It was a dark, miserable night in the third week of Michaelmas that we trudged over to the Wheatsheaf for our first taste of Oxford’s comedic offerings. Being dragged by an overly-enthusiastic fresher to see the Oxford Imps and with only thoughts of essays and sleep in my head, I wasn’t expecting much from a city where all conversations seemed to revolve around hours spent in the library that week and A-Level results. Two hours later, I was beginning to change my mind. You see, it turns out little old Oxford isn’t just libraries and tourists buying hideously overpriced hoodies. Oxford is really rather funny. When replies to what our friends thought of the Oxford comedy scene were ‘what scene?’, we set out to talk to the best that Oxford had to offer. Because while most students have heard of the Imps and the Oxford Revue, there’s a lot more going on for people to indulge in.

‘Oxford has a great mix of comedy’, Imp Jamie Cooke enthuses, ‘You have stand-ups like Ivo Graham, the Revue doing sketches, improvised comedy like us, and comic plays like Turn Again Lane’. The formula for the Imps is pretty simple – you give them a word and they turn it into a scene. ‘The weirder the word, the better,’ Jamie continues. ‘When we were in Edinburgh last year, there was a little boy who gave us the word ‘toothbrush’. When we asked for something a bit different, he came back with ‘the fifth circle of hell’. That made for some pretty inventive comedy. But the best words are ones that some people in the group don’t know; there was a game a couple of weeks ago when an American Imp had to guess the Elgin Marbles. I don’t think even I would have guessed the Elgin Marbles’. ‘It’s family-friendly comedy,’ Ali Hall adds. ‘It doesn’t make a joke funny just to have swearing as the punch-line.’ He’s right, just with their brains, a word and some pretty serious raw comic talent, each week the Imps offer hilarious funny and totally original comedy. What makes it even more amazing is that it is all completely improvised. ‘We rehearse for three hours in the week and warm up for two hours before the show, but what you see on stage is completely new for us and the audience’. With a mixture of games, musical numbers and rap battles, and for only £3.50 for two hours, it’s easy to see why the Imps are at the forefront of the Oxford comedy scene.

But perhaps students are looking for something with a bit more history. The Oxford Revue was founded by Michael Palin in the early 1950s and, with alumni including Rowan Atkinson, Armando Ianucci, Angus Deyton and Richard Curtis, its legacy makes it more prominent. The Revue’s name was thrust back into the limelight recently with ex-Revue member Matt Lacey and his YouTube hit ‘Gap Yah’. ‘Oxford is very good for comedy but you have to look hard to find it’ says Ollie Mann, the group’s current president. But with the Revue maybe this isn’t the case; their most recent show The Oxford Revue and Friends, featuring the Durham Revue and the Cambridge Footlights, packed the Playhouse and time and time again people flock to see their mix of quirky, sharp and energetic sketches. ‘Imp Comedy is engaging because its improvised, however, with sketch comedy you have the opportunity to make the sketch as funny as possible and you don’t have the case of ‘Oh I wish I said that, that would have been funnier’. We meet as a group and brainstorm our ideas, but each sketch will have a different style depending on who wrote it’. With sketch comedy every scene is different so you can be guaranteed a laugh, especially if you go to the Revue’s shows where they choose only their best and most polished sketches. ‘We put on shows at the Wheatsheaf to try out new material and see whether it works, and that’s where we try out the students auditioning to join us’. Ollie is certain about one thing – they aren’t about to make their show family friendly.

