They say you should leave Oxford with a first, a husband or a blue. Which one would you choose? Liz Williams graduated from Oxford this year with a First and a husband. She met her beau at a ball in Hilary of first year, and he proposed in Trinity of third year. “We got married just after Finals so we did a lot of the preparation for the wedding while revising. It was nice to be able to flick through bridal magazines as a break from law revision. I usually revised in the day and planned for the wedding in the evening; having a wedding to look forward to was really useful to off-set the stress of Finals.”

Liz explained how she and Harry had always wanted to get married, but that it was her year abroad in Germany that decided the time frame. “I could see it coming but I wasn’t sure exactly when he would propose.” Though her friends from Oxford found it odd as a concept to get married so young, Liz told how friends in Germany were really shocked. “Possibly because those who go into higher education there stay in education longer, so marriage is put off till later”, she explained. While her friends were celebrating the end of Finals by going travelling in exotic countries, she spent the summer in a cottage in Warwickshire with her new husband. “We got married in August and by then it was pretty expensive to go anywhere too crazy.”

Gabriel Martindale proposed to his girlfriend in Trinity of third year, on a punt in Magdalen’s river by Batwillow Meadow. Gabriel and Dina had been going out for a year and a half; they got together in Michaelmas of his second year and her fourth year. “Some of my friends were very surprised we had got engaged, some were less, and some wondered why it took so long,” he said. “I didn’t want to get married till after I finished my degree, although my wife points out that I did not help much anyway so it would not have made a difference!”

“I think it’s sad that more people don’t get married, even when they know they are in love,” Gabriel explained. “But we wanted to prove that it was possible to get married – to show you can have a nice wedding on a modest budget. Getting married so young will continue to be the exception unless there are any massive societal changes.”

But not everyone waits till after finals to tie the knot. Bryony Collins, who also graduated from Oxford this summer with a First in Archaeology and Anthropology, got married at the end of first year. She met Rusty, now aged 35, during her gap year in New Zealand, and was already engaged when she matriculated at St Hugh’s back in 2007.

“We arranged the wedding during my first year, and did most of the planning in Trinity, which was a nice diversion form prelims revision. I was split between revising really hard and being super excited about Rusty coming to England and the wedding.

“Most people at college viewed me as ‘the one who got married’ and some people found it really strange. But everyone from my course was really accommodating. We had to go on a two week excavation dig, and at that time Rusty had just moved to the UK with nowhere to live. I asked my tutor if Rusty could come on the dig too, so he came with, and actually did the dig with us.”

Though Bryony lived in Hugh’s accommodation for her first year, she lived out with Rusty during her second and third year. “Obviously living with Rusty made a huge difference to my time at university, but I preferred it. I lived with him in Oxford all year round, so it really felt like my home, and it was nice to get away from the crazy, intense atmosphere of college.

“I definitely did not go out as much as most of my friends but that would have been the case anyway, as I’m not that fussed about the nightlife here. I was part of the trampolining club, so went out on crew dates and socials in my first year, but not as much after I was married. I know most people wait at least until after they have graduated if they want to get married. But for us it was the choice between getting married and living together in same country, or spending three years going back and forth between England and New Zealand. We were already engaged so getting married didn’t feel like a massive step.”
Scott Berry is one of two second year PPE students at Wadham to be engaged. But Scott’s situation is even more unique: he lives with his fiancée Dani and baby daughter, Maddie. Scott and Dani met when they were seventeen, and started going out when they were eighteen. In November, when Dani was a few months into her first year at Sheffield University and Scott was on his gap year, they found out that Dani was pregnant.

“Dani did not get pregnant on purpose but we decided to keep the baby. Both our parents were really shocked when they found out, but now they have come round to it all. Wadham have also been really helpful; one of the first people we spoke to was the Wadham Admissions Tutor, who sorted out a college owned apartment for us in Kidlington.”

However, Scott described how in other ways the college has not been as supportive: after problems with student finance, as Maddie was born after the applications were due in, the Domestic Bursar threatened to kick Scott, Dani and Maddie out of the flat.
Scott said, “Having a baby has definitely changed things, but then this was inevitable. Its harder to make friends if your living out of college in your first year. The main thing is time – I want to spend time with my family and see my daughter growing up. Even though part of my life is very different to others, I still have a lot in common with other students, I’m still at uni studying for my degree. People at Wadham tend to be surprised but not judgmental”.

Scott explained how having a child has much more of an impact than just being engaged. “There’s a sense in which I wish I could be a normal student, be able to go out till late and not worry about getting up when Maddie cries at 6a.m. But I would never sacrifice Maddy and Dani for it.”

