Page 1631 – Cherwell

Review: Kyla La Grange – Ashes

Culture

Marc Pacitti

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4th August 2012

Ashes smacks of a lack of effort. The songwriting is not exceptional in any sense of the word, the delivery of the material is average to the point of tedium, the production feels unfinished and uncared for and influences aren’t so much worn upon the artists sleeve as they seem to constitute the entirety of the clothing.

Seemingly, the entire reason behind the existence of Kyla La Grange as a musician is that she is easily marketable. When Florence and the Machine are such a huge commercial and critical hit, you can bet that half of the world’s record company executives have “Quirky, faux-gothic, female singer-songwriter” written somewhere in their three-dimensional marketing synergy matrix-thing. So, when Kyla La Grange comes along and is described as the next Florence Welch, it’s easy to see why a huge record deal would practically throw itself at her. Hype and the media attention should quickly follow, and the results end up plastered across the record stores of our nation like the symptoms of a gloomy, art-student-ish virus.

As a result, La Grange comes across as a bad impression of last summer’s sensation. Kate Bush-esque vocal flourishes feel unnatural, almost copied and pasted into tracks. Backing vocals sound like drones rather than choirs, and instrumentation is similarly uninspired. The production is rough around the edges in all the wrong ways, with unbalanced audio and poor volume control. More fundamentally, La Grange lacks what made Florence Welch so appealing – the voice. Whilst La Grange certainly has an admirable voice, all too often it is kept to a stagey whisper or relegated to the bottom of the mix. This prevents La Grange from belting it out, as Florence does.

Perhaps I’m judging this rather too harshly by comparing it to Florence and the Machine. It could be the case that Kyla La Grange is an original artist with her own direction and ideas. The unfortunate conclusion that follows from this is that these ideas and that direction just aren’t all that compelling. The album isn’t bad; it just isn’t very good. It’s the product (in the full commercial sense of the term) of too much style and too little substance. But it makes decent background music.

TWO STARS

Making a splash

Olympi-cynic

Lifestyle

Imogen Beecroft

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3rd August 2012

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When I was asked to write something about my experiences of working at the Olympics, I was reticent, partly because I was lacking in anything interesting to say, and partly because of some irrational fear that I might get myself on some Boris blacklist if I said anything too scathing about the Olympics. But then they took my sandwich and everything changed. Plus I realised that by expressing this political concern I was probably overestimating my journalistic importance.

I’ve been working as part of the ‘great Olympic team’ (as my supervisor insists) for two whole shifts now. That’s 14 hours. 840 painful minutes. One confiscated sandwich. One too many. To set the scene, I’m working in the London 2012 Athletes’ Village and will be for the duration of these Olympics, assuming I last that long (given that I’m writing this as I hide in the stockroom, it isn’t unimaginable that I won’t).

I began this process as an Olympi-cynic, and although there’s been quite a lot which has reinforced this opinion, I’m not embarrassed to say that I’ve seen the light – the torch, if you will. I, like most Londoners, laughed at our incompetence when the visiting athletes got lost on their way to the stadium and sighed when we had to ‘practise’ our journeys to work as they will be during the Games – inevitably they’re the same, but two hours longer. I’ve begun to think that it’s a good thing that London’s public transport is so unreliable as delays will be nothing new to most commuters. The only real difference is the surplus of offensively pink beacons to signal our way.

I’ve heard the stories about security personnel being hired on their ability to smell the difference between vodka and water, and laughed at Mock the Week’s suggestion that rather than a torch (meant to ‘burn with the light of the sun’) we watch the dignified procession of a flannel across Great Britain. Generally, I’ve felt nonplussed about the actual Olympics being held in London, irritated by the disruption, and embarrassed by London’s performance. I have no tickets for any events, and am baffled by those people who spent £2012 on tickets to the 100m final. That’s over £200 per second of entertainment. I doubt even the best hookers can charge that. When a friend offered me a ticket I was mildly intrigued, until she mentioned the £50 price tag. And the fact that it was beach volleyball – the soft porn of the Games. I’d have a better time rereading 50 Shades of Grey.

