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Wednesday 23 February 2011 

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2 The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011 

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Thomas Seal 

News Editor 

Another RHUL student has been 

attacked near Egham train station, 

prompting the college to issue a 

safety warning. 

The incident took place Thursday 

January 27 at approximately 6pm 

near the junction of Rusham Road 

and Station Road. There, the male 

student was accosted from behind 

by three men, who, after being refused 

his phone, struck him and ran 

off with his bag. This follows two 

incidents at the end of the Autumn 

Term. 

The College issued this statement: 

‘Whilst Egham remains a very safe 

area we take the safety and security 

of our students extremely seriously 

and advice on personal safety is regularly 

emphasised by the college and 

Students’ Union. 

Personal safety alarms are made 

available to students and we have 

been reiterating the importance of 

sticking to well lit routes home, not 

walking alone and using the college 

bus service where possible.’ 

Of the three suspects, one was described 

as black, one as Asian and 

one as white. The first was said to be 

wearing a black Nike tracksuit and 

to be about 5ft 7ins. The second was 

wearing a dark blue Nike tracksuit 

and was described as being around 

5ft 11ins. The first was described as 

being about 6ft and wearing a white 

hoodie. All were said to speak with 

southern accents. 

DC Ash Mullem, the lead detective 

of the investigation, called the 

attack ‘vicious and cowardly.’ The 

local Neighbourhood Sergeant Iain 

Weaving advised RHUL students 

‘to walk in groups and try to avoid 

walking alone in the hours of darkness 

and to report any unusual or 

suspicious activity to police’. 

However, there are some areas for 

students - for example Kingswood - 

which are simply not accessible by 

lit paths, which causes frustration 

and worries for some students, and 

often precipitates the route being attributed 

the nervously-joking label 

of ‘rape alley’. 

Photograph: Thomas Seal 

Englefield Green ‘second most 

burgled place in Britain’? 

Vikki Vile 

A road located in Englefield Green 

has incorrectly been listed on a new 

crime-mapping website as the second 

most crime ridden spot in the 

country in an embarrassing blunder 

for a new website, in the first week it 

has gone live. 

The new website, www.police. 

co.uk went live on Tuesday, February 

1st and has been designed to 

allow the public to see the number 

of recorded crimes in the area they 

live, ranging from anti-social behaviour 

to burglaries. The site was 

featured in many national news reports 

during the first week of February, 

with much attention focusing 

on an apparent crime “hotspot” on 

a rather unremarkable looking road 

in Preston which topped the list in 

the whole of the United Kingdom 

for reported crimes. 

In the case of student heavy Englefield 

Green, the site suggested 

that Kingswood Close was the second 

most burgled street in the UK, 

although, when later contextualised 

it became apparent that the somewhat 

surprising ten recorded incidents 

referred to on the crime map, 

referred to the one same incident 

which in reality took place at Kingwood 

Hall on December 22. Robert 

Nield, Runnymede Neighbourhood 

Inspector added, 

Continued on page 3 »

The Founder | Wednesday 23 February 2011 

News 

3 

» continued 

“Although only one property was 

broken into this was a building with 

multiple occupants. In total the offenders 

gained access to ten rooms 

within the one building and as there 

were ten separate victims.” 

The Englefield Green error was 

not the only stutter in the launching 

of the new website. On the day 

of its launch, so many people logged 

on throughout England and Wales 

that the site remained crashed for 

much of the day, however a spokeswoman 

for the site insisted, “we are 

delighted with the response which 

shows how popular this information 

is with the public.” 

flickr/Stuart Grout 

Egham not on the 

level? 

Stuart Stone 

Network Rail and Egham’s Chamber 

of Commerce have called for improvements 

to be made on Egham’s 

level crossings after they failed on 

two separate occasions. 

Of Egham’s three level crossings 

- one located parallel to Rusham 

Road on Station Road another in 

Pooley Green, intersecting the B388 

and the third on Prune Hill - two 

have failed in the past year. 

On 8 November last year the level 

crossing at Pooley Green failed after 

a barrier was jammed after a piece 

of the barrier became dislodged. 

Another of Egham’s crossings failed 

on 27 January this year where it was 

discovered that the barrier had been 

bent out of shape. The line was kept 

open in spite of the failed barrier 

due to the fact that the sirens and 

warning lights were still fully functioning. 

Meher Oliaji of Egham’s Chamber 

of Commerce claimed that people 

had risked their lives by continuing 

their journey either by car or on foot 

under the static barrier and stated 

that investment was needed to ensure 

that the technology didn’t fail 

in the future. 

Network Rail issued an apologetic 

statement to anyone whose journey 

was affected by the incident, and 

reiterated that that drivers and pedestrians 

should always abide by the 

warning lights and sirens even when 

a barrier had failed. 

Courtesy Nigel Cox 

Aaron Porter ‘just a Tory 

too’ in latest protest 

Amy Norman 

Yet even more demonstrations have 

been lead by students recently in 

opposition to the rise in tuition fees 

and cuts in public spending. The 

protests, held in London and Manchester, 

were largely peaceful on this 

occasion but nonetheless the police 

made several arrests. 

In London, thousands of students 

marched through Whitehall 

and Westminster to oppose the 

government raising tuition fees to 

a maximum £9,000 per year, which 

Cambridge University has since announced 

it will be charging. Many 

of the protesters showed solidarity 

with the Egyptian protesters by 

wearing badges and joining demonstrations 

outside the Egyptian 

embassy. 

Students stopped at Topshop on 

the Strand to shout abuse aimed at 

Sir Phillip Green. The students were 

angered by the Topshop owner’s 

tax arrangements and chanted “pay 

your tax”. Once again a small group 

of protesters attempted to break into 

the Conservative’s Millbank headquarters, 

yet any trouble remained 

limited after a handful of people 

were arrested. 

Events at the Manchester march 

proved to be a bit more dramatic, 

with tensions rising within student 

groups and causing internal divisions, 

especially with regard to the 

National Union of Students. Many 

students have been calling for a 

more active approach from the NUS 

and even a more militant leadership, 

opinions that came to the forefront 

at the march. 

Aaron Porter, president of the 

NUS, had to have a police escort remove 

him from angry crowds who 

were calling for his resignation. Mr. 

Porter was meant to be speaking at 

the protest and request unity within 

the NUS after dividing opinions on 

the conduct of demonstrations and 

sit-in protests caused problems, yet 

the students turned on him and said 

he is “just a Tory too”. When the 

NUS vice-president Shane Chowen 

tried to address the crowd, he was 

greeted with eggs and oranges being 

thrown at him by a small group of 

protesters. 

RHUL’s Levi asks: was Mozart Nazi art? 

New evidence shows Mozart’s music may have been 

appropriated by Hitler’s propaganda minister Goebbels 

Emily Lees 

When one thinks of the music synonymous 

with the Third Reich, 

the name, which usually springs to 

mind, is Wagner, however Royal 

Holloway’s Reader in Music and 

Director of Performance, Erik Levi 

shines light on the use of Mozart’s 

music within the Nazi regime. 

In his new book, Mozart and the 

Nazis, Levi uncovers the Nazi plot 

to delete the contribution to Mozart’s 

music, by the Jewish librettist 

Lorenzo Da Ponte. 

Levi explains; “Mozart’s life and 

work had become grossly manipulated 

by the Nazis to support their 

ideological aims.” 

Levi continues to show how the 

propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels 

declared Mozart to be the greatest 

German genius, and with the 

150th anniversary of Mozart’s death 

taking place in 1941 a vast celebration 

of his works was undertaken to 

perpetuate further German superiority. 

The celebrations came to a 

crescendo in a week long festival in 

Vienna, Mozart was immortalised 

in speech after speech from highranking 

Nazi officials and honoured 

with a formal Nazi burial. 

Mozart encompassed a German 

ideal which the Nazi’s very crudely 

used to push forth their racialist 

ideals, another master manipulation 

which can now be seen thanks to the 

work of Erik Levi.


News 

RHUL Computer Scientist Murtagh honoured 

Noor Mansour 

Royal Holloway academic Professor 

Fionn Murtagh from the Department 

of Computer Science has just 

been elected into the prestigious Academia 

Europaea, an organisation 

of distinguished European scholars. 

The Academia Europaea, which was 

founded in 1988, has members from 

a wide range of academic fields including 

engineering, medicine, 

mathematics, humanities, as well as 

physical, life and social sciences. 

His nominators have declared 

that “Professor Fionn Murtagh is 

a leader in the field of pattern and 

data analysis and classification. He 

has contributed a variety of mathematically 

motivated methods to 

data analysis, often involving massive, 

high dimensional data sets, and 

has contributed novel algorithms 

and evaluated their performance 

both by using mathematical statistical 

methods such as Bayesian analysis 

and by conducting experimental 

evaluations and operational deployment”. 

Despite this achievement, Professor 

Murtagh stated “I am delighted 

to be elected into the Academia 

Europaea. The success is, however, 

tinged with sadness as my nominator 

for this was Professor Robin 

Milner, who died in March 2010 

in Cambridge. Robin was without 

doubt one of the greats of computing 

and of scholarship”. 

Professor Murtagh’s latest book, 

‘Sparse Image and Signal Processing 

– Wavelets, Curvelets, Morphological 

Diversity’, co-authored with 

Jean-Luc Starck and Jalal Fadili, was 

published by Cambridge University 

Press in 2010. 

Professor Fionn Murtagh 

Small fire in Gowar 

Egham Fire Station, whose fire crew was called in to Gowar Hall 

Courtesy Kevin Hale 

Elinor Gittins 

A few weeks ago, a fire broke out 

in Gowar Hall. It occurred on the 

fourth floor and was caused by an 

unattended pan on the hob. Fire 

crews from Egham and Staines ran 

in to tame the fire. 

No one was seriously injured, and 

no evacuations were needed. However, 

a female student was recently 

treated for smoke inhalation. The 

kitchen was also severely damaged 

and is not being used anymore. 

Most of the fire alarms are set off 

in kitchens and caused by students 

cooking. These alarms should not 

be necessary. This story should be a 

warning to us all: do not leave cooking 

unattended.


Sabbatical Officers 2011-2012 

5 

Following their recent success 

The Founder interviews next 

years sabbatical officers 

So Dan How does it feel to win? 

Fantastic I’m over the moon. 

You know I think we won convincingly, 

I’m hugely proud of my team 

because they put so much into it 

and I’m looking forward to working 

with the other Sabs. 

What’s the first thing your going 

to change in September? 

For me Royal Holloway University 

isn’t going to be immune to the 

budget cuts. I think the role of the 

students union next year should 

be about defending education and 

I’d really like to set up education 

assemblies, which is something 

really quite significant to do. I really 

want to make the students union 

interesting again with performance, 

presentations, theatre nights etc. 

Look at different universities, they 

have so many events going on and I 

think this would all be possible here 

and at an affordable price as well. 

Do you think students are paying 

too much for services on campus? 

