Cherwell brings you headlines from the past week… George Bush has refused to criticise Israel’s air strike on Syria in response to a terror attack which left 20 people dead. National papers are close to exploding a legal minefield, after hinting at the identity of premiership footballers alleged to have gang-raped a teenage girl. A male contraceptive has proved 100% effective in preliminary clinical trials of hormone injections on 55 men. Dogs were turned into mules last week, after police discovered cocaine sewn into the stomachs of two live labradors. Ben Affleck has denied meeting a woman who is making claims of harassment against him in the wake of media frenzy surrounding the cancellation of his wedding to singer JLo. Celebrities clamoured to congratulate young winner of Pop Idol, Alex Parks, who appeared dazed by her meteoric rise to musical recognition this Saturday. Playful tricks turned nasty for world-famous illusionist Roy, who was mauled by his pet tiger on stage in front of his partner Siegfried and a confused live audience. Sergeant Bilko, the 1950s American comedy series, was named best ever TV sitcom in the Radio Times guide to TV comedy. ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Both Tony Blair and IDS have battled cynical media coverage of the party conferences this week, struggling to retain focus on policy in the face of infighting and leadership controversy. Despite Tory hopes for an inspirational speech from their party frontman, Duncan Smith gave only a lacklustre performance, assuring voters that he would win the next election, but hardly appearing convinced himself; critics commented snidely that he had at last succeeded in unifying the party, but only in opposition to his leadership. Before IDS had even taken the stage, most attention was paid to speculation about possible candidates to succeed him, with former chancellor Kenneth Clarke casting the most threatening shadow over his pledge to remain in control. While warding off scepticism about his political competence, IDS threatened to sue the BBC should it broadcast allegations concerning the dubious payment of a secretary’s salary to his wife out of party finances, but he failed to prevent the rumours from clouding his conference agenda. The Independent even declared IDS’ leadership in crisis after its survey this week revealed that most people see the Liberals as Labour’s most serious opposition. According to electoral polls, the Tories remain in second place by five points, defying forecasts that they would advance on Labour following a recent slump in Blair’s popularity. The Prime Minister’s credibility was most dented in the past week by Channel 4’s drama, The Deal, which portrayed him as a wellspun actor on a ruthless quest for self-advancement. The programme purported to represent his rise to power, focussing on the friction between Blair and Brown, especially during the infamous Granita agreement supposedly promising the Chancellor leadership of the government halfway through his second term as Prime Minister. However, Blair managed to smooth over accusations of spin and deceit with a concerted campaign to promote Labour’s renewed efforts at transparency; his speech again proved his mastery of sincere performance, reasserting his authority as the party vote-winner and locking Brown back up in his little red box.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