But I digress; I list these instances only to highlight that I too was a non-believer, a sceptic, a miserable old bat. And my experiences of working at these Olympics didn’t turn me immediately: quite the opposite. First, the revelation that no food is allowed into the Village was a further nail in the coffin of my Olympic experience. As instructed, I’d treated it ‘as airport security’. I’d dutifully emptied my liquids, and even ensured that my sandwich was a dry one (ham, no mayo), only to be ordered to eat it quickly or surrender the goods. As I threw my sandwich in the non-recycling bin (an expression of my frustration with society), I thought my position as Olypi-cynic was confirmed.

My impressions on entering the Village weren’t much better. Whilst most countries bedecked their athlete’s buildings with regal and dignified flags, I cringed at GB’s ‘#OurGreatestTeam’ banner flapping in the rain. The welcoming ceremony for the athletes is a strange mix of NYT theatrics, a Queen medley, and spray painted umbrellas. The dancers encircle the visiting athletes and delegates and sing about their ‘champion’ status. The athletes seem at best bewildered, and at worst terrified. Although it is a bizarre sight to behold, it at least provides a distraction from the monotony of store life. Or it did for the first few performances. But after a day of welcoming dramatics at half hourly intervals, it feels like something more akin to tinnitus, and I doubt very much whether I’ll ever be able to listen to ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ again.

Although there is a lot about London 2012 which has made me cringe, there’s also been a lot which is incredibly impressive. The people who’ve volunteered to help during the Games – the ‘Games Makers’ – are working full-time shifts in return for nothing but a less than attractive outfit. Some of these volunteers have travelled from as far as Australia just to volunteer, and many are camping for the duration because they can’t afford to rent somewhere to live in London.

Speaking to some of these volunteers, their only reason for embarking on this thankless job seems to be because of a desire to ‘be a part of it all’. This might seem strange – and maybe a little tragic – to us, and certainly to me, but this doesn’t stop me being impressed by their enthusiasm and dedication. It might be a cliché, but without them the Games really wouldn’t be able to happen, and even my cynical self has softened because of their attitude.

Being around so many people for whom these might be the most important couple of weeks of their life, the organisers who’ve been planning these events for years, the volunteers who deserve a medal (or mental help), and the (few) Londoners who are proud to host these events, I’ve found myself jumping on the enthusiasm bandwagon. So what if London 2012 might not run as smoothly as other Games? So what if I get off the tube at Stratford only to see staff covering up the arrows pointing to the Olympic Park with arrows pointing the opposite direction? I, for one, think we should embrace the shabby-chic of London 2012 and am willing to admit that I am, if not proud exactly, very excited for the world’s best sportspeople to converge on my London, and for the eyes of the world to be on us. And it’s something I’m prepared to give up my sandwich for.

‘Fuzzy Ducks’ club night to close

News

William Whittington

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1st August 2012

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‘Fuzzy Ducks’, the club night held at the O2 Academy and once voted by FHM magazine as the easiest place to pull in the country, will run no longer.

It has come under constant pressure from local residents and has reportedly experienced a recent fall in attendees.

‘Fuzzy Ducks’ was held at the O2 Academy in East Oxford on Wednesday nights for more than a decade. The venue has a capacity of 1,350 and the night attracted a variety of guests, from Out of the Blue to David Hasselhoff.

Behaviour at the O2 Academy and the surrounding residential area led to numerous complaints of anti-social behaviour from local residents. The mid-week night, called “notorious” by the Oxford Times, promised cheap alcohol until the early hours of the morning.

Police patrols were extended to the area in 2010 to cope with students exiting the club, and a recent application to extend opening hours at the venue received more than 60 complaints.

Ed Chipperfield, a member of the East Oxford Residents’ Associations Forum, is glad to see the end of the night. He commented that “Fuzzy Ducks was marketed as an ugly night of excess, and that’s precisely how the customers treated the area before and after they went. You can’t blame the customers for behaving exactly as the promoters wanted them to, really.”

‘Fuzzy Ducks’ is to be replaced by a new night run by the O2 Academy and the Oxford Brookes Student Union. The concern for residents remains a return to previous behaviour under a different name.