Certainly yes. I’ve been here for 

three years, and for particularly 

those coming from off campus or 

from Kingswood it’s a huge burden 

to pay so much. I’m not entirely 

sure my remit and how much I can 

influence this but there could be 

campaigns about these issues as 

well as cuts to libraries, courses and 

facilities which can be very effective 

an effect change. I know many 

people who live of campus and it 

causes many problems like where 

you leave your stuff, the food where 

you pay five quid for a sandwich 

and a hot coffee, its ridiculous really. 

Libraries are a sticking point for 

many people, how would you want 

to improve the libraries? 

It’s a question of more study 

space and getting the appropriate 

books in. A lot of people need to 

go to Senate House and I think we 

should look to that as a supplement 

to the library as opposed to being 

an alternative. It’s the basic things 

like getting access to books, access 

to journals and the fines, which I 

think we should look into. I think 

the union is the place they should 

go to as opposed to just talking 

about the problems amongst their 

friends. It’s about making these 

things all quite visible. 

Would you push for 24 hour 

opening throughout the year or just 

keep it in exam time? 

I wouldn’t want to promise 24 

hour opening I think its something 

we should look into, especially 

over the weekend. We want to look 

for slightly later hours through a 

process of consultation with the 

current staff. For me its all about 

the small things, the bloody plugs 

don’t work, printing is a nightmare, 

the computers so regularly never 

work, just kind of basic things we 

need to look into. 

No admittance after midnight 

on Union nights has created a 

huge amount of anger, would you 

change this? 

We want re-admittance, and 

speaking to a lot of people in the 

union that’s certainly possible. I’ve 

been frustrated many, many times 

at the union. My vision of the 

students union is to be a cultural 

and social centre for it to be a place 

where people go to relax and listen 

to interesting music, go to see 

interesting things, regular talks, 

poetry, satire. We are so rich in that 

respect and we should celebrate this 

diversity as well. 

Bake and Bite is set for redevelopment, 

how would bake and 

bake look under a Daniel Cooper 

Union? 

We have had a number of discussions 

with the students union and 

with bake and bite, I like the emphasis 

on sort of lounge place and I 

think we can make more of it. 

But not another Imagine? 

No no I don’t think it would be 

another Imagine. 

The SU President sits on over 20 

committees, that’s an average of 

3 a day, is that too many and is it 

stopping the president from talking 

to students? 

Yes! I say flippantly but I mean 

it in a serious way. I have a lot of 

experience in these kind of things, 

in terms of organising and I’ve said 

time and time again I think the SU 

Daniel Cooper - President 

shouldn’t be nervous to get out of 

the office. There is an importance 

to these committees, we talk about 

everything from the environment 

to putting books in the libraries 

and we need that space to discuss 

things, though in no way should 

that stop us from being active. For 

me one of the big criticisms is that 

they [Sabbatical Officers] don’t get 

out enough and are not physical 

and not active enough. They work 

incredibly hard and do all of that 

admin and bureaucratic stuff, but 

we need to be leading the campaigns. 

I want to be central in all 

of that particularly in the college 

council and where things are decided 

upon, but that shouldn’t in any 

way get in the way of campaigning. 

I found speaking to a lot of different 

sabbaticals that they have been 

told to go to meetings just to shut 

them up, and that shouldn’t be the 

case. If anything I would prioritise 

spending far more time with the 

students and being active around 

the campus. 

If there is one thing you think 

college to do, and that you would 

lobby them to do, that would 

improve student life what would 

that be? 

There are a number of issues. 

Defence of education and stressing 

cuts are unacceptable particularly 

when they affect students here. We 

would call for collective decision 

making public and open meetings 

on critical decisions. London living 

wage for me is something crucial. 

I would want to work with the 

cleaners and the admin staff, with 

lectures, with the workers union 

on campus for this. We should be 

academically world leading and we 

should be ethically as well. To me 

it makes ethical and financial sense 

to have everyone well paid and in 

acceptable conditions and to be 

unionised. All of this recognition is 

tangible and can be done. 

One of the big things is that 

we want to introduce a black and 

minorities and women’s officer. So 

for the women’s officer it would 

be about establishing crèches and 

advice and services and resources, 

especially for mature students. 

Health and social care at the moment 

is being completely hit, and 

a lot of the women here have kids 

and don’t know what to do with 

them. Also we want to be lobbying 

the college about more scholarships 

greater bursaries and importantly 

to provide access especially for kids 

from working class backgrounds 

and black and ethnic minority 

backgrounds. In British universities 

66% of students are British and affluent 

you know we should look to 

widen access. 

For me the significance in getting 

the candidacy is really been that we 

have run explicitly on an anti cuts 

platform and combing that with 

making the SU an interesting place, 

a cultural and social centre as well 

as London living wage, all of these 

things, and that for me is the significance. 

Royal Holloway has had 

a history of un-involvement and 

apathy to me this is indicative for a 

desire for something different. We 

have received hundreds of messages 

of support from across the country. 

I think this is volcanic. I would use 

the term volcanic in terms of the 

way it goes and its direction. 

In ten words what, in your ideal 

world how would the Students Union 

look a year from now and what 

would it have done? 

Defend education. London living 

wage. Widen access. SU as a social 

and cultural centre. So many ideas. 

Something! I do apologise! Something 

about the SU that is quite 

critical. We have this building with 

so many unelected, unaccountable 

people, and we have processes that 

perhaps have been uncontrollable 

for Rachel Pearson but I think we 

have to make the general manager 

all of the types, and they work 

bloody hard, but lets make them 

accountable as well for me that’s 

crucial. We have general managers 

in universities preventing Sabs from 

acting. That cant be the case.



Katie Blow 

Vice President Education and Welfare 

Thomas Seal 

News Editor 

It’s Valentine’s Day and on a 

deserted reading week Monday 

morning in Crosslands I meet 

up with Katie Blow for a quick 

chat about the aftermath of her 

victory following the epic Sabb 

campaign week. 

How does it feel to have been 

elected VPEW? 

Katie Blow: Very, very weird! I 

honestly didn’t think I was going to 

win. Me and my team were actually 

stood at the back of the bar, and 

they were going to put me in the lift 

and I was just going to leave via the 

lift...so yeah it’s taken a while to get 

used to it...and now it’s like ‘I’ve got 

so much I need to do!’ 

How soon do you need to start 

doing things? Is there a good 

handover period? 

Yeah, basically me and Beth start 

handing over 1st July and then 1st 

August she leaves and it’s...all mine! 

(laughs) So basically it’s a month of 

meeting everyone I need to meet. 

So tell us a little bit about yourself... 

I’m technically a 4th year even 

though I’m in my final year here, 

because last year I went abroad to 

Japan. I do Psychology, I rowed, 

I’m in RAG, and I’ve done Strictly 

Come Holloway! A bit of a mix, I 

suppose. 

What’s happened so far postelection? 

Have you had a chat with 

[current VPEW] Beth Rowley? 

Yeah it was really nice, because 

Beth and I are actually best friends. 

We didn’t talk the whole of the 

election period and so the next day 

it was just like ‘I’m so glad to have 

you back in my life!’ We’ve had a 

chat and she’s told me not to think 

about anything until handover and 

not try and feel like I have to do 

anything, so that’s quite cool. 

So you can concentrate on finals! 

Yep! (nervous laugh) All the work 

that’s been neglected for the last 

three weeks! 

What are you most looking forward 

to about being VPEW? 

Umm...I think meeting people. 

And being able to have my manifesto 

in front of me and being able 

to tick things off it, so I’ve done this 

or put that in place. Feeling like I’ve 

achieved stuff. ...I’m excited about it 

all really! 

Regarding a couple of your manifesto 

points: firstly, how will you go 

about changing the lighting? 

Well, obviously outside of campus 

is a lot more difficult because 

you have to liaise with the community 

and police and stuff, but on 

campus there are still a few dark 

spots. Even motion lighting would 

do...for example, if you walk from 

Bedford library to the Union - past 

the physics building - there are 

some steps, and that’s just pitch 

black, and it would be great if there 

was just something so you could 

see where you were going. A lot of 

the time it is just about persuading 

people and getting the ball rolling 

but hopefully I can smile my way 

through! 

One of your other promises is to 

have 48 hours between each exam 

for students. That sounds quite 

ambitious... 

Yeah, everyone said that! We had 

a big chat with my campaign team 

when I printed my manifesto and I 

said ‘do we think this is too high?’ I 

felt that if I go in with a high number 

and then negotiate down then I 

can achieve something, rather than 

to go in with 24, and get 24, and be 

like ‘actually I could’ve done better’. 

I know it will be difficult and there 

will be a lot of subjects where it 

might not be possible yet - especially 

for joint honours students - but 

I definitely think something needs 

putting in place. Holloway has a 

whole term of exams, and there’s 

got to be something done so that it’s 

easier and less stressful. That’s my 

number one thing. 

So would you say that’s what 

you’d do first? If you had to choose 

one thing? 

Definitely. And also making 

students more aware of the services 

that are available to them. For example, 

I live in Founder’s now, and 

there’s a little sticker on my mirror 

that says ‘Nightline’, which is really 

out of date, and I think something 

like that, put in every single room, 

something that isn’t obvious, that 

you can look at and think ‘actually 

I might need some help’, is a subtle 

way of getting these messages 

across. 

Is there anything else you’d like to 

add? Anything you’d like to say to 

those who voted for you? 

Yes, thank you very, very much! 

Thanks for taking the time to read 

the manifesto, and watch all the 

videos, and thank you everyone for 

coming to Question Time. It was 

hard this year because you had to 

register online and there were issues 

there so...thanks so much!



7 

Sarah Honeycombe 

Vice President Communications and Campaigns 

dreams lie? 

Thomas Shore 

Editor 

It must feel good to win, how has 

the week been since? 

It feels amazing. It took me twentyfive 

minutes to walk from the front 

gate to the hub the day after I won 

because, I kept getting stopped by 

people congratulating me. 

Do you think more people got interested 

in these elections more than 

previous years? 

Well last year’s turnout was over a 

hundred people higher. It was 1200 

in 2010 so I think maybe online 

voting got people angrier. 

Does online voting work? 

It’s too early too tell. I do like online 

voting because it saves the union 

quite a bit of money, but I think the 

problems with registration were 

a real pain. The fact that so many 

people tried to register on the last 

day and the system struggled is 

quite depressing, but that won’t 

happen again. 

What do you think gave you the 

edge over everyone else? 

I have no idea. Ben and Claudia 

were both really strong candidates 

and I think it was such a close election 

for a reason. Maybe my experience 

with Insanity and the Orbital 

might have just pushed it ahead. I 

got some really positive feedback 

after candidate’s question time so 

maybe that. 

How do you think your experience 

with Insanity will help you next 

year? 

I think it’s going to be brilliant. One 

third of the job is student media 

and I’ve been one of the section editors 

of the orbital and I’m currently 

one station managers of insanity so 

there is perhaps less of a handover 

to do there as I’m fairly well versed 

in how it all works. I also know 

how tough it can get and how time 

consuming it gets for the assistant 

managers so I should be able to 

help out there. 

What about the other two thirds? 