‘Primarily, we do what we love and that produces the best comedy’. But it’s not only the Revue keeping people entertained, a new sketch comedy group Little Dark has just emerged on the scene, and following a successful show at the Burton Taylor, they seem ready to rival the Revue for the place of Oxford’s kings of sketch comedy.
Dark horses on the Oxford comedy scene are the stand-ups. ‘It’s the purest form of comedy,’ says Ivo Graham, ‘but in Oxford it’s far from being an institution. You wouldn’t want to start out in comedy here, but people obviously want it.’ Ivo incidentally won the So You Think You’re Funny? award at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and runs a packed stand-up comedy night ‘Ministry of Mirth’ twice a term at the Wheatsheaf. Ivo, Chris Turner and Rory O’ Keeffe are just some of the comedians working Oxford’s circuit at the moment. ‘There aren’t many nights especially for stand-up comedy, so you have to do college events and just try and get your name out there,’ Chris comments. ‘Also Paddy Luscombe runs the ‘The Free Beer Show’ on Mondays at The Cellar, where there is always a well-known headlining act and then student comedy afterwards’. There is stand-up comedy out there in Oxford if you know where to look for it, and there’s some to suit every taste. Rory describes himself appropriately as funny; Chris describes himself as witty; and Ivo as rambling. But having spent an evening with these three, we can definitely assure you that they’re highly amusing (although Rory did try to argue that ‘there’s a fine line between a serial killer and a comedian’).

So much great comedy is on in Oxford; all it needs is people to seek it out. An evening of comedy is going to cheer you infinitely more than that chocolate muffin if you have an essay looming, and definitely perk you up more than that third espresso. So put on a comedy night at your college or spend an evening with Oxford’s finest. If you can’t catch them in Oxford, show your support if you’re at the Edinburgh Fringe this summer – catch the Imps, Racing Minds (a group of ex-Imps), the Revue and Ivo all doing shows. If you don’t, you’ll never know what you’re missing out on.

Clive Anderson has no idea where he’s going. Or, for that matter, how he got to where he is. Throughout our interview, he stresses just how wildly unplanned his career has been. Indeed, before we get started, he offers a warning: ‘I may come across as a rather indecisive and drifting kind of person, actually because I am.’ Yet upon inspection of his career, ‘indecisive and drifting’ would be the last words to come to mind. Instead, over the past twenty-five years he has forged a consistently successful career that has seen him rarely absent from radio or TV. His stints on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Clive Anderson Talks Back, Have I Got News For You and many others have made him a familiar face to audiences in Britain and even across the world, yet despite such success, Anderson maintains his career has crept up on him.

At Cambridge, he seemed destined for comedy stardom, serving as president of the Footlights alongside Griff Rhys Jones and Douglas Adams, and it soon took priority. ‘It became my main preoccupation… but it had a sort of time-consuming aspect to it. You’re writing and rehearsing at exactly the time you’re supposed to be concentrating on your work, so it’s not ideal.’ Would the Footlights be to blame for any exam failures? ‘It’s a convenient thing to blame. I think I’d have been capable of wasting my time without Footlights, but [without it] I might have done a bit better.’

Despite this, Anderson emerged from Cambridge intent on becoming a lawyer, and laid comedy to bed. He sighs ‘I think it was sort of a failure of imagination, in a way… it didn’t really strike me that there was a world that needed me to be an actor or a stand-up comedian. I did want to be a barrister, so I did that.’ At least, for fourteen years. But his Footlight days weren’t dead: ‘I did keep up comedy in that I used to write sketches and jokes for radio and then TV programmes, but I didn’t really pursue it very much. It was like a little hobby that occasionally paid money.’ Yet eventually, law and comedy proved too tricky to balance: ‘I found it just too difficult, time-wise. But I didn’t really throw down my horse-hair wig and say, ‘Right, I’m stopping doing it’. I continued to do it for a while, until I realised, ‘Ooh, well I’m not really a barrister any more’. Has he considered returning to law? ‘I always thought I would… [But] now sufficient time has gone by that I’d have to start and retrain really.’