Mr Chipperfield is cautiously optimistic about the new night, saying, “I think everyone here – students as well as ‘locals’ – is cautiously optimistic about a higher expectation from a new event promoted by Brookes.”

‘But if it falls below expectations, then people living in the area will have no problems bringing their troubles up with the relevant people – the local police.”

However, residents’ complaints have been a pressure for the decade Fuzzy Ducks ran, but the night has only just ended. Reports are that the popularity of the Brookes night decreased significantly in the final term of this last year. According to one Brookes student, the 1,350 capacity venue failed to get above 300 clubbers on most Wednesdays.

Club management would neither confirm nor deny if the decision to end the night was a response to pressure from residents or the waning popularity of the night among students.

Oxford Brookes Law student Joseph Ware reacted positively to the closure. He said, “I just see it as an excuse for people to get blind drunk with the promise of sex.”

“But in reality it’s a sweaty pit of hormonal sports teams embracing a social fad. And besides the special guests, it has nothing to put it above another night elsewhere.”

Poor coverage ruining our Olympics?

Sport

James Taylor

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1st August 2012

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‘Pauca sed bona’, only a few but of good quality. Perhaps someone should have scribbled this on a post-it note to the BBC as they prepared for this year’s Olympic Games. Why? Their coverage has, thus far, been the antithesis of that epigram.

One cannot fault them for trying. Their 27 TV channels and innumerable other forms of online coverage and analysis are a testament to Lord Coe’s plea to embrace the Games.

However, the quality of that coverage, and more so the commentary that accompanies it, does an injustice to the athletes who have sacrificed so much to compete here in London.

Jonathan Liew’s frank confession in a recent Telegraph article puts into words the problem: ‘The writing business is forgiving enough to allow entire careers to be sustained on an ability to produce five synonyms for the word “win”. On television, there is no such hiding place.’

Although the BBC have turned to a number of previous Olympians to add credibility to the otherwise lacklustre commentary, the blunders of their colleagues overshadows any gems of athletic insight that they may produce.

Mark Foster, the former Swimming World Champion and Team GB’s flag-bearer in Beijing 2008 often struggles to get a word in edgeways next to the bullish Clare Balding who, for all the hand gestures and decibels in the world, still struggles to outline a single race without repeating herself or mentioning the pressure that the athletes are under.

The awkward conversations in the BBC main pod are almost as painful as the dissonance of the commentary teams.

Amir Khan’s discussion of his Olympic experience, 8 years ago in Athens, sounded forced and resembled little more than an exercise in self-aggrandisement for a man who many were saying should retire after the beatings he took from Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia.

Meanwhile, Ian Thorpe’s frustration was tangible as Gary Lineker descended into cheap quips, after the multiple Olympic champion had seen his country’s ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ self-destruct with a disappointing 4th place in the 4x100m freestyle relay.

Even the usually tolerable Sue Barker and Jake Humphrey made me wish the BBC did ad-breaks, with their cringe-worthy ‘I hope you’ve got a bike and helmet’ – ‘I don’t go up hills’ exchange.

BBC top-brass clearly thought that the mystery of less well-known sports could be solved by familiar voices from other sports, with Golf’s Andrew Cotter covering Canoeing and Rugby’s Eddie Butler assigned to Archery.

As Jonathan Liew put it, ‘these men are risking accusations of dilettantism at best, and outright ridicule at worst, by gamely pitching their flags on foreign ground … but without an instinctive feel for the rhythms and patter of a sport, it is impossible to avoid sounding like an outsider.’

With Bradley Wiggins’ recent success in the Tour de France, Cycling has had an ‘hors catégorie’ rise to prominence, but the coverage of the two Olympic Cycling Road Races has undoubtedly been the stand-out failure for the BBC so far.

The men’s race, if Team GB’s disappointment was not enough, was soured further by the lack of information about time gaps between the groups and a number of mistakes by the commentary team, at one point claiming that those who finished outside the top 30 were in fact battling for the bronze medal.