The micro-mini is a must have this season, as the sexiest of all skirts regains its catwalk throne and gives our favourite slouchy combats a sharp kick in the pants. Patterned tights at D&G, leggings at Versus, opaque tights in bright colours at Marc Jacobs and almost endless thigh-high boots at Gucci all meant one thing – the focus is on legs this season. But the sudden leg-fetish is nothing to fear even if you don’t have the proportions of a supermodel – in fact it’s pretty good news. There’s no reason to slog for pointless hours on the cross-trainer; there is no J.Lo bottom of legs. Yes, most of us may turn green at the sight of Gisele in a miniskirt, but many guys may not agree with you. Britney’s legs are short and chunky and Beyoncé’s thighs are far from toned but guys go crazy over both. Go figure. Treat your own little slice of perfection to some of this season’s leg-hugging lovelies.All clothes from GAFF, Broad St,Short faded denim skirt £65; Black cow-neck top £54;Tartan skirt £72; Red and khaki top £27Model – KATIE CARROLLARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Four recent St. John’s graduates, NICK STANHOPE, REBECCA GOWLAND, JONNY POLONSKY and ROBERT HADMAN give us weekly updates as they cycle the length of Africa to campaign against slavery #1 Rob: The story begins… A couple of years ago my friend Nick Stanhope invited me to join him for what can only be described as “the trip of a lifetime”. This horrible cliché was, however, justified. His plan was to travel by bicycle all the way from Cape Town to London. It was irresistible and I immediately signed up. At the time, Nick and I lived in a skanky house on Museum Road. It was our second year, and hence levels of maturity were at an all time low. Nick, an immaculately dressed, eyebrow-plucking alpha male, brought a tiny measure of class and responsibility to the house, yet his bike-ride idea was anything but compatible with the middle-aged, father-figure tag with which I had branded him. So Nick, Becks, my feminist fiancée, Jonny and I committed ourselves to the summer of 2003 for our adventure. Becks’ experience as chair of the University’s branch of Amnesty International gave us the focus necessary to turn this pipe dream into today’s reality. Personal connections to Kevin Bales, author of Disposable People and one of the world’s leading authorities on modern slavery, inspired us to raise money and awareness for Anti-Slavery International, the oldest human rights charity in the world. Fund-raising has been fun but exhausting. We have managed to raise roughly £25,000 so far, £15,000 of which ASI has already received. Saracen Bikes gave us four very shiny machines at an incredibly good price, all our spares have been severely discounted and our flights donated through relatives’ air-miles. Contributors range from Jeremy Paxman to Jeffrey Archer, but we’re still waiting for Sting and Desmond Tutu… Getting a documentary off the ground has also proved tough, but it’s been really fun pursuing contracts, coming up with ideas and talking about factors such as group psychology. We decided to set off from Cape Town on 23rd August, International Slavery day, cycling 100 miles a day, investigating and filming cases of slavery en route, camping every night, and producing a documentary on the move. Our route should take us from South Africa, through Mozambique and Malawi and into Tanzania. From there we aim to cycle into Kenya and then to Ethiopia. Then it gets very tricky; Sudan is a bit of a shit to get into and not much fun once you’re there, it’s one of those war-in-adesert type places with a flourishing slave trade and a distinct lack of roads. Then when/if we get to Egypt, we’re still thinking of making a break for Jordan and coming round the Med via Syria and Turkey You will get updates of our weekly progress here but please check out our swanky website at www.capetowntolondon.co. uk – any interest we can generate amongst jobless students will be helpful. Next week we’ll be thousand miles closer to home and doubtless will have lots more to report – look forward to photos of our scabby arses…ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