The average age at which people get married continues to rise. In 1961 the average age for first marriage in England and Wales was 25.6 years for men, and 23.1 years for women. By 2000 this rose to 30.5 for men and 28.2 years for women. But given the number of students at Oxford who have long term partners while at university, it is perhaps surprising that there aren’t more Trinity proposals on punts, mid-finals wedding planning, and post-finals wedding celebrations. So why isn’t everyone doing it?

There is a lot of social pressure not to get tied down, as well as financial pressure, what with student loans to pay off and an unstable job market. Many people do not want to rush into things like buying a flat together and opening joint bank accounts. Some even say you are ruining your life to get married when you are so young, and would never even consider it. Graduates often want to become established in their careers before they turn their attention to marriage. Perhaps it is also the strange atmosphere at university that makes it hard to export a relationship straight from Oxford into the real world. There’s quite a big gap between bringing your boyf to your college bop and bringing him to your corporate client dinners. Getting engaged, married and having a baby will almost certainly remain the exception while at uni. And perhaps its best that way.

Living modernly is living quickly. You can’t cart a wagonload of ideas and romanticisms around with you these days. When you travel by airplane, you must leave your heavy baggage behind.’

Not Caitlin Moran, but Lady Tantamount in Aldous Huxley’s 1928 novel Point Counter Point. Moran would put it differently. But no writer in Britain today is more modern or quicker on the draw than the woman behind Celebrity Watch and every other feature in the T2, and Caitlin Moran travels light. Intellectual baggage, with all its -isms and -ations, is ditched in favour of ROFLs and OMGs by the first writer ever to get the word ‘cunt’ into a Times op-ed (and it ranks among her proudest achievements).

‘The funniest woman in the country’ – so says Jonathan Ross, anyway – greets me on the doorstep. She has a purple velvet dress, and her trademark shock of black-and-white-streaked hair – modelled on the TV series Dynasty, she says, although it reminds me of Rogue from the first X-men film – is more impressive in real life than in the pictures.
I am whisked into the kitchen, past a room that contains more CDs than an HMV. Few books. Many photos. Moran bustles happily, fixing me an instant coffee with the last of her Nescafe Gold while her daughter watches intently from the other side of the table. Her new book – which she describes as ‘redefining feminism for the 21st century, with a load of knob gags’ – was finished about an hour ago, and she is all sweetness and light and utterly comfortable with this jaded stranger in her home.

Up to the ‘office’, a spare bedroom where she lifts a stack of copies of The Times off the bed – yes, Moran hoards her articles just like we do – and she lights a roll-up. She sighs with pleasure. ‘The main reason for writing this book was so that I could start smoking again.’
And the interview begins. Sort of. Moran talks nineteen to the dozen, faster than a fourteen-year-old girl on a sugar high, and there is absolutely no distinction between what is on the record and what is off it. I can scarcely keep up.

What’s she on about now? Her book. ‘What makes it unique is that it is written from a position of absolute pig ignorance and lack of any academic grounding whatsoever.’ I point out that this sense of humour is anathema to feminist writing. ‘That’s why I needed to write the fucking book,’ she replies.

Sudden interlude: a message appears on her Twitter account. It’s from Stephen Fry: ‘So, @caitlinmoran, I believe madam has finished her book. Huzzah! Let joy be unconfined. A million shimmering congratulations.’ She scrambles to reply, while I desperately try to catch spurts of the stream of brilliance pouring from her lips.’@stephenfry Fucking ace. Can I use that as a cover quote? Or a tattoo on my face? Or arse?’

This isn’t how student interviews are supposed to go. I’m used to earnest discussions about the state of the nation and the decline of culture, where you have to spend entire half hours angling for a single risque quote. And here is Caitlin Moran, rattling out more controversy in a minute than you’ll find in an entire issue of NME.

For Moran, speed is everything. ‘I just get faster and faster – you’re at your most creative when you don’t have time to think.’ She points to a picture of Usain Bolt breaking the world record for the 100m at the Beijing Olympics, tacked up on her wall over what must be the world’s largest coffee cup. ‘That’s my inspiration – I love to think of all my rivals sweating away while I do a little victory dance at the finish. I used to have to sit and think about writing, but now it’s mechanical – in a joyful way.’

Her parents pulled her out of school at 11, and she wrote her first and only novel at 16 just to pay the bills. ‘We were insanely poor,’ she says, ‘we were very, very poor. I just thought, “if the cataclysm comes, I’ll defend my family with the money I get from writing.” I was just a fuckwit in a hat who wanted money to pay for bunkbeds.’