The inadequacy of the post-race analysis only added salt to the wound as John McEnroe and Kelly Holmes blathered on without any real understanding of what they were meant to be talking about. Ignorance, in this case, was far from bliss.

Furthermore, Lizzie Armitstead’s tremendous silver medal was dampened by journalists’ inability to spell her surname and the references to her ‘feeding’ which made her sound more like a prize budgie than the closest Team GB had hitherto got to a gold medal.

Matt Baker’s painful pronunciation of Fabian Cancellara, one of the most famous cyclists in the Olympic peloton, as I write, evinces the over-reaching of BBC commentary teams across the channels as they try to come to grips with the challenge of covering what is likely to be the most watched Olympic Games in history.

With the Athletics beginning on Friday, I can only hope that John Inverdale justifies his Olympic selection with a personal best after disappointing performances at the Crystal Palace Grand Prix and the Aviva UK Trials, and that the BBC learn from their mistakes.

You know what they say about ‘Jacks-of-all-trades’…

Subfusc gender restrictions removed

News

Helena Ruff

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31st July 2012

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Oxford University has recently altered subfusc regulations in order to respect the needs of transgender students.

The decision, which will come into force on 4th August, will see subfusc becoming gender-neutral and will allow transgender students to wear what they wish without needing to obtain permission from University Proctors before sitting exams. All students will be able to make their own decisions about what they wear to exams and formal university occasions and will be free to choose whether to wear a bow-tie or ribbon, or a skirt or a suit.

The campaign, led by OUSU’s LGBTQ Officer Jess Pumphrey, was initially passed by OUSU in February and was then taken to the University Proctors for further information. Pumphrey told Cherwell, “This is an important and very welcome change, which will greatly improve the experience of transgender students, particularly during the exam period.”

They added, “This change allows transgeander students to fully, comfortably and safely participate in the tradition of subfusc, without worrying about whether their gender will be scrutinised by examiners.”

Simone Webb, President of LGBTQ Soc, also told Cherwell about how the changes would benefit transgender students, saying, “I think this is a brilliant change which, while small, will lessen the stress which transgender students face around exams.”

Former Trans rep for LGBTQ Soc, Gail Bartlett, also welcomed the changes, adding, “The real motive of this change is that students who may be transitioning gender will no longer have to have the added stress of worrying that they will be challenged on their clothing”.

They both expressed disappointment over how the news had been covered in the national press. Webb commented, “I am saddened by much of the national reporting on the changes, which has misleadingly claimed that the new rules are aimed at facilitating cross-dressing”, whilst Bartlett told Cherwell, “much of the popular press has missed the point, with provocative and inaccurate headlines such as ‘men in dresses’ and ‘gay dress code’”.

Although the University was unable to offer an opinion on the changes, a spokesperson said, ‘The regulations have been amended to remove any reference to gender, in response to concerns raised by Oxford University Student Union that the existing regulations did not serve the interests of transgender students.’

The changes have met with positive reactions from students. 1st year Keble Biology student, Jessica Norris, said that the changes would “bring subfusc up-to-date’ and that ‘people in today’s age should be able to express themselves how they wish and not be constrained”.Â She added, “I don’t think the new rules should be abused though but I don’t see how that could be policed”.

One first year at Magdalen, who did not wish to be named, continued, “The rules just allow people to wear a different set of clothes so I don’t see why they would cause anyone to get upset. One concern might be misuse, which could undermine the integrity of subfusc, but is that really a bad thing?”

Sportsmanship kicked from the beautiful game

Sport

James Gheerbrant

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31st July 2012

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Sportsmanship kicked from the beautiful game

Sometimes in sport, a touch can make all the difference. The history-books are gilded with examples of sprawling saves, desperate tap-tackles and faint edges that swung the outcome of a match, even a tournament.

Boxing is one sport that seldom deals in such subtleties. Technical nuance is not unimportant, but quick hands and pretty feints will always be trumped by a sledgehammer left, as Amir Khan discovered on Saturday. And brute force is never less preeminent than when the mouth guards are out.