I’m really looking forward to it. In 

the Ethics and environment side 

I’m really looking forward to talking 

to Ed Resek, “Go Green week” 

was a massive success, and today we 

found of we have been nominated 

for an ecologist award which is really 

cool, so there is a good foundation 

to work from there. The union 

has some really good campaigns it’s 

just about getting the word out. 

How do you get the word out? 

Oh wow. Facebook, twitter, the SU 

website. I cannot wait to get my 

hands on that sodding website. 

Are you going to personally do it or 

is the union going to hire someone 

to do it again? 

I’m going to try and get the computer 

science department to help 

me. They offered last year and were 

turned down, one of the students 

who offered is the guy who created 

the insanity website and I think 

that website is brilliant. So if I can 

get people like that involved it will 

hopefully save a lot of money and 

make the website easier to use. 

How does The Founder fit in next 

year? 

I really like The Founder, I’ve contributed 

to The Founder. I think the 

union and The Founder’s relationship 

could be better and I’m hoping 

that maybe I can push that along. I 

think The Founder is a really good 

newspaper and a source of news 

and if the union can talk about 

things through The Founder that’s a 

really good idea. 

What about The Orbital? 

It’s fairly upsetting. As a former 

contributor and editor the fact that 

it’s not out as much anymore is 

quite depressing. It’s about looking 

at money and working out a way to 

get more issues out more quickly 

and keeping the online presence up 

to date. The Orbital turns twenty 

five next year there is no way it’s not 

going to be huge. I actually took the 

first issue to candidate’s question 

time. 

Beyond Holloway where do your 

I put off a masters degree to take 

this job so I am going on to do a 

masters in history the year after. 

You said you wanted to use electronic 

media to communicate, does 

this mean that general meetings 

and others forms are not being 

utilised enough at the moment? 

It’s almost defiantly not being used 

to its maximum. It is being used 

and that’s a really good thing but 

at the General Meetings you get a 

turnout of thirty, I know because 

I go to every single bloody one of 

them and while it’s three hours of 

cutting through red tape you cant 

really expect more people to get 

actively involved unless they have 

a reason to or unless they have 

another way to get involved. The 

union will be utilising a lot of electronic 

media next year I will make 

sure of it because I think more 

people want to get involved but 

don’t know how. One of the major 

things of my campaign is that there 

are so many opportunities being 

given that students just don’t know 

about and you can’t expect students 

to take up these if they don’t know 

what they are 

Any particular campaigns your really 

keen on? 

I think it’s about time we opened 

up campaigns to the students. I’ve 

never been consulted on them. I 

know what they are because they 

are on the wall planner but I’ve 

never been asked what campaigns I 

think the union should get involved 

with. And the sabbatical jobs are 

representative roles so I would feel 

a bit weird if I was to decide on 

campaigns on my own. Obviously 

SHAG week will stay because it’s 

exceptionally popular and “Go 

Green Week”, they had a guy making 

smoothies with a bike during 

the campaign, they were great! 

If there were one thing you could 

change during your year, what 

would it be? 

Insanity getting its FM licence, if 

it kills me. Though admittedly we 

should be having that soon.



Jake Wells 

Vice President Student Activities 

Jessica Phillipson 

News Editor 2011-2012 

I’m also Vice President of Cricket. 

Sports are my passion, not to say I 

will neglect societies! 

On a quiet Wednesday morning in 

Coffee and Cake, we meet up with 

newly elected VPSA Jake Wells to 

discuss elections and the future of 

the union... 

First of all, how does it feel to win? 

Brilliant, actually! Really good 

because it’s something that I really 

wanted and having worked so hard 

for it and having actually done it 

feels really good. 

Are you happy with the other 

elected candidates? 

Yes! There’s not a single candidate 

who was running who I would’ve 

been unhappy with. Throughout 

the course of the campaign you 

spend a lot of time with everyone 

and get to know people really well. 

I’m really pleased. 

Is there anything that Victor’s doing 

that you would do differently? 

When did you decide to run? 

It was in election time last year because 

I helped my friend to run for 

VPSA. Unfortunately he didn’t get 

it, but the whole experience really 

made me interested in it. I know 

Victor so I spoke to him throughout 

the year and that just reinforced 

how much I wanted to do it. 

Were you expecting to win? 

No, I think there are some things 

that can be tweaked, but as far as 

I’m concerned Victor’s done a fantastic 

job. I don’t think there’s anything 

that needs to be overhauled. 

All the ideas they’re running with 

are really good. Hopefully I can 

continue their good work. 

What do you think the result of the 

wrong person getting the role of 

VPSA would be? 

No, no, no! You speak to anyone I 

spoke to that day from 1pm when 

my lectures finished, I was an absolute 

mess! 

What have you been up to since the 

election? 

To be honest, getting my sleeping 

patterns back on track has been 

quite important! Two hours a 

night is not conducive to any sort 

of health. Catching up on degree 

work, chatting to the other Sabb 

elects and the other current Sabbs, 

seeing what there is that needs to be 

done, trying to better understand 

the role that I’m going to be taking 

on. 

What do you think the best thing 

about being VPSA will be? 

Getting to interact with the sheer 

number and variety of students in 

all the clubs and societies and feeling 

that I can actually help out as 

many of those as possible. I’m really 

looking forward to it. 

Is there an advantage of sports men 

and women who run for VPSA over 

those in societies? 

Numerically, sports teams here are 

huge. That’s not to take anything 

away from societies, but in terms 

of football teams here, you’ve got 

six teams with seventeen people in 

each, that’s a lot of people straightaway. 

I wouldn’t say it’s an advantage, 

it doesn’t mean those numbers 

should vote for that candidate. 

People should go to the website and 

read the manifestos to make their 

own mind up. 

What’s the first thing you’re going 

to change? 

Well, I’m meeting Victor about a 

ULU-wide competition, sort of 

like ‘Strictly Come Holloway’, but 

with all the dance societies. That’s 

not a change, but it’s something 

that’s being implemented. One 

thing I want to do is possibly have 

a ‘Refreshers Fair’, like Freshers fair, 

but in second term. You walk into 

Freshers Fair and there’s all these 

Presidents shouting at you and it’s 

a little bit intimidating. I hope to 

get a ‘Refreshers Fair’ with stalls 

manned by Freshers who joined 

in the first term, as that’s more accessible. 

Hopefully that will boost 

membership for everyone. 

Can you tell us a bit about yourself, 

outside of your VPSA role? 

Well, I work in Crosslands, I’ve 

been there for nearly two years now. 

I study Politics with Philosophy and 

I really enjoy it. I play football and 

I think they’d be found out pretty 

quickly and I’d like to think something 

would be done if the person 

wasn’t up to it. I think the role 

would suffer in that it would lose 

a lot of credibility and more and 

more people would go down the 

popularity contest route in future 

elections, which I would personally 

hate to see. Societies and sports 

clubs would suffer because the necessary 

things would not be done. 

Simple things like the budget, the 

membership lists, all those kinds 

of things would be poorly organised 

and all the events that are held 

would not be as good as they deserve 

to be. The little things would 

have a huge knock-on effect. 

Is there anything else you’d like to 

say? 

Basically, I’d just like to thank 

everyone who voted and make sure 

people remember that elections are 

an important time.


Comment 

9 

& 

Debate 

The Damaging Effect of 

Pornography 

Alex Boardman 

Now some of you may be wondering, 

what is the problem? Pornography 

seems to have become a part 

of modern day life, due to the instantly 

accessible nature of it at the 

click of a button. The debate around 

the issue is becoming more prevalent 

in society, as psychologists are 

learning more and more about the 

negative effects it is having on our 

generation. With smart phones 

and the increasing ease of Internet 

access it is becoming easier and 

easier to get hold of pornographic 

content. In November, the House 

of Commons debated Internet 

Pornography’s effect on society. As 

Claire Perry states, “A third of our 

10-year-olds have viewed pornography 

on the internet, while four 

out of every five children aged 14 

to 16 admit to regularly accessing 

explicit photographs and footage on 

their home computers,” she said in 

the debate. We are in a generation 

of people, where 87% of young men 

and 31% of young women reported 

using pornography. 

Here are some of the main issues 

that have been raised in the debate. 

Deforming of our sexual development 

Have you ever wondered why 

you, or your partner, may not have 

been able to ‘get it up’ during a 

night of passion? Research is showing 

that porn is indeed addictive, 

especially to men, and that it damages 

their libido in the long-term. 

The abundance of free and available 

erotica has been linked to the 

relationship between people who 

eat processed foods and obesity. If 

your appetite is stimulated and fed 

by poor-quality material, it takes 

more junk to fill you up and the 

research suggests that men need 

higher and higher levels of stimulation 

to become aroused. Experts are 

seeing an epidemic today of healthy 

young men who cannot perform 

easily with their partners because 

they have been overexposed to 

pornography. 

More worryingly is that to fill 

the increasing need for stimulation, 

men need more and more extreme 

situations for arousal. The Witherspoon 

report expresses concern 

about the “brutality” of much of the 

imagery on the web and the way it 

gives young men a “rape-like” view 

of how to have sex with women 

from the offset. Pornography works 

in a Pavlovian way on the brain 

i.e. if you associate orgasm with 

your girlfriend, a kiss, a scent, a 

body, that is what, over time, will 

turn you on. On the other hand if 

you open your focus to an endless 

stream of progressively more antisocial 

activities, that is what it will 

take to arouse you. 

Porn isn’t a good foundation for 

developing relationships 

A lot of our generation, 

are being contaminated by 

Internet porn before even getting 

the chance to have sex or enjoy a 

genuine relationship. In one study 

of 718 Swedish students around the 

country, 29% said that pornography 

had actively influenced their sexual 

behavior. I remember when I came 

round to my first real sexual experience, 

my mind was full of a pretty 

inappropriate mixed bag of fantasies 

and scenarios and the girl’s feelings 

weren’t ever really taken into 

account. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 

when it came to having a sexual 

relationship with a real person, 

someone I actually cared about, 

rather than images on the screen, I 

had no idea how to behave. 

Firstly, porn isn’t just affecting 

young men’s views about sex, but 

is also having an affect on their 

attitudes of relationships. Increasingly 

men are using porn as the 

model for what relationships are 

about and believe that real women 

behave like the ones they see on 

the Internet, which can cause a lot 

of strain on relationships. In porn, 

women are always up for it. Even 

if they initially say no, they don’t 

mean it, and within minutes they 

are gasping and begging for more. 

This gives men extremely high 

expectations of what a girl should 

be like in the bedroom and has led 

to a proliferation of what we might 

call “non-procreational sex”. This is 

leading to confusion between both 

sexes about appropriate decorum in 

relationships. For instance, will my 

partner be up for anything or will 

my view of sex, shock or horrify 

them? 

Is it all bad? 

In a recent Times article, a young 

female student wrote “It’s good to 

have some of those images in your 

head. I find I look at something, 

and then maybe a week later I’m 

having sex and it comes back to me 

and — hey! — that’s really helpful 

just when I need it most.” Also, 

Frankie Boyle, the controversial 

comedian, summed up many men’s 

views on the subject pretty conclusively: 

“If you have a very high 

sex drive, which I do, and you’ve 

got a kid, you can’t just go and shag 

people any more. So you watch pornography.” 