Now humour is everything in her writing. ‘I don’t read the serious people,’ she protests, ‘I’m out there for the ROFLs. Humour is having an excess of intelligence. It means you have time left over to be charming. I literally just want somebody to have the best possible time on my page.’ She even has an aesthetic theory of gossip: ‘We’re all gossipy creatures – most art is either the result of somebody having a fucking affair or screwing somebody over. And with some art – like Francis Bacon – you just look at it and think “fucking hell, I can see the gossip there.”‘

But Moran’s humour has a sharp point to it. She has just started work on a ‘Gallery of True Hotness’ in the Times, offering women ‘useful’ men to fall in love with. ‘The men women are told to fancy are a bunch of hateful fucking wankers. Half of them are actors, and most of the actors I’ve met are cunts. You don’t want Aragorn, son of Arathorn, he’s a div.’ In place of Jude Law and Leonardo di Caprio, Moran is putting forward a sensible pantheon of crushes: Aslan, Father Christmas, and Gonzo from the Muppets.

‘If I have any responsibility at all,’ she says,, ‘it’s to be somebody a bit more clever and a bit more liberal and a bit more calm and to tell somebody who’s a div that, well, he’s a div. A little political correctness doesn’t hurt, either – political correctness is politeness, and politeness is one of the best inventions we’ve ever made.’

There are only two celebrities she will always go for with her claws out. The first is Simon Cowell, ‘because he’s insanely powerful and dim, and an absolute fucking philistine.’ The second is not Fearne Cotton – ‘I need to lay off her,’ says Moran wistfully, ‘even if she does let women everywhere down by pointing at things and just going AAAAAAAAH!’ – but David Cameron. She met Cameron at a News International party shortly after describing him as ‘a camp robot made out of ham,’ and he pointedly snubbed her for Giles Coren. ‘I thought posh boys were supposed to be polite and gracious,’ she muses, ‘even when dealing with these Hogarthian peasants.’

A full-time mother to two young children, she scarcely has the time to read books any more – everything comes off the internet. ‘I used to read a book a day, but since I’ve had kids I’ve just been fucked.’ She puts on a kind of counter-cultural pose: ‘I’m the naughty one. I was the first journalist to get in there with the ROFLs, the LOLs, and the Lolcanoes. In my opinion, the Profanisaurus is the best book published in the last ten years.’

Nevertheless, her siblings were packed off to university, and she has fond memories of dropping her brother off to read ‘super-advanced Maths’ at Jesus College, Oxford. But in spite of the pride she takes in her illiteracy – ‘if it’s a funny picture of a cat with a sausage on its head, I am so in’ – you can’t escape the impression that Moran is the brightest of the lot.

And she prizes education, whatever she says about it. ‘I would have thought an Oxford degree would be managed by the crusty old professor from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, sucking on his pipe and giving you crumpets. Actually, I’ve got this plebby, MILFy crush on these Oxbridge boys making their way through this system of favouritism like some microcosm of Twitter.’ I cross my legs and try to look bashful. She looks up with a smile. ‘The age of the nerd is upon us.’

I sure hope so. I think I am a little in love.

The Best of @Caitlinmoran:

‘Toby Young hasn’t done ANYTHING
other than be a c*** since 1993’

‘This bloke on Radio 4 is suffering from
severe “Delighted chuckle in the voice”.’

‘*sadly* I used to take loads of drugs on a Saturday night. Now I’m feeling “jangly” off the MSG in a Cup-a-Soup.’

‘Quick note to Gaga-haters trying to convince me she’s over-rated: I believe life is too short to talk to people who don’t like “Bad Romance”‘

‘Balls of hair, cheese rinds, fag ends, chewed gum, a bottle of champagne, 3 metres of
bubble wrap and a Mooncup: my desk.’

‘I can’t believe people are saying that Father
Christmas is my dad. My dad would have been far, far too stoned to do anything at 2am.’

Work-shy codger’ wasn’t the term I had in mind for describing Stewart Francis. Considering his hectic schedule as one of Britain’s highest profile comedians: with an international arena tour supporting Ricky Gervais; a number of successful appearances on The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Mock the Week, 8 out of 10 Cats and Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow; his own headlining UK Tour; previous work as host of Canadian gameshow You Bet Your Ass and writing credits for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno under his belt, I was a little taken aback by his disarming self-deprecation.