DANIEL LLOYD explores representations of the women of Zimbabwe and finds little to praise In Praise of Women, ArtAfrica’s exhibition of Zimbabwean sculpture, which took place in the gardens of Magdalen College, was a very curious affair indeed. Ostensibly intended as a showcase for indigenous Zimbabwean stonework, it was largely controlled and curated by middle-aged westerners, and the works carried hefty price tags. Apparently a display of folk-art, the pieces seemed strangely derivative, inducing nothing so much as a sense of deja vu. A mass of contradictions. A curate’s egg. The reasons behind the unsatisfactory feelings which one takes away from the exhibition are several, and are perhaps indicative of a wider trend in populist art, particularly that which emerges from Zimbabwe. To most westerners, that country is a blank space on their mental embroidered tea-towel of the cultural map of Africa. It falls vaguely south of the Pharaohs, east of Youssou N’Dour, north of the Rainbow Nation. The tradition of stone sculpture is, ironically for a country whose name translates as “house of stone” in the language of the Shona people who make up a little over four-fifths of its population, rather recent, having taken off around the 1970s. And therein lies the problem. It has, throughout its entire cultural history, been supported and encouraged by westerners and white farmers. Zimbabwe has no great history of tourism, and that has certainly declined in present times. So, in order to attract buyers for these pieces, they must be hawked around the world (this particular exhibition is taking place in Oxford, London, Copenhagen and Uppsala) in a boutique dressed as a museum. Worse still, in order for the work to sell, it must be saleable. It must be user-friendly. Hence the sense of deja-vu: this is “African art” for the lowest common denominator. There are the obligatory big–buttocked earth mamas, faces with vaguely “tribal mask–like” features, and abstract depictions of wombs and the female form. That is not to decry the technique of the sculptors who achieve remarkable effects of texture and colour with the huge geological wealth of Zimbabwe. Nor the setting, which, with the dreary rain of a typical Oxonian summer brought out wonderful tones in the stone that the heat of Harare might not. Sadly the subject matter does not engage with the realities of life. On the one hand, one could argue that the depiction of such elemental subjects as womanhood, birth, or childhood are in some indefinable way universal; but on the other, where is the engagement with rape, incest, prostitution, misery, poverty, pain, queues for bread? This exhibition sanitises the lives of the “women of Zimbabwe” and does them a disservice. It turns them into sitting-room curios, inoffensively genial, un-challengingly joyous. In Praise of Women has received much adulation, yet it is rather patronising; we ought to demand more of our artists. The exhibition ought to be retitled “A Present from Zimbabwe” – we ought to ask ourselves whether “A Present from Eastbourne” would have the same reception. www.artafrica-online.comARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Give me your tired, your poor and your huddled masses…” If ever a place in England could speak these lines as that famous symbol of immigrant opportunity west of the Atlantic does, it would be a stretch of road smack–bang in the middle of London’s East End. For fleeing Huguenots in the 18th century, escaping Jews in the 19th and Bangladeshis in the 20th it was a place of economic and social refuge; that place was Brick Lane. Monica Ali’s debut novel immortalises the idiosyncrasies of the immigrant experience, focusing on a Bangladeshi woman and her trials and tribulations as a daughter, wife and mother. The narrative journeys from rural Bangladesh to Tower Hamlets with Nazneen its protagonist. In London she experiences a fettered lifestyle, firmly under the thumb of her husband’s “advice” despite her own embryonic attempts to forge an independent existence. Far from being illiberal, her husband, Chanu, is neither religiously inclined nor particularly adherent to native custom. He revels in his self-implied superior status, a man “always learning” in comparison to other Bangladeshis who “miss the pull of the land”. Meanwhile, Nazneen listens with serene confidence to her husband’s platitudes on everything and anything, and her children’s difficulty with their culture. Interwoven are glimpses of Hasina’s life through letters she sends to her sister, Nazneen. Later, young Karim enters Nazneen’s life, sparking hidden desires and catalysing Nazneen’s path to self–discovery as a woman. Unfortunately the Booker–Prize– nominated Brick Lanefails to live up to its press blurb. Euphemistically called “epic” and “Dickensian”, some may claim the lack of dramatic momentum is necessary in order to correspond realistically with the minutiae of Nazneen’s slow life, but it still doesn’t adequately justify the plodding pace. Like Dickens, Ali creates cartoonish characters instantly recognisable through what they look like and say; there’s Chanu’s fat self and pseudo–intellectual ruminations, Mrs Islam’s arthritic body and tiresome advice and Islamic groups with fundamentalist leanings, animations that become clichéd and painfully skewed. But Ali must be commended on her poetic and practical vision of the immigrant experience. She gives us haunting aperçus wrought with pathos into death and illuminating observations on the tantalising memory of the motherland, the immigrant’s disillusionment with the host-culture and the question of a multicultural identity. Ali implies in many ways that an immigrant’s old-school thinking has no place in a modern world where free will spells out happiness for the individual, a world where choice not convention must determine human action, after all says a character, “This is England, you can do whatever you like.”ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