Hedonists who embrace 

porn, carry on surfing because it’s a 

free country and in porn world they 

don’t have to justify themselves to 

the perpetually hot females on their 

screens. In real life relationships 

are risky. Although they can bring 

great joy, comfort and security, 

they can also bring humiliation 

and pain and, comparatively, porn 

allows you to swap uncertainty for a 

virtual world that is predictable and 

controllable. 

What can we do? 

In Confucian thought there are 

five ‘key relationships’ to bring ‘Social 

harmony’, which are supposed 

help society learn and teach 

Continued on page 10»


Comment 

& Debate 

The Damaging 

Effect of 

Pornography 

Let them eat cake, it 

didn’t work before, 

it won’t work now 

» continued from page 9 

one another how to navigate life’s 

difficulties. These relationships 

are ‘ruler and subject’, ‘father and 

son’, ‘husband and wife’, ‘elder and 

younger sibling’ and ‘friend and 

friend’. ‘Social harmony’ is supposed 

to result from every individual 

knowing his or her place in 

the social order, and playing his or 

her part well. David Cameron has 

highlighted new research which 

showed that what matters most to a 

child’s life chances is not the wealth 

of their upbringing, but the warmth 

and input of their parenting. 

Pornography on the other hand 

is mostly an anti-social, selfish 

activity, which is hurting our 

generation’s ability to promote 

healthy and mutually rewarding 

relationships. Politicians have been 

trying to look into ways of regulating 

pornographic content on the 

web, such as the MP Claire Perry, 

who has called for the nine main 

Internet service providers [ISPs] 

to limit access to porn unless their 

customers specifically request it. 

There are problems with regulating 

the porn industry, such as where do 

you set the boundary of what can 

and cannot be regulated? What 

effect will this have on our ability 

to surf on what we want on 

the internet. Cyber-libertarians’, 

suggest that the Internet should 

be the ultimate domain to shape 

our lives free from the control of 

the government and suppressive 

forces. 

I think we need more debate 

and information in our society, 

especially about the negative 

effect that new technologies and 

websites can have on our wellbeing. 

The problem is that we 

are only just learning about the 

effects on ‘our generation’ and 

more needs to be done to combat 

the proliferation of porn on the 

Internet. My belief is that we 

need more self regulation, as we 

are ultimate in charge of our own 

actions. For those of you who 

have read A Picture of Dorian 

Gray, all of Dorian’s bad actions 

in his life show up on a portrait 

of himself. What I worry about is 

what effects of what we see and 

view on the Internet are having 

on our development and for 

lack of a better word our “soul”. 

I don’t know the answers, but I 

hope to see this debate develop. 

tf Comment and Debate 

Comment and Debate is always interested in 

the opinions of RHUL students 

Simply write an aritlce of 400 - 700 words and 

sent it to: 

comment@thefounder.co.uk 

Best before midday Monday 28th February 

Nicholas Coleridge-Watts responds to Sam 

Hancock’s Response... 

Before I begin let me nail my colours 

to the mast: I am not a member 

of Royal Holloway Anti-Cuts 

Alliance, and I’m not familiar with 

their programme aside from the 

obvious objection 

to the Coalition’s 

education policies. 

I am however 

of the opinion 

that university, 

being a service, 

should be free at 

the point of access 

like the NHS. It is 

with this in mind 

that I will critique 

Sam Hancock’s 

response. 

Firstly, Mr 

Hancock mentions 

that there 

are fundamental 

flaws in the procedures 

and actions 

of RHACA. I 

feel bound to 

point out that 

this organisation 

is not subject 

to a hierarchy, 

and represents 

an independent 

initiative of likeminded 

students. 

Consequently it 

doesn’t need to 

toe any kind of 

party line, and is 

free to set its own 

agenda. 

I wasn’t present during the 

specific incident, but it seems to 

me that if anything the antics of 

RHACA were restrained within 

the normal parameters of student 

protest. A sit-in, like all peaceful 

protests, is supposed to be disruptive. 

That the Choral Scholars were 

allowed through at all seems to 

me to be an indicator that student 

demos have gone soft. If nonviolent 

protesters had never made 

a nuisance of themselves we’d still 

have Apartheid, people would’ve 

just ignored Ghandi, and the Civil 

Rights Movement would have been 

left in the hands of white American 

liberals (and we all know how few 

of them there are). 

Later Mr Hancock says that 

RHACA’s (alleged) chanting of 

‘fascist’ and ‘bourgeois’ justifies 

the (not necessarily pejorative) 

assertion that they are ‘left-wing 

radicals’. Well, that’s just mudslinging. 

You can’t condemn partisan 

activity one minute and then go on 

to participate in it the next. 

I’m sure RHACA, like all political 

organisations, sometimes resorts to 

emotion in the prosecution of their 

struggle, but the real question is: 

why is that so bad 

Sam? The SU are 

elected to serve, 

and it can’t have 

escaped your notice 

that when it 

comes to the cuts 

your electorate is 

divided into two 

distinct groups: 

those who don’t 

want them and 

those who don’t 

care. If you throw 

a rock out of any 

window on campus, 

chances are 

you’re not going 

to hit someone 

who thinks what’s 

going on is a good 

thing. 

So why is the 

SU so passive 

about the issue? 

Questions have 

been raised in 

General Meetings 

you say. 

Well, I’ve been to 

GMs; the turnout’s 

poor which 

reflects what the 

students think of 

their usefulness, 

and one gets the 

impression of admin for its own 

sake. The whirligig of town hall 

politics makes the occasions more 

about procedure than achievement. 

Maybe if you they had something 

to fear then they’d take a greater 

degree of interest. 

As for Mr Hancock’s comment 

about RHACA being a minority 

which claims to represent the majority: 

take a look in the mirror.

E X T R A 

Julia Armfield gets the inside 

scoop on Drama Society’s 

upcoming production of...


E X T R A 

Arts 

Interview: Drama Society’s 

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern 

Q: What made you choose this 

play? 

A: We both share a passion for 

both Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the 

ideas of existentialism present in 

works such as Waiting for Godot. 

This play presents us with a fusion 

of the two. Through Stoppard’s 

reworking of Hamlet we felt there 

was a great opportunity to manipulate 

Shakespeare without our own 

emotional connection to Hamlet. 

We can at once make fun of, and 

protect the beauty of the original 

while also playing with more of our 

favourite ideas, that of existentialism, 

discordance and alienation. 

Q: The play is comparatively short 

on female principals – was this at 

all a concern when you first chose 

to bid it? 

A: While there is a striking lack 

of female dialogue in the play, this 

does not mean that the female 

characters do not play an important 

part in the unfolding of events. 

Furthermore, we cast the part 

of Alfred to a female actor (Sian 

Mayhall-Purvis) and changed the 

host of attendants and Tragedians 

to unisex roles. This enabled us to 

further subvert Shakespeare in a 

play so obviously preoccupied with 

reimagining tradition. 

Q: There have been a variety of 

high-profile productions of this 

play in the past – not least the 

movie featuring Gary Oldman 

and Tim Roth. Have you been 

more concerned with taking inspiration 

from or deviating from 

past productions? 

A: We are both aware of previous 

productions of the play but 

there has been no sense of strong 

influence in regard to our own 

interpretation. We have strongly 

advised our actors to develop their 

own characters according to both 

our and their own reading of the 

text giving little or no consideration 

to previous productions. We 

believe that our interpretation is 

solely unique and, to prove this, 

have invited Gary Oldman, Tim 

Roth and Stoppard himself to Jane 

Holloway Hall. 

Q: The play is going to be performed 

in the Jane Holloway Hall. 

You say that you want to use this 

space to create an “existentialist 

Arts Editor Julia Armfield takes an opportunity to remove her 

ranting hat (for once) and have a little internet Q&A with Douglas 

Gibson and Robbie Brown, the directors of the latest Drama Society 

play: Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. 

void”. What exactly do you mean 

by that? 

A: The play will be performed 

entirely in the promenade style, 

meaning that the audience is ‘free 

to roam’ the space at their discretion, 

under no influence from the 

actors or ourselves. There has 

been a deliberate choice taken by 

ourselves, in conjunction with Kim 

Williams (Props and Costume) in 

destroying the idea of a clear historical 

context, lending the production 

a timeless and accidental feel. 

Q: The idea of metatheatre – i.e. 

plays within plays or scenes that in 

some way acknowledge their own 

Doug Gibson (left) & Robbie Brown (right) who are directing 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Photos: Tom Shore 

theatricality – and the interaction 

between actor and audience is 

hugely important to Rosencrantz 

and Guildenstern Are Dead. Have 

you attempted to highlight this in 

any way through your direction? 

A: The promenade staging, 

merging actor and spectator, only 

serves to exaggerate this theme, and 

there are many moments of direct 

interaction and even manipulation 

of the audience to serve our 

needs. The fact that the actors will 

remain in character, in the space, 

throughout the performance, as if 

in a ‘haphazard rehearsal for a bad 

production of Hamlet - learning 

lines, moving props etc. - provides 

a further level of meta-theatricality. 

However, these two examples do 

no justice to the depth of meta-theatre’s 

influence on both the script 

and the staging of the play, and to 

answer this question fully would 

require a two page spread. At least. 

Probably more. 

Q: The play focuses a great deal 

on the nature of art and reality 

and the idea that an event can 

only truly be construed as real if 

it is witnessed. Do you think that 

Stoppard is using his characters 

in this way to comment on the 

believability of theatre? 

A: ‘Audiences know what to 

expect, and that’s all their prepared 

to believe in.’ The reality is that, 

on stage, everything is witnessed, 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are 

never alone - they have each other, 

and as soon as they don’t, they die. 

To add to this, an audience is always 

present, in the knowledge that 

they are witnessing actors pretending 

to be characters. In this way art 

is not reality. Life itself is not always 

witnessed, whereas theatre always 

is. 

Q: How do you think your production 

will differ from anything 

else we’ve seen from the Drama 

Society? 

A: As far as we are aware, there 

has never been another production 

at RHUL to declare ‘the era of seats 

is over!’ This audience/performer 

relationship will present a completely 

new theatrical experience 

and hopefully kick start a new wave 

of contemporary theatre, drawing 

influence from performance 

companies who are relevant right 

now. No longer do we expect an 

audience to be passive, stagnant, 

and possibly bored by orthodox, 

repetitive theatre. This is also a 

genuinely funny play which ranges 

from base slapstick and farce to 

high level punnery-something that 

a play very seldom focuses on when 

performed at RHUL. 

Q: Do you think your production 

will be accessible to everyone, 

whether or not they are familiar 

with Tom Stoppard or Shakespeare’s 

Hamlet? 

A: Although knowledge of 

Hamlet will be of benefit to the 

audience, it is by no means essential 

as this play stands alone as 

a classic, consisting of great jokes, 

deep intellectualism, ponderings of 

mortality/fate/probability, perverse 

desires, emotionally charged 

dialogue and poetic language, along 

with revolutionary staging, physical 

theatre, an energetic cast, a focused 

crew and above all an incredible 

rapport between two great actors 

(Dan Collard and Alex Burnett). 