Charming and humble, what comes across immediately in conversation with Stewart is his bewilderment at his own, gratefully and graciously acknowledged, success. Francis tells me ‘I ended up involved with comedy because I’m pretty funny… And I’ve never wanted to work. I guess I had to do something with my life after getting out of prison.’ Francis jokes, of course, but it is difficult to make the distinction between his wry sense of humour and actual experience. He relishes the word ‘codger’, having applied it to himself as he recounts ‘breaking into comedy in my thirties… I just signed up for an open mic night and here I am.’ Francis asks me in earnest, as a Briton, if ‘codger’ is a deserved adjective, revealing his love for the British sense of humour.
Having grown up off and on in the UK and Canada, Francis confides in me that ‘Britain is my favourite place in the world – that’s why I’m here. I have to be here, professionally.’ From his first performance at the Stand Comedy Club in Edinburgh, Francis has felt at home. ‘Comedy is such a part of the British DNA’ he gushes in his Canadian twang, ‘it’s part of who the British are. The characters comedians love to use are all already there in the pub.’ Engaging with my reciprocal laugh, Francis gleefully has me agree: ‘See!’ he exclaims. ‘Through comedy is how the British communicate. In every aspect of British life humour comes in.’
I ask Francis how he feels, as a neutral Canadian, about American comedy in comparison to his beloved British humour. ‘Hmmm… There are funny Americans’ Francis sighs, ‘and, pound for pound, Canadians do well, too… American comedy is very influential’ he eventually hazards to compromise, ‘I liked American sitcoms like Police Squad, Greenacres, Get Smart… I guess they’ve had an effect on my comedy. They’ve seeped into my comedic brain.’ Francis attributes his own comic style, celebrated for his deadpan one-liners, ‘to an amalgamation of my British ancestry, with the influence of the American comedy I grew up with.’

Francis’ distinctive style ‘evolved naturally’, he muses: ‘comedians do whatever it takes in trying to make people laugh. With me, with my style, it’s just BANG BANG BANG, joke joke joke… I think the richer you make your set, the more you keep to the point of being funny, the more the audience enjoy their money’s worth. Yes, the more gags the better!’ The hardest, and most important, part he tells me is to ‘make ’em laugh. The audience doesn’t need to be educated. There’s nothing better than laughter, and comedy should be pure entertainment – it’s the best form of live entertainment. I want to ENTERTAIN. And to do that, I need to make ’em LAUGH.’

I ask Francis if he watches a lot of comedy, and what he thinks of his fellow inhabitants in the British comedy scene. He doesn’t watch a lot of comedy, but ‘did buy a Steve Martin video back in the 70s… It’s not something I’ve consciously noticed, but I don’t want to be distracted by other people.’

His style makes a change from the popularity of observational comedy, although he is quick to observe its success. ‘I think there are too many self indulgent storytellers’ he offers, ‘they care about dominating people’s lives, for an hour or however long, and lose sight of the importance, as a comedian, of just being funny all of the time.’
He recognises the prominence of comedy in popular culture today, and praises the diversity of styles it has bred. Francis reckons an individual comedian’s own personality determines their comedic style, and it’s much harder to maintain a complete showbiz facade than the public can be lead to believe. ‘I have a short interest span, so I need to make quick jokes. I like to chop and change between jokes and themes and characters to keep the audience entertained, and to keep things fresh.
Francis admires his fellow Mock the Week panellist Frankie Boyle’s rock-solid, self-assured persona, a tough sell in comedy. ‘My comedic persona isn’t deliberate’, he explains, ‘it evolves. The characters I play don’t necessarily reveal any aspects of my actual personality, but the stage persona created is an amalgamation of themes and characters I fall into.’

Regaling me with a story he once heard about the young Jim Carey pulling faces in front of the mirror as a child, Francis admits that his onstage expressions are natural, ‘I enhance my comedy with my cartoonish voice, it’s a great tool to be changed up and offer variance, like facial expressions are for other comedians.’

Having toured around the world with Ricky Gervais, Francis is ‘glad to have ticked the box of supporting, but I wouldn’t like to do it again. It showed me a different aspect of showbusiness, and of life. A public life, like Ricky Gervais’, is a life I wouldn’t want to live – I like that my performances aren’t too accessible for the public.’

Performing in arenas is a million miles away from his origins at the open mic night I add, and he agrees: ‘I’m grateful for the experience, but I don’t think, as a comedian, I got that true sense of an audience relationship that you get in smaller venues. And also, as a support act I was performing for people who weren’t my fans. I think my opinion would’ve been changed if they were my fans, who knew what they wanted, and didn’t need any breaking in.’ His rapid-fire delivery of one-liners and puns is certainly very different to Gervais’ rambling style. Just where do all of those jokes come from, I wonder?

‘I keep a book with me to write down jokes as thoughts occur. Often, new jokes come from a tour, while I’m running a set over my mind. I talk to myself. I developed a lot of jokes, on the long drives home from gigs in Canada, talking to himself. I am my own audience – I have a good batting average towards my jokes’ success ratio, I can edit myself well, and think I’m a good gauge of what’s going to work.’
Francis has gauged well – his DVD, Stewart Francis Live: Tour De Francis is released on 22nd of November, and in the same month, he’ll be hitting Oxford’s New Theatre live. ‘Oxford is a good town for comedy,’ he tells me, ‘I had a blast here before, and this time I’ll be hitting the ground running for fans who already know me, instead of having to win the audience over. I already laid the groundwork’ Francis jokes contentedly, ‘now I can bask.’