VICTORIA CAULFIELD & GEORGINA TURNER seek sensual pleasure in Greece Clutching our factor 30 in true Brit style and looking for a change of scenery from the dreaming spires, we set off this summer to the land of sensual pleasures – Greece. Later, falling off the plane at a time when even Hussein’s is closed, collapsing under the weight of our rucksacks, and with a bus door slamming in our face, we were wondering when the holiday was going to begin. First stop was the medieval island of Rhodes – better known for its 18-30’s resort of Faliraki – where sex is as readily available as Retsina. After a year in the Oxford desert we couldn’t resist a stop. Sadly, fate became our contraceptive. Several hours later we woke up, blurry eyed having slept through the neon lights and the cries of Nelly’s, “its getting hot in here, so take off all of your clothes”. Lindos appeared to be our new destination. A rather more cultural one than had been intended but at least the rape alarm could be tucked away in the handbag. Tor, horrified at the thought of another “monument day”, decided it was an appropriate time to email the parents and impress them with the unexpected culture, rather than the usual suntan news. Yet before we knew it we are sitting in the ‘Luna Bar’ with cocktails being thrown our way by a big motorbike rider/cocktail bar tender called George. The decision is made and publicly broadcasted: George is the new guy in our lives. The size of a sumo wrestler, clad in a black vest, with tattooed muscled arms rippling, he is a surprising softie at heart, with a soft southern Texan drawl. As a local of Lindos for eight months of the year, he gives us a useful insight. Not only a local information point but George also offers free alcohol and provides us with private tuition in cocktail education. Achieving the feats of getting two past salmonella sufferers to drink a raw egg concoction. As the tax receipts pile up under the ash tray after numerous cocktails and shots are consumed, the enormous George doubling before our eyes, we make our broadcast. “George is the best cock…t…tail maker in the world, got something for…for everyone…we love him”. Collapsing back on our stools, Tor starts chatting to some English forty year old with a blatantly fake cockney accent and the subject seems to be Chemistry… we wonder what men find impressive… One thing for sure – it’s not working. Podge starts talking to a sailor from Plymouth who has never been further in his ship than Ipswich. Our own Faliraki is perhaps not so different after all. The e-mail Tor’s parents received that night was not the one that had been intended, the computer in the bar suddenly having a surprising appeal in the early hours. Luckily for us Greece may have its Falirakis but just around the corner is that perfect hangover retreat. Genadi, south of Lindos, proved to be ours. The peace was only disturbed by the formidable silhouette of George on his Harley Davidson scouting the beach for us – an abrupt reminder of our promised lunch date from the night before. The rapid dive under the sunbed was the only hindrance to our recovery… Contrary to what you might think, Greece does have places where you can whip your top off without the penalty of a £1500 fine. In Ikaria, a remote, secluded island where fishing offers tourism some competition, we discovered some more unusual sights than on your typical day at the beach. The nudist beach at Naz is the ultimate in liberation. Not only for the chance to bronze those always glowing in the dark bits, but also an impressive hippy commune, if you take the wrong turn. A few needles, and unintelligible conversations later we finally were pointed in the right direction. The hippy commune and nudist beach stand as a bizarre foreground to one of the most ancient ruins in Greece. Sun goddess Podge was in heaven – although finding it rather difficult to focus on the pages of Robinson Crusoe. The man to the left who should definitely try the latest anti-wrinkle cream, and the very fit Swede on the right with his porn star body were not conducive to our reading habits. The least pleasurable bit of any holiday is the actual travelling, not least when you are a definite Class C candidate. Somehow the rucksacks didn’t do much for the Class A quality we thought we could pass as. Made outcasts on top deck for the duration of a 22 hour ferry journey, our cafeteria no more than a sign, we certainly knew our place. Any attempt at entering the ’Saphire lounge’ below was thwarted by the little grey haired Greek man whose English amounted to “shoo”. Thankfully with bargains struck on a victorious treble win at backgammon, we claimed our bodyguards, Joseph and Jack – English gentlemen all the way – to guard us while we froze into sleep. We definitely felt like the stereotypical Bridget Jones when one day we were forced to ask some people where we were. I think the tourists who we targeted thought we were completely past hope when they initially replied, “Rhodes, Greece”. Then, when they replied “Mount Smithe” we gaily set out on a mountain hike without a map – all in aid of maintaining our mixed lacrosse fitness of course. After three weeks Podge finally weaned typical Brit Tor off factor 30 and was glad to report that the tans reached a satisfactory level. While we found that Greek sensual pleasures remain a myth, evident only on graphic sexual position postcards which could even outdo More’s ‘position of the fortnight’, Greece certainly gave us that alternative to the dreaming spires. Maybe looking back it was that clichéd girly holiday, but as the ancient Greek saying goes, “Girls justa wanna have fun!”ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Eddie Jordan is variously described as a fun-loving family man, an independent maverick and an incredibly astute businessman. On the eve of the final Formula One race of the 2003 season, I caught up with him at home to find out which of these images best fit the man himself.
Eddie gets a lot out of life, has a lot of fun, but as he says to me, “coming from Ireland, it is very much in the culture there that you shouldn’t take yourself to seriously.” He’s well aware however, that Formula One is a pretty serious business, worth billions of pounds worldwide, so at the same time he insists, there is often a requirement to focus and concentrate, and for him this requirement has been there for a long time, and is very much a part of who he is.
I ask him whether, at my age, he had this same concentration, and how he went about enjoying himself: “In many ways I took myself more seriously at your age than I do now, although I was always dreaming, but there was this need to be considering your future, how you’re gonna get on in life, how you’re gonna make a living.” Surely an attitude prevalent amongst many students at this University. He started out as a banker, but this was brought to a close by his passion for motor-racing, which as he explains, started out as a hobby, and progressed through becoming a professional racing driver, to owning arguably the most successful independent team in contemporary Formula One.
He explains that after a great summer, he is exhausted by this stage of the year. When I spoke to him he was clearly a man in need of a good night’s sleep after some heavy travelling. I ask him how he switches off, what his week consists of, bearing in mind that the racing takes place every fortnight. He works extremely hard Monday to Friday, about 12 hours away at the office, speaking to lawyers, bankers and accountants, hardly anybody’s idea of fun, “but I do normally try to do something for Friday and Saturday night,” and he often plays golf at the weekend.
What about his job does he enjoy, what gives him the most pleasure? Unsurprisingly for such a renowned deal-broker, it is “the buzz” of closing an important agreement, as he has in the recent past with giants Benson and Hedges and Deutsche Posts, which really gets his blood running. Citing how quickly the day seems to pass for him as proof of how much his working life appeals to him, it is clear that he is kept busy, and is completely immersed in what he does, which he adds is in part down to the “happiness he feels at his achievement.”
He goes on to explain this happiness, by looking at where he came from: “there was no motor-sport culture in Ireland, just mostly football, so that made it more difficult, and I had to work non-stop to make the breakthrough.” And what a breakthrough it has been. When I ask him which moments of his life he has enjoyed the most, and of which he is the proudest, he says that along with being present at the birth of all four of his kids, and the day he first met his wife, Marie (the wedding day he describes as being “a bit hazy, after a drink or two in the morning”), he mentions the double win at Spa in 1998. The two Jordan cars, driven by Damon Hill and Ralf Schumacher, came home first and second respectively after many of the other drivers crashed out in the pouring rain.
Eddie is “apprehensive” about the final race of this season, over in Japan, having picked up some points at Indianapolis last weekend, with a seventh place for Giancarlo Fisichella. “It could go either way. With a good race, we could end up fifth in the constructors, but with a poor result, we’ll have done crap this year”. He feels under “a lot of pressure” at the moment, since the Jordan car this season has not been as good as he had hoped, with engine failures, and only one “glimmer at Brazil” (Fisichella won that particular race much earlier in the year.).
When I ask him finally whether he can look at his life objectively and be happy with it, he answers with a wry smile that “maybe when I’m old and infirm I’ll be able to look back on it all and be very, very proud,” but he makes it clear that the stress, and the pressure which he’s already mentioned, makes for an unusually up-and-down emotional life. He claims that he’s “unemployable,” could only ever be his own boss, but as I leave him in his razor-sharp suit, tie slightly loosened, working away into the night at his desk, the burden of such dedication is unmistakable. Yet “irrepressible” is a word often used to describe Eddie Jordan, and I am sure that the good times won’t be long in returning, and he will be enjoying himself again soon.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