Q: When is it on and where do we 

buy tickets? 

A: Tickets will be available from 

our launch night (24th February, 

Stumble Inn - 8 till close) and from 

the SU box office from thereon in.


E X T R A 

13 

Arts 

Review: (the revamped) Love Never Dies 

Vikki Vile 

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom 

sequel, Love Never Dies was cruelly 

dubbed ‘Paint Never Dries’ by fans 

of the original when the show 

opened in March of last year. Just 

months later, the press reported 

that tickets were selling for as little 

as £3 and the show was heading 

for disaster. No surprise then that 

the good Lord saw the need for a 

re-think, controversially closing the 

show for a few days over the Christmas 

period for readjustments. 

Noting the teething problems, I 

approached my visit to the Adelphi 

with mixed feelings, concerned 

that this allegedly underwhelming 

follow-up would sent me running 

back to Her Majesty’s Theatre 

where the original is still packing 

in the tourists. That said, I believed 

that Lloyd Webber was not foolish 

enough to put on a sequel to a renowned 

original if it was not up to 

scratch. The rearranged show now 

begins with one of the big songs: 

‘Til I Hear You Sing. There is no 

lead-up, just bam, there it is before 

you’ve even had time to get comfortable. 

I found this confusing, it 

was like going to see The Sound of 

Music and starting with the Nazis, 

but despite this, I believe it worked. 

Many have asked whether Love 

Never Dies is an accessible watch to 

a Phantom virgin and the answer 

is unquestionably yes, though the 

content of the sequel will mean less. 

The plot is touching, rather than 

taxing. We meet Christine and Raul 

ten years on, now with a son named 

Gustav. The family are captured on 

arrival in New York by the Phantasma 

Freaks (go with it) and are 

taken to Coney Island, a down-atheel 

land of sleaze and mystery. The 

Phantom reappears to haunt Christine 

and demands she sing for him 

one last time, whilst Raul insists he 

will leave Christine if she does. In 

addition, there is the added intrigue 

of the subplot involving Meg Giry, 

now a washed-up dancer for the 

Phantasma troupe, and her mother, 

still bitter that the Phantom fails to 

notice Meg’s talent. Reading that 

back, it is easy to see where all the 

criticism has come from with such 

a thin-sounding plot. However, I 

would argue that the music saves 

the show; unquestionably Lloyd 

Webber’s greatest achievement 

since the Phantom of 1986. 

The set is a feast for the eyes with 

big projections, acrobatics and impressive 

costumes creating a sense 

of life at Coney. The moments between 

Christine and Gustav in the 

first act are endearing; Look With 

Your Heart is a heart-warming 

number; and she and the Phantom 

share some thrilling romantic arias. 

In a peculiar role reversal, Love 

Never Dies encourages us to side 

with the Phantom as we see Raul’s 

character take on a new darkness 

in his dejected, drunken state. 

Never have I seen so much tension 

injected into a title song as in this 

show’s climax, but Sierra Boggess’ 

talent makes it worth the wait. 

I loved it, there’s no denying. It 

is obvious that Love Never Dies is 

a show that has had a lot of money 

thrown at it, but I believe that after 

a nervy start, this is a wonderful 

and genuinely spooky show that 

can run the course. It is a show with 

heart, intent and meaning, and after 

all, if the insipid tackiness of shows 

such as Dirty Dancing can still pack 

in the punters, why can’t this? 

Student Workshop 

Review: 

Pool (no water) 

by Mark Ravenhill 

Knowing nothing of the play, I 

entered Sasha Haughn’s production 

of Mark Ravenhill’s Pool (no water) 

with a completely empty slate of 

expectations. Unfortunately, when I 

left I still held an empty feeling. 

The stage was bare; a tiled floor 

and three white flats were the only 

Tim Berendse 

set. The audience (well, about ten 

of them) was seated around the 

tiled floor, with the actors sitting 

in between them. The rest of the 

audience, including myself, were 

placed in raked seating behind the 

three-sided audience/performance 

area. From the offset this made 

me, as an audience member, feel 

very detached. The small amount 

of audience members seated in 

between the actors were addressed 

throughout the performance, but 

the majority of the audience were 

excluded from any interaction and 

forced to simply watch, almost 

voyeuristically, as a story was told 

to other audience members; a confusing 

situation to find oneself in. 

Perhaps this was intentional, but it 

didn’t work. I did not feel engaged 

in the performance at all, and as a 

result was not shocked when the 

actors used crass language or took 

their clothes off. 

I have never been a big fan of 

plays that try to tell an audience a 

story without interaction between 

characters. I don’t think it works, 

and I feel it never will. The whole 

play sounded like one long monologue 

split and given to different 

characters. I was thankful when the 

actors finally started moving after 

ten minutes of telling a story to the 

audience members next to them. 

Again, the majority of the audience 

in the raked seating was excluded 

from these seemingly private 

conversations and as a result, it was 

extremely difficult to understand 

what was happening. 

Even the actors seemed confused 

as to who they were meant to be 

saying their lines to. Some said 

them to each other, some said their 

lines to the audience seated around 

them, and others seemed to say 

their lines to themselves. When one 

of the actors eventually took on the 

role of protagonist, there was a brief 

sense of hope that there would be 

some character interaction, but to 

no avail. 

I can imagine that the play could 

be performed more interestingly, 

perhaps using physical theatre to 

add some relief to the dry speech, 

but the actors, who seemed more 

like narrators, were unfortunately 

left to perform their insular lines in 

an unengaging and detached way. 

I think what let this performance 

down was the lack of movement 

and interaction between the characters, 

whose acting was at no fault 

at all. What was most important, I 

feel, was the lack of consideration 

for the audience, who may have 

seen a great play if they were sat 

in amongst the actors. However, 

the largest part of the audience 

was excluded, something that was 

highlighted perfectly in the climax 

of the play, where one of the actors 

delivered a highly emotive speech, 

but with her back to the majority of 

the audience, hiding any expression 

or emotion from view, summing up 

the entirety of the play. 

tf Arts 

We don’t hear very much about arts and theatre events on campus, but we’d certainly like to! 

If you’ve been to see something on campus that you have something to say about, why not write 

us an article? You can bank on it that the productions will appreciate your efforts. 

It doesn’t have to be long, a couple of hundred words will do. 

Write to Auntie Julia at 

arts@thefounder.co.uk


E X T R A 

Arts 

Screwing up your daughters, the 

Twilight way 


The other day, I read an article so 

asinine that it made me spill coffee 

down my dress (although saying 

that, I don’t generally need an 

asinine article to spill coffee down 

my dress. All I need is coffee.). I 

happened to be trawling the Empire 

movie website, as you do, when I 

came across an article by movie 

blogger Helen O’Hara, entitled 

The Case for Twilight’s Bella Swan, 

Feminist. When I regained consciousness, 

some forty-five minutes 

and an exorcism later, I found that 

I had not, alas, hallucinated and 

that there was, in fact, someone out 

there willing to make a case for the 

heroine of Stephenie Meyer’s phenomenally 

popular Twilight books’ 

right to stand alongside Mary Wollstonecraft 

and Hermione Granger 

and give us the womanly word. 

The gist of O’Hara’s argument, 

from what I could make out 

through bleeding eye sockets, was 

that: “Bella’s relationship with Edward, 

while starting from a place of 

(unhealthy) obsession, evolves into 

something that’s still obsessed (on 

both sides) but actually rather balanced 

between give-and-take. He 

may try to control her life, but she 

simply doesn’t let him.” Well step 

back, Mrs Pankhurst, there’s new 

money in town. 

Let me just hark back a bit here. 

The Twilight novels, for those of 

you who have been living on Mars 

(in a cave, with your eyes shut) tell 

the story of a girl, Bella, who falls 

in love with a vampire, Edward, 

whose only defining characteristics 

appear to be bouffant hair and 

an incurable thirst for her blood. 

Over the course of the series, the 

two argue interminably over Bella’s 

desire to be changed into a vampire 

so they can be together forever and 

make mixtapes of My Chemical 

Romance songs or whatever, whilst 

peppering their bickering with 

intermittent battles for their lives 

and scenes in which they compare 

themselves to Heathcliff and Cathy 

without, I’m fairly certain, even 

the most basic knowledge of what 

Wuthering Heights is about, who 

wrote it or where England is. Also, 

there are werewolves and everyone 

talks about their cars. All pretty 

clear so far. As far as Teen Fiction 

goes, Twilight exploded in a style 

unheard of since Harry Potter. The 

books have sold over 100 million 

copies worldwide and three movies 

have already been made, with the 

final instalment set to be released 

in two parts. Twilight fans, or 

“Twi-hards”, are certainly not agespecific, 

ranging from preteens to 

the faintly disturbing “Twi-Moms”, 

who make me yearn for the days 

when nobody’s parents could even 

pronounce “Dumbledore”. Age 

discrepancies aside, however, there 

are still two incontrovertible facts 

to be gleaned about Twilight, the 

first being that its fan demographic 

is almost exclusively female and 

the second being that, whoever 

happens to have latched onto it, its 

target readership has always been 

teenaged girls. 

Teen fiction, as a genre, is endlessly 

problematic. The fact that 

the word “teen” can encompass 

anything from Upper Fourth to the 

end of university creates untold 

problems in terms of appropriacy 

and relatability and the highly 

gendered lines along which youth 

fiction is divided are certainly no 

help. Fiction aimed at those aged 

thirteen to nineteen is, as a general 

rule, aimed either at girls or at boys. 

The Alex Rider books and anything 

to do with sports or underpants are 

aimed at boys. Twilight is aimed at 

girls. 

Now, let’s wander back to that 

Empire article for a second. O’Hara 

claims that Bella Swan makes “wise 

decisions” and “follows her own 

path”, surely the founding tenets 

of feminism. This is, I should 

point out, the girl who obsesses 

so continually over her undead bf 

that she contemplates suicide when 

he leaves her; who is so near-mute 

in his presence that almost all her 

dialogue is followed by the words 

“I mumbled”; who allows him not 

infrequently to carry her around; 

who loses all interest in family and 

friends when in love; who tries to 

forgo college in the name of said 

love; who marries at age nineteen 

(oh yeah, spoilers); who has some 

seriously questionable violent sex 

afterwards; who gets pregnant 

with what I can only assume, from 

six-hundred pages of vomituous 

description, to be some kind of 

human incarnation of a Saw movie; 

who willingly has the thing; who 

loves it because she’s a lady and 

who waltzes off into the sunset with 

Saw baby and her Abusive Vampire 

Hottie like that’s all just how she 

rolls. Neat. 

O’Hara argues that “Feminists 

don’t - or shouldn’t - demand that 

every woman on screen live up 

to some feminist ideal when the 

population as a whole doesn’t”. 