“This is about two guys who dislike each other beating it out of each other,” declared David Haye in the build-up to his bout with Dereck Chisora. Chisora vowed to “burn” and “destroy” his rival.

No soft touches there then.

This fight was the legacy of an extraordinary brawl in a Munich press conference where Chisora descended from his dais to confront Haye. Haye hit Chisora with a bottle, Haye’s trainer Adam Booth was gashed on the forehead, and Chisora threatened to shoot Haye.

Both fighters had their licences revoked by the British Boxing Board of Control and had to turn to the Luxembourg authorities to sanction the tawdry circus of their mutual enmity.

These are tough times for boxing. No longer can the image of a sport in the doldrums be dismissed as the jaded grumble of stuffy ringside veterans.

The sport’s great 21^st century icon, Floyd Mayweather, is currently in prison for domestic abuse. Inept judging is a growing blight, with Manny Pacquiao, boxing’s other marquee name, its latest victim. Tarver, Berto and Peterson, world champions all, recently failed drugs tests. And then there are the antics of Haye, Chisora and their ilk.

But what boxing has not lost is its capacity to confound. After Haye knocked out Chisora in the fifth, the bitter antagonists shared a warm embrace. This was an extraordinarily redemptive moment of human contact for two men who had had to be separated by a steel fence at their weigh-in.

Their sins were not forgotten, but perhaps absolved, especially when Chisora revealed he would donate £20,000 to Haye’s chosen charity. Sometimes, a touch can make all the difference.

This week, another sporting touch, football’s pre-match handshake, came under scrutiny. In the wake of the deterioration of civilities between John Terry, Anton Ferdinand, Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Cole, it seems we will have to steel ourselves for more tedious ‘will-they-won’t-they’ sagas in the mould of last season’s Suarez-Evra handbaggery.

There will be, provisionally at least, 45,980 pre-match handshakes between Premier League opponents next season. And yet not one will touch us like that single moment of genuinely felt communion between Haye and Chisora, however imperfect the circumstances.

Not one will raise a smile like Bradley Wiggins and Vincenzo Nibali’s finish-line hug at the Tour de France.

Why? Because pre-match handshakes are not true sportsmanship. They are a meaningless mechanical ritualistic faff, fair-play for the fauxmance era. Like the mascot walk and the exchange of pennants, they belong to an elaborate choreography of sportsmanship devised by the game’s governing bodies.

Handshakes should be left to the end of the match as a free and sincere gesture of respect. They would not be as numerous, but at least they would mean something, and maybe, like Haye and Chisora, football’s opprobrious oiks might just surprise us.

‘Life is short. Have an affair’

Opinion

Tom Beardsworth

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30th July 2012

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I’d never heard of ‘Ashley Madison’ before, though apparently with 3.5 million members a lot of people have. The website, which in structure seems no different to Match.com or any other online dating service, hooks up men and women who would otherwise not meet. The difference? Ashley Madison is expressly targeted at those who are already married or in a relationship, its slogan – ‘Life is short. Have an Affair’.

I came across the site tangentially – via this hilarious billboard in California. Indeed the firm markets itself in true American style. Far from abiding by the culture of discretion and grace that characterises, say, French infidelity, the CEO Noel Biderman has attempted to sell adultery like Ronald McDonald sells French fries (here for instance). American politics buffs will appreciate the company’s endorsement earlier this year of Newt Gingrich, Republican Presidential hopeful and serial philanderer, in the now-elapsed G.O.P. primary contest.

I’m not sure what I make of Ashley Madison. Adultery is a function of (a) personal greed and (b) unhappy relationships. Those familiar with the MTV hit Geordie Shore, whose orange inhabitants possess the looks and libidos of gorillas, will be familiar with (a). Though as the Madison Superbowl commercial indicates prisoners of (b) are the target market.

To be fair, whilst Madison might have an interest in the cultivation of personal vice and inter-personal misfortune, it is in no position to influence either. As Biderman is oft to point out, Madison doesn’t make people want to cheat, it merely increases choice and efficiency in the adultery market.

Fair, but he forgets that we aren’t wholly autonomous; the choices available to you and I condition our preferences. The availability and social acceptability of another vice, cigarettes say, will encourage us to smoke them. Similarly a ready market for extra-marital sex will lead to more cheating.