MIRANDA KAUFMANN finds out more about our oldest and most controversial habit

Ann Summers has become a high street store, a similar outlet in America called Good Vibrations sponsors National Masturbation month, and the act is central to the plot of films such as the American Pie trilogy and episodes of Sex and the City. We could be forgiven for thinking that sex with someone you love (Woody Allen) is widely tolerated, even accepted.

In South Africa, the Government recently ran a campaign to “Join the Arm Struggle and stop raping our mothers, sisters, wives and children: Masturbate, Don’t Rape”. It may be, however, that masturbation is the last taboo. In 1995, the US Surgeon-General was fired after suggesting at a press conference that masturbation should be taught in schools. When the Clinton administration was asked for the official policy on the matter, a spokesman replied that any young people who required a practical lesson in masturbation would be below the IQ requirement to enter school. I spoke to many people while researching this article. None of them wished to be credited with “additional research”.

In 1921 Dr Ernest Jones wrote: “Modern Clinical psychology has definitely established that autoeroticism is a normal and quite universal phase of human development, and not, as used to be thought, an abnormal perversion of the sexual instinct”. “Self abuse” had previously been regarded as a disease. As late as the early Fifties a US Public Health Service pamphlet warned “self-abuse may seriously hinder a boy’s progress towards vigorous manhood”. It was thought to be the cause of many other health problems.