For Anderson, the gradual shift into comedy and presenting was accidental and, in many ways, he didn’t take it seriously: ‘When I was doing the telly, I’d be thinking, ‘Well, I’m not really a chat show host, I’m actually a barrister. I’m just doing this for a bit of a laugh.’ This shows onscreen, as he seems to lack egotism or vanity. He pauses. ‘I’ve experienced TV cameras, and they’re quite brutal. I certainly don’t usually watch my own programmes, because I don’t really like what I look like on television. I’d like to preserve the thought that I might look slightly different in real life, but I think that’s just a delusion really.’

Anderson seems to go to great length to paint a picture of himself as plain lucky, and rarely attributes his success to his own skill. ‘I’m not a great mover and shaker – things seem to happen to me, good or bad. I’m not very good at banging on the door and saying, “Look, this is what I should do”. I find that a difficult process.’ Yet the longevity of his career is not down to luck, but to talent. His rapid wit is renowned – though it has occasionally backfired. Infamously, the Bee Gees stormed out mid-interview after a few too many jibes, but that was anything but intentional: ‘I just stumbled accidentally into asking the wrong thing. I realised when they left that I’d trampled on a few nerves, but I didn’t do it intentionally. Well, that makes it worse doesn’t it?’

Such moments are rare, however. Instead, he has spent much of his career meeting his personal heroes, from Frankie Howerd to Peter Cook. His encounter with the latter led to an inspired special edition of his chat show, wherein Cook was the only guest and appeared as four different interviewees. It’s worth finding on YouTube. ‘I particularly liked that programme because it was great to work with Peter Cook in a proper comedy context… he didn’t really like talking about himself, he liked improvising and jollying away.’ With this impressive track record and Jonathan Ross’s impending departure, I suggest there’s a gap he might fill, but Anderson is quick to dismiss it. It’s a shame, as the dry wit for which he is famous would make a welcome change to the slightly more laddish, even juvenile, humour of Ross. But Anderson has no such doubts of the man’s skill. ‘I’m sure Jonathan Ross will crop up somewhere else as well, whether it’s on ITV or Sky or something. I doubt we’ve heard the last of Jonathan Ross.’

Currently, Anderson is mostly confined to radio, which he admits isn’t always ideal: ‘To be brutal, it’s not as well paid on the radio as it is on television, [and] it’s not as high profile. [But] it’s not really within my control.’ Still, many experienced a sense of déjà vu with the Second Prime Minster’s Debate, wherein Adam Boulton appeared as a weightier incarnation of Clive Anderson.

The man himself doesn’t see the resemblance: ‘I think it’s rather a cruel thing to say that he looks like a fat version of me! I’m sure that’s one of the worst insults I can imagine anyone giving.’ Nonetheless, he was present at the debates in spirit: ‘[The moderators] just had to say, ‘Mr Clegg! Mr Cameron!’ And so it was a little bit like Whose Line Is It Anyway? ‘And now I want that in the style of someone who does want to get elected.’ ‘Mr Brown, now do it with a smile on your face, to see if you can maintain it for more than a couple of minutes.’ He laughs at this, but adds, ‘forgive me if I ramble on too much. And please put it into sentences so I sound halfway reasonable.’

Such hesitancy is in stark contrast to his more confident onscreen persona, and while he has not been on television much recently, it seems doubtful that he’ll be away for long. For all his self-deprecation and even self-doubt, Anderson remains a witty and reliable host, and it has always been skill rather than luck that has sustained his career. He admits that he currently has ‘three or four projects which are in the ‘let’s go to lunch’ stage or ‘I’m just showing this to the controller’s stage,’ but quickly adds, ‘they sometimes come to nothing. I’m slightly nervous about talking about anything that isn’t set in stone.’ He needn’t worry. With things as they are, it doesn’t look like he’ll be retraining as a lawyer any time soon.