I confess to possessing Alain de Botton’s How to Think More about Sex. Like all my Amazon purchases made after 2am the book belongs to that commendable class of drunken acquisitions known as ‘1-Click Buying’.

His chapter on adultery is worth quoting. His observation that, until the eighteenth century phenomenon of the bourgeois, ‘the three very distinct needs – for love, sex and family – were wisely differentiated and separated out from one another’ is insightful. The oddness, and perhaps futility, of modern marriage rests in the retrograde idea that all these desires should be satisfied by the ‘selfsame person’. This is what Biderman is getting at.

Still, de Botton’s reflections don’t answer the question at hand. We may sympathise with the adulterer entrapped in a loveless, sexless marriage, but we’re still offended by Ashley Madison’s involvement. We reason that if a person is driven to cheat, then the complex emotions involved shouldn’t be exploited by a commercial interests. If you were repulsed in the first paragraph, that’s probably why.

Oxonian’s Olympic Ode a success

News

Lara Bryan

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29th July 2012

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An Olympic ode in ancient Greek written by Jesus classics professor Dr Armand D’Angour was read out loud by London Mayor Boris Johnson at the Opening Gala for the International Olympic Committee last Monday.

Performed to the Olympic committee, which included royal members such as Prince Albert of Monaco and Princess Anne, Johnson’s reading recieved enthusiastic applause and cheering.

The ode, inspired by the Olympics, was commissioned by the London mayor and has been engraved in Greek and in English on a Bronze plaque placed within the Olympic Park.

Dr D’Angour explains that “Writing an Ode for the Games revives a musical and poetic tradition from ancient Greece, where Odes were commissioned to celebrate athletic winners at the Games.”

Written in the style of Pindar, a 5th Century BC poet from Ancient Greece, Dr D’Angour’s ode remains faithful to ancient style and form whilst reaching out to a modern audience.

The English version of the ode, written in six stanzas of rhyming couplets contains references to Usain Bolt (“the lightning bolt around the track”), the chairman of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games Lord Coe (‘Join London’s Mayor and co within’), as well as diver Tom Daley (‘as medallists are daily crowned’).

Dr D’Angour also makes a playful pun on Boris Johnson’s name in Greek “Barus,” which means ‘weighty’ both in the physical sense and in the sense of a man of authority.

“Of course the puns may make people groan, but Pindar’s audiences may have done so too,” commented the Dr D’Angour.

“Boris certainly did it justice [when reading it to Olympic dignitaries], he brought it off with typical brio and panache, and even a bit of dramatic action when the Greek says ‘(watch) the archer draw his bowstring tight’!” added the doctor.

About the writing process Dr D’Angour said “It was terrific fun writing the ode, getting the Greek and the metre right, and working out how to make it effective as a performance vehicle for the Mayor.”

Dr D’Angour was previously commissioned to write a Pindaric Ode to Athens which was recited at the Athens Olympic Games in 2004.

First year classicist, Lydia Stephens enjoyed the puns, commetnting, “It’s very clever, Dr D’Angour did a great job.”

Ronan Magee a second year classicist added, “I think it’s brilliant, Dr D’Angour cooked up a fabulous Ode with lots of great jests. Let’s just hope that Adidas and LOCOG don’t object too much to the penultimate line’s reference to νÎ¯κη (Nike)!”

A lesson from Geordie Shore

Lifestyle

Matt Jones

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29th July 2012

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When I first watched Geordie Shore I decided it represented the worst of human culture, the last excesses of Rome before it was burned by the barbarians, and this (combined with the fact that I don’t have sky at home) meant that I swore off Geordie Shore and MTV for life. Having now become both more familiar with corners of the internet, of which MTV aren’t particularly big fans and living the intern dream, I’ve turned to Geordie Shore: Cancun Chaos as a source of escapism. And you know what? I may have been too quick to condemn. In fact, I think there’s a lot we could learn from them.