These attitudes can be traced back to the early 18th century, when a certain quack doctor published Onania, in order to persuade the reading public to purchase his remedies. He lists the following frightful consequences: hindered growth, ulcers, consumptions, loss of erection as if they had been castrated, impotence… and in women: relaxes and spoils the retentive faculty, occasions the Fluor Albus (literally white flux), an obnoxious as well as perplexing illness attending that sex, turns complexion pale, swarthy and hagged, hysterics, consumptions and barrenness – at length a total Ineptitude to the Act of Generation itself.

Some women, he goes so far as to claim, from the “Lustful and Excessive Abuse of themselves, have this Propension of the Clitoris, and are thus brought into a Resemblance of the Male Sex”. Early doctors were concerned that masturbation literally drained a man of his vital humour. By 1924 JFW Meagher concluded that “the somewhat popular lay idea that masturbation may cause imbecility, consumption, etc., is not only without foundation, but is ridiculous…to falsely tell a suggestible patient that he will surely die or go insane as a result of the habit does no real good”. So what cures were to be found for this vile disease?

The author of Onania recommended his Strengthening Tincture (10 shillings) to combat discharge, or his Prolifick Powder (12 shillings) to cure infertility and impotence. Between 1856 and 1919 the U.S. Patent Office granted patents for forty-nine anti-masturbation devices. Thirty-five were for horses and fourteen for humans. The human devices, made for boys, consisted of sharp points turned inward to jab the penis should he get an erection during the night. A possible solution was marriage. Even Sheikh Ar-Tameeny agrees here. “Hasten towards marriage, the door to all goodness, success and richness”. It was not until the 1880s, with the advent of electricity, that doctors and midwives found help in the form of the vibrator. This was an improvement on the dildo, which had been known in ancient times: LYSISTRATA: … Since the day the Milesians betrayed us, I have never once seen an eight-inch gadget even, to be a leathern consolation to us poor widows…” (Aristophanes, ’Lysistrata’ 410 BC). Early models were developed in the 1880s.

By 1906, the appliance looked rather like a hairdryer, and came with an impressive array of attachments. Between 1900-1920, vibrators were marketed in American periodicals such as Home Needlework Journal, Women’s Home Companion and Modern Priscilla. Slogans included “all the pleasures of youth…will throb within you”, “Such Delightful Companions”, “Aids That Every Woman Appreciates”, and aimed at the male consumer “A Gift That Will Keep Her Young and Pretty”. Sadly once these devices began to appear in certain films, they were taken off the market. Men have appreciated other aids in this field. In the 4th century BC, Praxiteles unveiled the Knidian Aphrodite – the first naked female statue.

Pliny records that her derrière bore the stains of her appreciative male audience’s lust. Apple pie was not the first edible aid either. He had invented a new stunt, so he put it. “You take an apple and you bore out the core. Then you put some cold cream on the inside so as it doesn’t melt too fast. Try it some time. It’ll drive you crazy at first. Anyway it’s cheap and you don’t have to waste much time”. This is Philip Roth’s rendition : “Oh, shove it in me, Big Boy’, cried the cored apple that I banged silly on that picnic. ‘Big Boy, Big Boy, oh give me all you’ve got,’ cried the empty milk bottle that I kept hidden in our storage bin in the basement, to drive wild after school with my vaselined upright”.

While Truman Capote was right when he said the nice thing about masturbation is “you don’t have to dress up for it.” If you prefer staying in to getting dressed up and going out, you may be in danger of practising auto sexual masturbation, a perversion for which no interaction with a lover can provide a substitute. This is by contrast to deprivation masturbation, which occurs as a social necessity, because society does not allow the unlimited expression of eroticism.

I shall leave you with the words of Mark Twain. “To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and impotent it is a benefactor; they that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion”.

