Alice’s coming of age in prim and proper fashion and a rather more raucous occasion in Wonderland.

This dual element is a key concept behind this reimagining of the story. Carroll’s fraught relations with the Liddells, due to what we can only say was an atypical interest in their young daughter who inspired the fictional Alice, are to be inserted into a historical and controversial narrative lending dramatic energy to the coming of age party. Wonderland performs bizarre transformations on these “real” personages, with most actors playing one corresponding role within each world, often contrasting as with one actress who plays both Mrs Liddell and the Queen of Hearts.  Two polarised worlds thus collide, an adult social world whose conventional rules must be manoeuvred and a childhood Wonderland equally demanding manoeuvre, but of the imaginative kind.

The warping of characters suggests subconscious activity, and indeed this is played up to the extent of mental pathology. Interactions between madcap characters (which is just about all of them) are intense, bizarre ripostes and logical/illogical quips thrown left, right and centre, with really dynamic movement to accompany, to a potentially overwhelming degree – though who doesn’t want that kind of experience in Wonderland?

I think this sounds a fun concept, so do go along and enjoy your teapot of pimms. Don’t things just become curiouser and curiouser…?

Alice in Wonderland will run from Wednesday to Saturday of 6th week. More information can be found at www.trinitylawnsplay.co.uk 

Preview: Philoctetes

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★★★☆☆
Three Stars

Ah, Greek tragedy, that epitome of literary and theatrical tradition…and hard to pull off without just a hint of pretentiousness or a radical re-writing (ahem, “adaptation”) of the script. But to be fair to them, the Corpus Christi Owlets, directed by Natalie York, who already has a glittering career of London experience behind her, have had a fair stab at keeping on the straight and narrow with their shortened, modernised version of Sophocles’ play. With a good smattering of thees and thous to keep the ancient original in mind, the script has been lopped and chopped down to a short and sweet forty minutes. No interval ice-creams to look forward to then, but from the brief clip I saw of the play you hardly need them; well-polished dialogue and physically graphic fight scenes (poor Philoctetes, played by Moritz Borrhmann, looked genuinely pained) keep us engaged and interested pretty successfully.

The story goes that Philoctetes, with his infamous “festering wound” is left abandoned on an island by his army. Ten years down the line, said army realise that for all their reluctance to do the Florence-Nightingale-caring thing, Philoctetes is actually rather necessary for their chances of victory. Except, and this is the clever part ladies and gentlemen, no longer is Philoctetes the owner of an out-dated “magical bow”. We’re in World War One, and the abandoned hero is a scientist with great plans for a revolutionary tank, plans which are carried around the stage rather wonderfully in what I am assured is a genuine early twentieth-century postal bag, complete with a water-proof covering of goat hair.

In one magical wave of the “adaptation” wand, the vast cast of Sophocles’ play are vanished away, so that we are left with a much more manageable three characters; more psychologically claustrophobic and less constrained by the demands of classical tragedy. “It’s the play Sophocles wanted to write,” the director tells me. I’m not utterly convinced by this insight into the tragedian’s mind, but it’s certainly true that the changes work well in the given space and context.

And what luck with the given space and the context! In the original, Philoctetes whiles away his lonely decade in a double-entrance cave. By happy coincidence, the stage in the auditorium of Corpus is backed by two stone alcoves in the wall which make the perfect place for a lamed and bitter tragic hero to lie, Caliban-like, as the growingly sympathetic Neoptolemus (Redmond Traynor) approaches to wheedle him out. I am reminded again of animals as Neoptolemus and the older and craftier Ulysses (Joe Rolleston) square-up to one another like bristling bull-dogs in an attempt to establish their power-ridden relationship.

It’s not without a certain amount of risk that the company have taken on this little-known play, and not without a certain amount of courage that they’ve made the (predominately successful) changes that they have. Overall I’d recommend you go along in 6th Week to take a look. And ten points for the first person to spot the goat hair. 

Review: The Wind in the Willows

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★★★☆☆
Three Stars

Sitting down in the St. Peter’s College Masters’ Gardens surrounded by about twenty schoolchildren, I was really glad I had decided to bring friends. Although I thought it would be the kind of play you’d only want to go see if you’d read Wind in the Willows as a kid, between the three of us there the only memories we could peace together was Mr Toad driving a car at some point, so it felt like I was seeing it for the first time.
 
It was an energetic and unexpectedly humorous production. Being an outside performance, there were unfortunately a few weather incidents; when Ratty spoke of the ‘wind picking up’ the wind rather spookily did begin to blow, and it subsequently rained, at which point we were smoothly ushered into the bar for twenty minutes whilst they moved to the chapel.
 
We soon met all of the characters that we knew and loved; Mole was bizarrely convincing, Mr. Fox gave a very polished performance, and the cockney element of the ‘weasel gang’ was a nice touch. However, the real star of the whole performance was Mr. Toad. Aside the fact I’m convinced he has some relation to Stephen Fry, he gave a performance that had more energy than all the other actors put together. The guitar, violin and flute performing specially-composed music also gave this performance the rural glaze it was attempting to create.
 
If I had one criticism, it would be that the play occasionally treads a fine line between theatre and pantomime, particularly in the second half with the final battle at Toad Hall and Toad’s songs as a washer-woman. The narrator was also a slightly unnecessary part of the production; every time he was on stage, he was narrating conversations that the characters were miming to each other, not to mention that at one point he seemed to be literally reading from the book. On the whole, it had some merits, and it did very well at making the material accessible to both children and adults, but there were no pleasant surprises. Worth going to if you have a free evening, but overall it didn’t blow me away.

Brasenose sports and arts dinners under threat

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The future of the Sports and Arts and Societies Dinner at Brasenose College has been put into question this week.

An email sent around Brasenose’s JCR stated that the Dean has called for “radical alterations to the dinners”. The email further states that the Dean “believes that the current management of the dinners has been problematic” and that “the cost saved from ceasing the dinners could be used more effectively elsewhere.”

It also stated that the Dean felt that the dinners “do not fit in the College’s core activity and academic reason for being.” This year the Sports dinner cost £2,260 (£18. 38 a head), while the Arts and Societies Dinner cost £1,821 (£15.18 a head).

The Dean has proposed to use the money to support sports and arts practically instead. He also suggested that the dinners should be paid for by attend the dinners in the future.The email asked students to contribute to the discussion and send in their opinions about the Dean’s proposal, and whether or not the dinners should continue or not.

Brasenose JCR President James Blythe told Cherwell, “Brasenose is currently consulting on how best to spend the money allocated to supporting the arts and sport in College. There is no question of reducing that money and no decisions have been made. The JCR President and VP, having organised a consultation for JCR members, will be closely involved in decision making, along with the Fellows who have responsibility for Sport and Arts, and the Dean.”

In response to Cherwell’s enquiries into the planned changes an email was sent to Brasenose sports captains by the JCR Sports Reps. It told students “You may be approached by the Cherwell asking for your view on the future of the Arts/Sports Dinners… and I would like you not to comment on it to any journalist until we have had a chance to talk about it.

One Brasenose student, who wished to remain antonymous, commented, “I’m sure a compromise can be found between those who want to retain the dinners and the Dean’s obvious good intentions in wanting to free up money to invest in sports and arts.”

Brasenose Dean Dr Christopher Timpson declined to comment.