Well, this I absolutely must contest 

when it comes to Teen fiction. A 

while ago, I wrote an article on 

how children’s books help fashion 

whoever we turn out to be and I 

would argue now that books aimed 

at teenagers carry just such a social 

responsibility. Admittedly, readers 

of thirteen up have a more rounded 

view of the world and a more fullydeveloped 

ability to interpret what 

they read, but the fact remains that 

at fourteen/fifteen, you’re a gibbering 

mess. Hormones, peer pressure 

and stress combine to create the 

Perfect Storm that is adolescence, 

and it is at this point more than 

ever that you start looking around 

for anything to latch onto that 

gives you a tangible identity. That’s 

why people become Goths (that’s 

why I joined Greek Myth Club). 

Literature, during adolescence, is a 

touchstone and Teen Literature is 

a means of searching for identity 

through relatable characters and 

issues. The importance of Twilight 

purveying a positive, empowering 

message for teenaged girls, 

however “idealised” O’Hara might 

think that, should consequently 

be pretty apparent. Teenaged girls 

are a vulnerable lot and frankly, 

the last thing they need is the most 

popular book in the world dangling 

a dream-scenario of perfect, 

vampire love over their heads as the 

way to opt out of a dreary life. Bella 

is made infinitely happier, prettier 

and more appealing by and marrying 

Edward, and if you have any 

problems with your sad teen life, 

then you should just get yourself 

a boyfriend too. One who carries 

you up stairs and fills in your 

Dartmouth applications, because 

it’s always best if you let the man 

take charge of the really important 

things, like college applications and 

motor skills (though obviously you 

don’t really want to go to college). 

Don’t worry if he slaps you around 

a bit, either, or randomly takes the 

engine out of your car – it’s only 

because he loves you. For all its 

inherent pull upon the sparkling 

escape fantasies of teenaged girls, 

Twilight is so woefully backward in 

its approach to essential teen issues 

that it is difficult to see how it could 

be more damaging. Opportunities 

to approach domestic violence, selfimage 

and suicide as anything but 

the trials of young love are sorely 

wasted, whilst abortion, as an issue, 

is as good as outright lambasted. 

An abusive boyfriend is presented 

as the absolute ideal (he sparkles, 

kids) and female characters are defined 

almost solely by the men who 

surround them. 

Bella Swan, for want of a better 

closing statement, is not a feminist. 

She’s a teenaged girl in dire need of 

a book to show her the way. And 

that book is most definitely not 

Twilight.


E X T R A 

15 

Arts 

‘The Holloway Players have been upstaged’ 

Thomas Mayo 

When the Holloway Players stand 

up to perform, they generally have 

no idea what they’re doing. By 

which I mean they won’t know 

what they’re doing until they’re 

doing it, and by then the spotlight 

is on and the show is in full swing. 

The compere gives them a game 

to play, the audience calls out a 

relationship, situation or location 

to adopt, and then they stand up in 

front of a minimum of 100 people 

and begin. And they’re bloody good 

at it. 

The shows themselves are a series 

of games, a la Whose Line is it 

Anyway; improvised comedy on 

tap. The society has been performing 

for several years now, doing a 

couple of shows each term, filling 

Tommy’s Bar on Thursday nights 

with a crowd of tipsy onlookers 

(yes, there will always be a bar). 

And now, after their sell-out first 

SU show in mid-January, they’re 

stepping it up, performing two or 

three times a month. Their next 

show is on Feb 21st, which is soon, 

in case you were wondering. In fact, 

what you were more likely wondering 

is what exactly you’ll be getting 

when you buy your ticket – and 

trust me, you should buy one. 

What you’ll be getting is varied, 

unique, and kind of masochistic. In 

the eyes of the Players, every new 

way of making things more difficult 

for themselves is a new game. There 

are games where they can’t speak 

and games where they can’t move. 

There are games where three people 

must become one, or where one 

person ends up being four, games 

where they have to guess who their 

fellow improvisers are, or even who 

they themselves are, games that test 

their storytelling, acting, memory, 

mime, or which demand that they 

sing an improvised song (in tune) 

on the spot. And half the time, the 

slightest stumble from a performer 

will result in the entire audience 

yelling ‘die’ at them with tremendous 

vigour. And then there’s the 

strong likelihood that they’ll be 

asked to become the moon, or 

Pulls-Fishes-From-His-Armpits- 

Man, or simply the concept of 

taxidermy. 

Okay, guess who’s biased? You 

caught me, wily reader, I’ve been 

a RHUL Player for almost a year 

and a half now, and dammit I’m 

proud. Obviously, I can’t review 

myself, but I can review the rest of 

them. I am, as I’ve said, ‘biased’ but 

luckily, as I type, my aching hand 

reminds me of exactly why they’re 

so good. No, it’s nothing sexual. 

It’s just that we spend a minimum 

of 6 hours a week workshopping, 

discussing, practicing, and yet still, 

two days ago, I managed to bruise 

my hand through embarrassingly 

over-enthusiastic clapping, a wound 

which joins my three Player-caused 

scars (two heavy carpet burns and a 

stab wound) as a badge of honour. I 

still enter a state of unseemly mirth 

when a game begins, because it’s 

never the same thing twice, and 

these people are brilliant. 

And if that’s not enough in the 

way of critical acclaim, don’t worry, 

there’s a reason we’re mounting the 

main SU stage and putting on more 

shows than ever before. It’s partly 

that Tommy’s has started to be filled 

to capacity, partly that in all the 

time I’ve watched the Players there’s 

never been a bad show, but mostly 

that no-one at Royal Holloway, noone, 

dare I say, in the great county 

of Surrey, is quite so dedicated to 

making prats of themselves for 

your enjoyment. Of course, it helps 

that you, gentle reader/soon-to-beaudience-member, 

get to call out 

suggestions just to make our lives 

more ‘interesting’. But don’t worry, 

we can handle it. 

The Holloway Players have several 

shows coming up, their main 

performances being Feb 21st in 

Tommy’s, March 10th in Tommy’s 

(Free!), and March 22nd for their 

second SU Main Hall show.

Holloway View 

Please send in any photographs you’ve taken 

of scenes around campus, and we’ll print one 

or two in each edition. You can email your 

images to pictures@thefounder.co.uk - include 

“Holloway View” in the subject line and send 

them in the highest quality possible. Also, 

please include a few lines telling us a little bit 

about the photo and where you took it. 

Thomas Jackson sent us in this photo by the path 

to the Stumble Inn: “This shot I call “Vale of Sunlight.” 

It’s a beautiful image of the sun shining through the 

trees, which is set in a vale. Incidentally, the rays of the 

sun look almost like a veil, giving an interesting play 

on words.” 

My housemates stuck their heads into one of 

those flower-ball-light-things in ‘Imagine’ (the 

new Ikea-explosion under the Hub). Not for any 

photographic purpose; their reasoning was that 

“it’s almost some sort of, like, weird-trip-thing.” 

Bruce Asher

I took this photo on a rather rainy afternoon in Covent 

Garden Market. I had gone into a covered area beside St. 

Paul’s Church and turned back to capture people walking 

past the archway. This photo only happened because I 

clicked the shutter at exactly the moment the lady and the 

umbrella walked past. I was very lucky. 

Tamsin Bell


E X T R A 

Film 

Hannah Riekemann 

Disney, as in old Walt, has been a 

constant source of speculation as 

to whether he really is cryogenically 

frozen and if so, when he is 

going to make his re-appearance. 

One can almost hesitantly say that 

the return of the ‘proper’ Disney 

film was what many of us craved 

after years of, to be fair, rather good 

movies. I was horrified to learn that 

many people of our generation have 

never seen an old-school Disney, 

no 3-D CGI thank you very much! 

It is a shame especially as many of 

us regard Disney films as a corner 

stone and key developmental 

process that is as much a tool in 

class (comparing the 18thcentury 

to modern Disney characters) as 

well as an icebreaker at parties. As 

a firm champion of the better form, 

I was delighted when The Princess 

and the Frog came out last year and 

positively leaping with excitement 

when I learned of Disney’s newest 

venture Tangled. 

I was rather disappointed at first I 

must confess. The opening credits 

looked suspiciously like a touch of 

CGI had been added to the mix but 

then soon realised that the animator’s 

pencil drawings were visible. 

Phew! Tangled tells the story of 

Rapunzel, albeit a highly modified 

one, who is stolen away from her 

royal parents by an evil gypsy intent 

on using her hair for regeneration 

purposes. Sound familiar? On her 

18th birthday, Flynn Rider the thief 

Review: Tangled 

steals away into the tower to escape 

from Royal Forces and manages to 

get Rapunzel to escape with him 

so that she can view the Chinese 

lantern display. What ensues is the 

usual boy/girl dilemma complete 

with all the songs you could possibly 

ever want to sing along to. 

Indeed I must confess that I did try 

much to the amusement of the Flatmate 

who ended up patting me on 

the head before turning resolutely 

back to the screen. The dialogue 

is witty and incredibly sharp with 

laugh out loud moments that leave 

you gasping, tears running down 

the cheeks et al. It may not be a 

***** 

total Disney classic but it proves 

that Disney can create a winning 

formula without relying too heavily 

on Pixar for the extra bits. The plot 

relies on the old fairytale without 

trying to be ‘cool’ and including 

popular modern day references or 

songs that will date the film as was 

the case with Shrek. The revival 

of the fairytale for Disney’s 50th 

animation is ingenious and intelligent, 

returning to the classic story 

telling that made the studio famous. 

They have carefully placed hooks at 

agreeable points so as to keep you 

entertained and the dam-busting 

sequence leaves your heart in your 

mouth; the fact that the characters 

are animation is of little consequence. 

Rapunzel, voiced by Mandy Moore, 

is the typical teenager, although 

she has never previously left her 

tower, and the see-sawing emotions 

she displays will be scarily familiar 

to those of us who had similar 

arguments with our parents. One 

slight niggle may be that Moore 

sometimes gives very little depth in 

certain scenes but this is swiftly rectified 

by the excellent Flynn Rider, 

Zachary Levi, who shows that the 

narcissistic thief does have a background 

that leaves one reaching 

for the Kleenex. We get characters 

who have a little heart and soul, 

returning to the classic Disney of 

yore. The real star of the film, in 

my opinion, is Rapunzel’s sidekick 

chameleon who picks up the slack 

left behind in the scenes and despite 

having no voice, proves to be 

the voice of reason; his expressions 

left me falling into my seat grasping 

my sides. You can almost see the 

spin-offs that this little chameleon 

will be getting soon. The evil gypsy 

is as dark as the villains of old and 

her regeneration, using Rapunzel’s 

hair, is as terrifying as Ursula in The 

Little Mermaid. 

Now this may not prove to be a 

classic Disney film with proper 

old-school hand drawn animation, 

but it does show a link can be 

made between CGI and animation 

without losing the integrity of the 

story. I absolutely adored the film 

and would happily go and see it 

again and again. Embarrassingly I 

nigh on floated out of the cinema 

still singing the songs to myself and 

flicking my hair about; it makes 

every girl feel like a princess. I 

felt sorry for my Flatmate who 

trailed behind me watching with an 

amused stare as I joined the countless 

little girls who were similarly 

twirling about pretending to be 

Rapunzel. Tangled is seriously good 

fun and I would even go as far as to 

say a strong contender for winning 

in this season’s award ceremonies. 

All I can say is please go and see 

this film and remind yourself of 

believing in your dreams.