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There’s no accounting for taste. People’s personal preferences are so random that finding another person with the same opinions as yourself is impossible. Marmite is deliberately advertised with the line “you either love it or hate and the same could be said of several other things – David Gray, for example, or perhaps Basingtoke. Alcohol, however, is one thing that tends to unite people’s opinions. All across the world, from the furthest stretches of Siberia to the most isolated villages of rural Swaziland, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ll be able to some kind of alcoholic beverage strip away all those annoying inhibitions and enable yourself to dance a twat, crack crappy jokes, and pass out in gutters. Hurrah. It is precisely this inhibition-destroying quality makes alcohol so popular at universities, where from the first day of Fresher’s Week to the final post-finals fling people are encouraged to drink too much and behave like fools. Some people, however, take this to extremes. They positively worship booze, creating entire clubs and societies with the sole aim of getting shit-faced as severely and regularly as humanly possible. These people are pioneers, ladies and gentlemen, boldly going where no liver would be advised to go. They are also insane. As you might imagine, Oxford is not without its fair share of these societies. To gain entrance to the Christchurch-based “Flowers and Fairies” society, for example, candidates are tied to an existing member of the society and have to match their counterpart drink for drink all the way through a particularly heavy session. A penalty system applies with punishable offences for going to the toilet, making a phone call, or drinking too slowly. The penalty, of course, is more booze. After this, any recruits who are still standing dash round the quad, discarding a garment at each corner, and the rest is history. There are other, supposedly more up-market societies in Oxford, relics of the Victorian age, likely to behave just as badly, only in slightly pricier venues. The Phoenix, made up of Brasenose undergrads, wear brown tailcoats and throw riotous garden parties in the summer, while also enjoying a termly dinner with a silver phoenix, known as “Our Old Friend” sitting in the 13th seat at the table, hinting at former satanic practices perhaps. There is the Bullingdon Club, for Oxford’s wealthiest boys, who can occasionally be seen staggering down Broad Street in their royal blue and yellow tailcoats tailored personally at Ede & Ravenscroft, after a heavy session at the King’s Arms. In fact, photos of past members in their finery can be seen in the back room of that very pub. Another university-wide society, the Stoics, again wearing old-fashioned tailcoats, initiates new members by forcing them to down a revolting concoction of liqueur from a silver horn in the graveyard of St. Mary’s, the University Church, in Radcliffe Square. Presumably candidates are assessed on their ability to hold the vile mixture in their gut. Less showy but similarly messy are the Assassins, one of Oxford’s more mysterious clubs, who along with the infamous Piers Gaveston society, hold annual parties at unknown destinations, fuelled by more than just alcohol. None of these groups are likely to be registered with the University Proctors, and often the college based societies are actually banned from the premises, as in the case of the St. John’s King Charles Club, which along with the Phoenix claims to be Oxford University’s oldest dining club. The “Bugger Ruggers” society at Teddy Hall dispenses with such elaborate selection procedures, choosing instead to elect three (female) recruits from each fresher year and take them on a twice-yearly bender round Oxford’s various drinking establishments, clad – there had to be a catch – in fancy dress. So the next time you see a bunch of pissed birds dressed up as cartoon characters rolling down the High Street, you know who to blame. As grueling initiations go, though, it would be hard to beat that imposed by the “Nondescripts” society at Christchurch. Prospective members are first taken to the Bear, where they are “encouraged” to drink a minimum of five pints in an hour. The next stop is Ma Belle, where they enjoy a huge meal accompanied by a compulsory two bottles of wine each. For some quiet post-dining rest, candidates are then taken to the Tom quad for the infamous “Quad Dash” in which they all race round the (not inconsiderable) circumference of the quad, performing twenty exercises (press-ups, sit-ups etc) and downing a can of beer at each corner. To cap off an enjoyable and relaxing evening, each person then necks a football boot’s worth of port. A Blues rower actually turned up for training the morning after carrying out this particularly savage ritual, which demonstrates admirable dedication, if not good sense. The Nondescripts – described as a “sports, dining and drinking society” – were actually banned for five years in the late 1980s after someone in authority took issue with the dubious sounding “Raindance” ritual, the details of which, I understand, “might not look good in print”. The Oxford-based societies, then, seem to be in rude health, with several particularly hideous traditions being enthusiastically upheld year after year by some extremely dedicated and single- minded devotees. But – although it pains me slightly to praise a Cambridge society over its Oxford counterparts – an honourable mention must go to the Wyverns society of Magdalene College, Cambridge. To gain entrance to this prestigious society, fresh-faced recruits are force-fed enough alcohol to get them in the mood and then sit down to a 20 course dinner. This sounds innocuous enough, until you see the menu: one course, for example, is a tin of dog food, another is a live goldfish, and the candidates are asked to provide another course by vomiting into a bucket and then eating the results. So there you have it – by all means join one of these clubs or societies. But you would be well advised to take out health insurance first. And should you wake up next to some particularly ugly stranger, with a suspicious taste of Pedigree Chum at the back of your throat, don’t say you haven’t been warned…
ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003