Cambridge is a half-hearted effort of a town. Let’s face it; it will always be the less quirky Oxford. From living in both places almost simultaneously it is easy for me to make a comparison and it’s not looking good for Cambridge.
I don’t blame you if you are fooled by Cambridge’s eccentric veneer. By law, you’re not allowed to play tennis in the street. Sounds kooky, but I’m afraid that bourgeois tradition feebly manifesting itself as idiosyncrasy is as far as it goes here. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that Cambridge is a vagarious vacuum.
With over 22,000 students frequenting the streets of Cambridge every year, you would have thought that the city would at least try and cater for this swarm of frolicsome, fun-loving twentysomethings. But alas, they are abandoned. Instead, the day’s entertainment comes in the form of punting under the mantra of you-will-bloody-well-grit-your-teeth-and-enjoy-it whilst unwillingly slurping warm, overpriced Corona and listening to the guide’s uninventive riverside commentary.
As our mediocre but ever-reliable local newspaper recently reported, ‘PUNT WARS BEGIN AGAIN AS TOUTS CLASH’. This is, of course, not referring to a low-budget Cambridge remake of Lucas’s galactic classic but to the fact that Scudamore’s Punts have a monopoly over Cambridge punting. But what does this mean for us river folk? It means that you should expect to pay in the excess of £30 every outing. What a bloody rip-off.
However, scathing remarks aside for just one moment, if you are ever in C-Town and find yourself drifting down the back alleyways, be sure to look out for a few hidden gems: the bohemian coffeehouse ‘Clowns’ is a Mecca for tiramisu-lovers the world over, the Japanese restaurant Teri-Aki serves cheap booze to the underaged and the charity shops offer cast-offs from the Cambridge elite.
And then, I suppose, there is the Strawberry Fair: an annual music festival in the heart of the city, rich with an inspiring diversity of people from louts to ladies to lawyers. Local bands come out in force and volume, exhibiting their raw talent and promising musical careers. The Fair embodies any remnants of a ‘scene’ in Cambridge.
But wait, what’s that you say? Strawberry Fair is cancelled this year? Yes, you heard correctly. Organisers say that ‘unfortunately, each year it is necessary to deal with those who would use the event as an excuse to offend’: a ‘scaredy-cat’ approach to the spoonful of adverse behaviour that inevitably emerges from such a unique event. So all that we have been clinging onto has faded and we’re left hungry for handicraft once again.
However, I am hopeful. Yesterday I received an invitation to a group on Facebook entitled ‘Even though Strawberry Fair is cancelled, I’ll still turn up’. This encourages me: perhaps the vision of the Cambridge people for a more eclectic city is not so blurred after all. It is for this reason that I remain loyal to Cambridge: I always knew that coming to Oxford would be a cruel test of where my allegiance truly lies.
Cambridge, my love, I’m coming home.

Last November saw the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall and the re-unification of Germany after forty four years of division. Heads of state from countries across Europe were present and the public celebrations were televised worldwide. A chain of one thousand giant dominoes running along the route of the wall was toppled in a symbolic re-enactment of its fall in 1989. Even an autumnal downpour could do little to dampen the scenes of jubilation across the city.
Since re-unification in 1989 a succession of governments in Germany has invested vast sums of money in the East of the country and the East of Berlin, which were formerly run by the Soviet Union. After 44 years of Communist rule, East Berlin was significantly poorer than West Berlin; its citizens had been brought up under a very different set of values and beliefs. For these reasons social and economic integration has been a slow process.

Today, Berlin is not rich. A bird’s-eye view of the city is singular in its lack of sky-scrapers and high-rise buildings. Germany’s financial sector has taken root in cities like Munich and Frankfurt and this is where big business has flourished. Thus, while politically Berlin is the capital of the country, economically it is the capital of the ‘working poor’. One quarter of the workforce (about 360,000 people) earns less than 900 euros a month. Unemployment too, however, is far higher than the national average – it reached a staggering 14.2 per cent in July last year, when the national average was far lower at 8.2 per cent.