E X T R A 

19 

Film 

The King’s Speech (insert pun 

here) at the BAFTAs 

Daniel Collard 

Film Editor 

...reigned supreme, rang out the 

loudest, was crowned ruler...There’s 

a few to get you started. Whatever 

predictable tabloid headline you 

read, none will be exaggerating 

when they speak of the phenomenal 

award success of Tom Hooper’s 

film about King George VI’s 

struggle to overcome his speech 

impediment and his relationship 

with Lionel Logue, his Australian 

speech therapist. Having already 

been excellently reviewed in a 

previous edition of The Founder, I 

shall merely reiterate that this film 

is a very entertaining and moving 

tale of friendship, trust and 

responsibility. It came as no great 

surprise to myself, at any rate, that 

the film came close claiming a full 

house of the top awards – Hooper 

himself missing out to The Social 

Network’s David Fincher in the 

Best Director award. It picked up 

the coveted Best Film gong, as well 

as the Outstanding British Film, 

Best Original Screenplay, and Best 

Original Music awards, while Colin 

Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena 

Bonham-Carter won the Best Actor, 

Best Supporting Actor and Best 

Supporting Actress awards respectively. 

All in all, a pretty good night 

for them, then. 

Yet what might the cynics make 

of this near white wash? Might 

BAFTA have been buttering-up The 

King’s Speech for a less Anglophilic 

reception at the Oscars? It would 

make sense to beef up the film’s 

critical credentials in the hope of 

it following in Slumdog Millionaire’s 

footsteps and beating a host 

of noteworthy films to the king of 

all little gold men. Especially when 

considering that many of the other 

big contenders will be going into 

the ceremony with other less grand 

but still impressive BAFTA awards, 

while The King’s Speech (and remember, 

I’m only being a hypothetical 

cynic here) will not have the 

benefit of a British bias. The Social 

Network left the BAFTAs with the 

Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay 

and Best Editing awards under 

its belt, and was one of a number 

of films that beat The King’s Speech 

to a ‘lower-tier’ award. This might 

suggest that, while the performances 

of the film and the quality 

of the dialogue outshone all others 

in British cinemas in the last year, 

it may not pack as much of a solid 

punch Stateside when it comes to 

be a fully-rounded film that ticks 

the boxes on all levels. 

Now, I personally think that incredible 

performances can/should 

be enough to win a film the top 

award at the Oscars – There Will Be 

Blood, for example, being just one 

of the films robbed of this award 

despite its lead, Daniel Day-Lewis, 

receiving the Best Actor trophy. 

Yet I wonder whether or not The 

King’s Speech will lose something 

in the translation. At the core of the 

film lies an arguably universally applicable 

relationship story between 

two phenomenal actors, but I 

think certain facets of the struggle 

(such as the begrudging equality 

imposed on a member of the the 

British Royal Family by an Antipodean 

immigrant) might well not 

completely come across. And even 

if they do, I fear that an American 

audience may subconsciously side 

with the ‘oppressed colonial’ – as 

Mel Gibson has encouraged time 

and again in ham-fisted style with 

Braveheart, The Patriot, etc – which 

may undermine the classless beauty 

of their friendship. It is not a victory 

of one over another, but their 

joint victory of what makes them 

different. 

Of course, I may be talking utter 

rubbish (again, not saying that I 

actually believe it in the first place) 

and The King’s Speech may clean 

up across the pond as convincingly 

as it has over here. Perhaps the only 

reason I’m voicing a hypothesis 

towards the contrary is because 

I’m hoping someone beats Helena 

Bonham-Carter to the award so 

we can avoid her giving another 

long, drawn-out, dull-as-dishwater 

speech.


E X T R A 

Music 

Review: Hereafter 

Music News 


David Bowman 

Music Editor 

* 

The story sounded interesting and 

with Clint Eastwood in the director’s 

seat and Matt Damon as one 

of the main characters, my hopes 

were, if not high, then at least above 

rug-level. Hereafter has received 

good reviews and having seen all 

the good ones, I thought I might as 

well. We follow the three protagonists: 

Cécile de France as a French 

journalist who falls victim to the 

2005 tsunami but survives; Frankie 

McLaren as a young boy who loses 

his twin brother in an accident; and 

finally Matt Damon, an ex-psychic 

who struggles to reconcile with 

his rare ability of communicating 

with the dead. In the first three 

quarters of the film, the audience is 

shown how the three characters all 

interact with death on some level 

and consequently their fight to deal 

with the inevitability of it. Hereafter 

is in essence built up by two 

hours of backstory and half an hour 

introduction to the plot. And then 

the film ends. As the lights came on 

I looked at my companion with a 

slight, no make that considerable, 

frown. I felt cheated, but was in all 

honesty quite happy to finally get 

out of there. Where was the story?! 

The only reason Hereafter gets one 

star rather than a minus with a 

huge exclamation mark following it 

is because of the believable special 

effects and excellent cinematography. 

Other than that, there is not 

much else to praise. With poor 

acting from all – even Damon 

(who seems to doing little else but 

stuffing himself with food throughout 

the film)! – and a huge lack of 

connecting story. Each character’s 

story could have provided enough 

material for an individual (and 

rather interesting) film, but when 

they are all crammed together into 

one they became superficial and 

insignificant. As a consequence, 

I quite frankly struggled to give a 

damn about any of them. If you’re 

making a film about depressed 

people, at least make sure they’re 

interesting enough. 

Hereafter is not only a waste of 

time, it is a waste of time you will 

regret. Eastwood’s work is possibly 

one of the most pointless films I, 

at least, have had the displeasure 

to watch. With huge potential for 

banging and heart-stirring plot, it 

never fires off, or even moves in any 

direction at all. 

Big news! By the time you read this, 

Radiohead will have bestowed their 

eighth album, The King of Limbs 

(which they have described as the 

world’s first ever newspaper album) 

upon the world. What that exactly 

means will become clear to those 

who shell out thirty pounds to get 

the very collectible physical copy of 

the album, which ships in May. 

Following LCD Soundsystem’s 

announcement that they will be 

disbanding, the band confirmed 

that they will be playing a farewell 

concert at Madison Square Garden. 

However, most of the tickets for 

the event were acquired by scalpers, 

prompting front man James 

Murphy to post a very angry rant 

on the band’s website that is well 

worth a read, before scheduling a 

further string of gigs at Manhattan’s 

Terminal 5. 

In other saddening news, The 

White Stripes have announced that 

they too will be breaking up following 

this message on their website: 

“The reason is not due to artistic 

differences or lack of wanting to 

continue, nor any health issues 

as both Meg and Jack are feeling 

fine and in good health. It is for 

a myriad of reasons, but mostly 

to preserve what is beautiful and 

special about the band and have 

it stay that way.” Jack White will, 

however, be appearing on Gnarls 

Barkley-producer Danger Mouse’s 

upcoming spaghetti western concept 

album Rome, which will also 

feature contributions from Norah 

Jones and some of the musicians 

that appeared on the original 

soundtracks to Once Upon a Time 

in the West and The Good, the Bad 

and the Ugly. 

The Strokes have released the first 

single from their upcoming album 

Angles, entitled ‘Under Cover of 

Darkness’ and have also unveiled 

the album art for the record. I will 

be taking bets as to whether the album 

will turn out to be even worse 

than the album art. 

More information has emerged 

about Spike Jonze’s film Scenes 

from the Suburbs, which is a 

companion piece to the Arcade Fire 

album The Suburbs. It will reportedly 

be a 30 minute film about a 

group of suburban teenagers whose 

town is controlled and torn apart 

by the military. Artsy. The excellent 

video for the album’s title track 

was described as being effectively a 

trailer for the film. 

This year’s Grammys illustrated 

how indie music is fast becoming 

accepted by the mainstream, with 

wins by The Black Keys, Danger 

Mouse, The White Stripes, The 

Roots and, most notably, Arcade 

Fire, winning the award for best 

album for The Suburbs, somehow 

beating competition from popgiants 

Eminem, Lady Gaga and 

Katy Perry. 

Immediately afterwards, Kanye 

West tweeted what we were all 

thinking: ‘#Arcade fire!!!!!!!!!! There 

is hope!!! I feel like we all won 

when something like this happens! 

FUCKING AWESOME!’


E X T R A 

21 

Music 

Review: James Blake, James Blake 

David Bowman 

I’ll confess that I was more than a 

little surprised when I heard that 

James Blake had placed second on 

the BBC’s Sound of 2011 poll, although 

based on his superb output 

last year (releasing no fewer than 

3 excellent EP’s of material) it was 

in no way undeserved. The reason 

for my surprise is that Blake’s music 

only rarely flirts with accessibility, 

creating sparse electronic landscapes 

that are the logical progression 

from the kind of things that 

Burial was doing a few years ago 

before Dubstep was anywhere 

near to being a household name. 

But then, can James Blake even be 

considered Dubstep? 

The first half of the record largely 

consists of electronic tracks that 

shudder and twitch through a series 

of paranoid movements that create 

a remarkable sense of claustrophobia 

despite the amount of negative 

space dictated by the record’s inherent 

minimalism. The middle of the 

record contains the superb ‘Lindesfarne 

parts I&II’ which begins 

solely with Blake’s voice through a 

vocoder and is very reminiscent of 

Bon Iver’s autotuned track ‘Woods’ 

(the same track that is sampled at 

the conclusion of Kanye West’s latest 

album) and then in the second 

part adds an acoustic guitar and a 

touch of drums, transitioning the 

album into a much more relaxed 

and open space. Immediately 

following this comes the heavily 

circulated Feist cover ‘Limit to Your 

Love’, which starts as a standard 

piano ballad but then adds a speaker-damaging 

bass line which comes 

off as abrasive following the mellow 

track that precedes it. This is one 

of many subtle moments where the 

sequencing of the album is shown 

to be of the utmost importance, as 

Blake is able to maintain absolute 

control over the listener through 

his attention to dynamics. 

The latter section of the album 

is made up of piano ballads with 

minimal vocal or instrumental 

distortions that, although they 

initially come off as unremarkable, 

unveil themselves as deep and 

complex entities that are, in a sense, 

self-contained from the rest of the 

record. On the occasions when the 

vocals are manipulated, it is to raise 

the pitch of Blake’s voice, giving 

it an almost feminine quality and 

creating the illusion that Blake is 

singing call and response in a duet 

with himself. 

James Blake proves to be a truly 

remarkable and unique record 

that is the culmination of the work 

begun by Thom Yorke and The xx 

in the way it can make minimalism 

sound vast, but it is utterly original 

in the sense that the core of the album 

seems not to be based around 

electronica or Dubstep, rather 

than jazz as (pardon the cliché) the 

sounds that Blake doesn’t make are 

often more important than the ones 

he does. 

Thanks to the BBC, it’s almost inevitable 

that Blake will be critically 

lauded throughout the year and it 

would seem inconceivable that he 

wouldn’t receive a Mercury nomination 

at the very least. 

Artists You May Not Know #1 

James Chance & The Contortions 

Sel Bulut 

I’m not sure when the words ‘experimental’ 

and ‘difficult’ became synonymous, 

but when James Chance 

& The Contortions released their 

debut LP Buy in 1979, ‘avant-garde’ 

was still a phrase with meaning. 