1. Drink Responsibly

If there’s one thing that LawSoc/balls/any open bar event has taught me, it’s that sometimes we need a lesson in restraint. Just because the alcohol is behind the bar doesn’t mean that it has to be drunk, although a feeling of wanting to ‘get your money’s worth’ (even if it was free) means that it normally is. In Geordie Shore, however, the drinks on the table don’t disappear as they’re put down. Gary, on the other hand, can happily dance next to a bottle of vodka for the entire night without feeling the need to down it. Admittedly it’s because he’s too busy shining his laser pen at girls in a manner that makes him look a little bit like a bouncer looking for drugs, but it’s obviously a tactic that’s working for him. In fact, maybe I’m not so much advocating reduced drinking but rather the use of laser pens to act as a, albeit slightly creepy, distraction.

2. There’s no substitute for good game.

If there’s one thing you can’t deny when watching the program, it’s that these Geordies have a lot of luck with the opposite sex. Whether you consider it luck when you see which particular specimens of the opposite sex they’ve gone for is another matter, but they seem to be enjoying it anyway. Not for them the forced intimacy of a crew date: eating curry with 15 others on a table that seats eight while subtly trying to encourage your friends to shout your most embarrassing/flattering/’laddish’ sconces. In the last episode Rebecca had been ditched by her girls, who’d all settled into relationships (or onto the toilet in Charlotte’s case), but there was no stopping her and she went off to meet a man at a foam party while ‘feeling like a soapy goddess’. Equally Gary, ever the charmer, goes for the line ‘three way kiss’, which I think is a technique that perhaps wouldn’t work as well in Camera, but then there’s only one way to find out.

3. Reject authority

One of the main sources of tension in Geordie Shore comes from Cancun Chris, a man who has no function in life other than to set arbitrary rules that will obviously be broken and tasks that involve random members of the group either doing nothing or travelling in order to do nothing. Nothing exemplifies this than his leaving of a special bottle of tequilia in the middle of the house he was letting them rent while telling them not to touch it, in a manner similar to the set up of the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge. When Gary, our band’s proverbial Eve, took the tequilia he was sent to get some more on a trip that seemed to rival the Fellowship of the Ring’s for length/discomfort. However the Geordies stand up to him, refusing to listen to his demands to ‘stay in the house’ and fleeing on the back of motorbikes when it all gets too much. Think of this example when next set a piece of work by a tutor who knows it’s completely irrelevant and you know will never mark it but just wants to make sure you’re productive during the vacation, or ‘extended study time’ as they seem to know it.

4. Never give up on love

Charlotte and Gary are rapidly becoming the “real life” Ross and Rachel, except without any semblance of adult responsibilities and with added threesomes and one night stands. Perhaps a more exciting Ross and Rachel when you put it like that. The little glances they give each other, the fact that Gary pies Charlotte and then Charlotte pies Gary and who can forget their trip to buy more Tequilia and the game of ‘gearstick’ that they played on the way home. It truly is the stuff of modern romance; you can really feel for Gary when he says how hard it’s going to be not to shag her and for Charlotte when she explains just how hard she’s tried to get over him and how much she still wants that cock. As Madeline Sava, a third year archaeology and anthropology student puts it, “It really does teach you that, while the path of true love may twist and turn, it is worth fighting for”. So what if he pies you and goes for the girl on the blues hockey team on a crew date, or she falls for that third year’s charms? Just pick yourself up and go for a grind on the RnB floor of Park End or a grope on the back of a punt, it’s always worth a go, this might just be the time they fall for it.

5. Make the most of what you’ve got/exercise

Regardless of what you think of the Geordie Shore gang, their morals and general outlook on life, you can’t say that they haven’t nailed it. They’re basically doing what they (and don’t lie, a lot of us as well) would do in an ideal world in a house paid for MTV and clubs that give them drinks (they don’t even have to sell tickets for them!). I’m not sure how it works but it doesn’t look like they cook or clean, just go clubbing, talk about going and try to navigate group politics. If that doesn’t sound like Oxford without the essays or bills I don’t know what does. Who’s having the last laugh now?

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Oxford's oldest independent student newspaper, est. 1920