Most of this poverty and unemployment is still concentrated in the East of the city. A short walk round any neighbourhood in this part of town is enough to show you how current the problem is. Derelict apartment blocks, disused factories, empty spaces – the vestiges of Communist rule and a poignant symbol of where recent government investment has failed to bridge the gap left behind when the wall came down.
Berlin is also a fairly ‘young’ city. The capital has several large universities and because of the flexibility of the German educational system, many young people remain students into their late twenties. Students make up no less than 25% of the city’s population. What’s more, they all tend to gravitate towards the East of the city, largely due to the simple fact that it is cheaper to rent housing here than in the West.
Because of this, in the last twenty years a novel phenomenon has sprung up in these areas of Berlin. In Eastern quarters such as Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, communal houses known as Hausprojekte have begun to spread. They started out life as squats: students taking over derelict buildings and turning them into functioning living spaces, but they are now far more official and more common. They have become a ubiquitous sight as one wanders round the Eastern boroughs.

From the street, these houses are instantly striking: brightly painted murals often stretch right across the entire facade of the building; banners screaming political slogans hang out of windows; groups of young people often congregate on the steps outside; loud punk music emanates from within the bowels of the building.
These Hausprojekte are run on a basic principle of communal living – the inhabitants share the physical space, their food and drink. Some of the more radical Projekte work on a pure communal ideology, each individual sharing everything with the other residents: all their possessions and their money.

Food is an essential part of this communal lifestyle. Often these projects will open up their doors for a Vokü (short for Volksküche, ‘People’s Kitchen’), which involves the cooking of a large pot of food which is then dished out to anyone who has one or two euros to spare. Other projects house public spaces such as cinemas, cafés or even climbing-walls.

One of the oldest Hausprojekte in Berlin is known as Köpi (it is situated at 137 Köpenickerstrasse in Friedrichshain). In February of this year, it celebrated its twentieth birthday, meaning that it was first squatted only three months after the Berlin wall came down.

The old apartment block sits a way back from the street and is obscured by a number of tall trees behind a rusty fence. As you step in through the open metal gate, however, an impressive sight meets your eyes. You stand in a shadowy courtyard and look up at the vast building as it looms enormous and dark over you. Graffiti, slogans and blazing political banners cover its face. The residents of Köpi are radical and on the far Left of the political scale. To live here, you have to be.

The residents organise regular demonstrations and marches, often in defence of other squats in Berlin which are in danger of being closed down by the authorities. Political slogans are all over the project’s website – ‘Gemeinsam sind wir unausstehlich. Raus auf die Strasse!’ (‘Together we are intolerable. Out and onto the street!’). The group has recently also taken itself off Myspace as it does not want to subscribe to the ‘capitalist brainwashing of Rupert Murdoch’.

Berlin has always had a reputation for being a focal point of political expression and protest. Virtually every year, May Day (International Workers’ Day) culminates in riots on the street and clashes between demonstrators and the police. The Hausprojekte like Köpi seem to have become vehicles for this political expression and provide a space in which people can speak out against issues as wide-ranging as neo-Fascism, climate change and animal testing.

Berlin’s recent history is unique and the influence this has had on the city is clear. The remnants of Communism in the East are still very visible. Street names commemorating the heroes of the German Democratic Republic are still preserved in East Berlin today – if you choose to, you can do some window-shopping on Karl-Marx-Allee, take the underground metro to Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz or grab a drink on Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse.

But there are more subtle ways in which the Communist past has helped shape the Berlin way of life. One could argue that the Hausprojekte, so common in East Berlin now, are one example of the way in which Communism has influenced the lifestyles of at least some people in Berlin today. This is not to say that they are all Communists, but more that the values of sharing and equality at the heart of the Communist ideology seem to form the basis for their way of living together.
Communal living is something which has virtually died out in Britain. On average, we no longer even live with our extended relatives any more, preferring instead the even more insular confines of the nuclear family.

Perhaps this is no bad thing. Perhaps, however, we might look to East Berlin and the Hausprojekte and take a more open approach to the idea of living communally. For I can see no reason why it should remain such a foreign concept.