Buy is the first album that comes on 

after listening to the James Blake LP 

on iTunes and within the first ten 

seconds of its opening track ‘Design 

To Kill’, I’ve already forgotten how 

the previous forty minutes actually 

sounded. This isn’t to say anything 

particularly bad about Blake’s record, 

but on a personal level, it does 

none of the things that give me the 

most enjoyment from music. These 

things happen to be everything The 

Contortions encapsulate – rhythm, 

genuine experimentalism and most 

importantly fun – and at no point 

does it make for ‘difficult’ listening. 

The Contortions were key players 

in New York’s no wave movement, a 

ridiculously fertile period of musical 

history that spawned some of 

the most influential sounds of the 

modern age. Whereas punk was 

based on the notion of a musician 

knowing three chords, many no 

wave artists knew nothing, people 

that literally couldn’t play an instrument 

making stripped down, atonal 

jams driven by hypnotic repetition 

and texture rather than melody. A 

lot of no wave betrayed influence 

– it owed itself to no music before 

it and wouldn’t fit into any style or 

genre. 

Critics and musos will argue for 

hours over who was no wave and 

who wasn’t and it’s easier not to get 

involved in defining it too rigidly. 

What might be easier is to consider 

no wave as a movement that was 

part of a larger upsurge in experimental 

music in New York during 

the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

Whilst on paper this sounds like a 

bunch of pretentious kids making 

noisy, experimental drones (and, 

admittedly, some of it was) plenty 

of stuff from this period was as fun 

as it gets. 

The Contortions were amongst 

these. First formed in 1977, the 

group differed from many no wave 

acts insofar as that James Chance 

demanded some level of skill from 

its members. Originally known for 

their aggressive and confrontational 

live performances, it was after appearing 

on Brian Eno’s seminal No 

New York compilation in 1978 that 

they gained the most recognition. 

No New York was a compilation 

of four no wave artists operating 

in New York in the late 70s that, 

whilst a decent document in itself, 

has sadly meant that many other 

no wave artists have been forgotten 

about. Whilst this newfound 

recognition could have been the 

beginning of something excellent, it 

was sadly not to be, with The Contortions’ 

original lineup splitting 

by 1980. James Chance continued 

with his own funk project, James 

White & The Blacks, whilst founding 

member Pat Place formed the 

excellently groovy post-punk act 

Bush Tetras and the rest of the band 

became the now-forgotten Raybeats. 

What The Contortions left behind 

is unlike anything before or 

since. This is best summarised by 

their ‘hit’, the underground classic 

‘Contort Yourself ’, a four-minute 

stomper based on a simple repetitious 

funk groove, discordant guitar 

work and free-jazz saxophones 

riding over the top whilst James 

Chance’s nutso James Brown impersonation 

commands us to ‘contort 

yourself one time! Contort yourself 

two times! Contort yourself three 

times!’ before descending into 

wolf-like howls. The song hangs 

together on a thread, powered by 

raw energetic rhythm. 

Whilst Buy was a discordant jazz 

trip, James Chance’s second album 

was a bizarre disco-funk odyssey. 

The album, called Off White and 

released under the James White 

& The Blacks moniker, actually 

came out on the same day as Buy 

and contained a disco reworking 

of ‘Contort Yourself ’ by pioneering 

pop producer August Darnell of 

Kid Creole & The Coconuts fame, 

a re-version complete with female 

backing vocals and a defined fourto-the-floor 

kickdrum beat. 

James Chance still releases music 

to this day, with his most recent 

release, ‘Incorrigible’, coming out as 

recently as last May on NY-based 

label Rong Music (as an aside, Liv 

Spencer and DJ Spun provided 

an acid-tinged remix of the song 

which, for what it’s worth, was 

probably the most fantastic piece of 

club music to have been released in 

2010). He also performs live, sometimes 

in a jazz trio, sometimes with 

the reformed Contortions and, if it’s 

in Europe, with his backing band 

‘Les Contortions’. And despite the 

fact that he must be about two hundred 

years old by now, he’s still got 

it – in an interview with Resident 

Advisor, tastemaking selector JG 

Wilkes described his performance 

at Glasgow’s legendary Optimoclubnight: 

“James Chance was searching 

around for his reed and his false 

teeth fell down his saxophone”.


E X T R A 

Film 

thefounder 

needs you! 

Various editorial roles available 

News 

Interested? 

Books 

email editor@thefounder.co.uk 

No experience necessary! 

Love 

struck... 

Studying for that exam in Bedford library, running for a lecture in 

the Windsor building, grabbing a coffee in Café Jules or sipping 

a cocktail in Medicine...love can strike at anytime at Royal 

Holloway. Email lovestruck@thefounder.co.uk and tell me a little 

bit about the gorgeous girl or super-hot guy who you just can’t 

stop thinking about since your chance encounter about campus. 

Let me play cupid and help you find your true love...or crush! 

To the sexy Indian guy who 

sits in Crosslands most days 

with the Russian girl. I was 

wondering if you’re still 

single? I love your caring 

eyes and the hair that protrudes 

from the top of your 

low cut shirt. Wanna go for 

a drink sometime? 

SEXY SECRET ADMIRER 

To the guy I always see 

wandering around the South 

Quad at odd hours dressed 

up like Bertie Wooster. 

Either you’re a freak, a time 

traveller or just incredibly 

pretentious but whatever 

the case, I like it. 

Cocktails and a night on the 

town? 

FLAPPER GIRL AT HEART 

You were the girl who fell 

down the Union stairs last 

Friday. 

I was the guy laughing and 

pointing. 

I feel no remorse. 

GUY WITHOUT ENOUGH 

TO DO 

To the girl on my corridor 

who’s spent the last week 

wailing to her friends about 

being dumped so early in the 

year. 

Frankly, you seem a bit 

clingy for my taste, but Valentine’s 

Day’s been and gone 

and I’m desperate. 

GUY IN REID B – COME 

ROUND ANY TIME 

I’m the girl with the long red 

hair, you’re the freckly guy 

with glasses. We’ve been 

exchanging looks in Bedford 

library all year – last week 

you even lent me a pen. 

Are you ever going to ask 

me out, or do I have to do 

all the work myself? 

GIRL WHO HONESTLY 

DOESN’T BITE 

Girl with the stunning green 

eyes who gave me directions 

to the Queen’s Annexe 

the other day. I sort 

of knew where the Queen’s 

Annexe was – I just wanted 

an excuse to talk to you. 

Want to give me directions 

to Medicine one night? 

TALL ASIAN GUY IN THE 

BLACK JUMPER 

To the dark-haired guy who I 

think tried to contact me in 

the last edition. 

Yes, I so bat for your team. 

I’m just not entirely sure 

how to find you. 

BLONDE GUY WEARING 

THE LIGHT BLUE HOODIE 

(STILL) 

lovestruck@thefounder.co.uk


College offers £2 million in scholarships 

Royal Holloway has made a commitment 

to offer more than 120 scholarships 

and awards, worth a total of 

£2million, to support postgraduate 

students over the next three years. The 

scholarships are being offered to outstanding 

students for PhD and Masters 

degrees as part of the College’s continuing 

investment in postgraduate 

research. 

The Principal, Professor Paul Layzell, 

said: “In the six months since I joined 

Royal Holloway I have been extremely 

impressed by the range and depth of 

research taking place across all three 

faculties. The Times Higher Education 

World Rankings has placed Royal Holloway 

88th in the world for the quality 

of our research and I believe it is vital 

that we continue to invest in our exceptional 

young scholars who will be 

the future leaders of their field.” 

He added: “Despite the news of 

cuts in higher education, we have 

continuing support from the Research 

Councils, along with funding from our 

partnerships with industry, business 

and charities and government organisations. 

We are able to offer a vibrant 

and supportive research environment 

and would welcome applications from 

students who believe they can help 

flickr/ ~FreeBirD®~ 

keep Royal Holloway at the leading 

edge of research.” 

The College awards will support 

research taking place in centres of 

established research excellence across 

the faculties of Arts, Science and History 

and Social Sciences. 

For more information visit: http:// 

www.rhul.ac.uk/studyhere/fundingforstudents.asp 

23 

Safety comes first 

As you may have seen from the 

recent crime mapping statistics that 

were published Egham and Englefield 

Green remain extremely safe areas in 

comparison to the rest of the UK and 

Surrey as a whole one of the safest 

counties. Nonetheless the College 

and Students’ Union continue to view 

student safety and security as a high 

priority subject and are keen to regularly 

emphasise advice on keeping as 

safe as you can at all times. 

Modern humans left Africa much earlier 

than thought, new artefacts reveal 

A team of scientists, including Dr 

Simon Armitage from the Department 

of Geography at Royal Holloway, have 

rejected the existing view that modern 

humans left Africa around 70,000 

years ago. Their discovery of ancient 

artefacts reveal that humans left 

Africa at least 50,000 years earlier than 

previously suggested and were, in fact, 

present in eastern Arabia as early as 

125,000 years ago. 

These ‘anatomically modern’ humans 

– you and me – had evolved in 

Africa about 200,000 years ago and 

It is important for no one to become 

complacent about crime and to ensure 

that students keep both themselves 

and their possessions safe and secure. 

Everyone needs to make an effort to 

diminish any risk to themselves and 

by following these simple suggestions 

you can avoid becoming a victim of 

crime: Try to avoid walking home 

alone during the hours of darkness 

and make use of the College bus 

service, the SU non-res bus or a local 

subsequently populated the rest of the 

world. “These findings will stimulate a 

re-evaluation of the means by which 

modern humans became a global species,” 

says Dr Armitage. 

The new study, published in the 

journal Science, reports findings from 

an eight year archaeological excavation 

at Jebel Faya in the United Arab 

Emirates. 

The researchers analysed the Palaeolithic 

stone tools found at the site 

and discovered that they were technologically 

similar to tools produced by 

reputable taxi firm. If you do have to 

walk home at night, try walking with 

a small group, keeping to the main 

well lit roads where possible and don’t 

be tempted into taking short cuts 

through dark alleyways or the cemetery. 

Always remain vigilant and don’t 

be caught out by listening to your iPod 

– headphones can make you vulnerable 

and miss behaviour which may be 

untoward or suspicious. 

We suggest all students carry a 

personal safety alarm with them, as 

an added safety measure, to use in an 

emergency situation. These can be 

collected from the Support & Advisory 

Services Helpdesk in Founder’s West 

early modern humans in east Africa, 

but very different from those produced 

to the north, in the Levant and 

the mountains of Iran. This suggested 

that early modern humans migrated 

into Arabia directly from Africa and not 

via the Nile Valley and the Near East as 

is usually suggested. 

Dr Armitage calculated the age 

of the stone tools using a technique 

called luminescence dating. His ages 

revealed that modern humans were 

at Jebel Faya by around 125,000 years 

ago, immediately after the period in 

or from FW 170. Store telephone 

numbers of College Security (01784 

443063) and Surrey Police (0845 125 

2222) into your phone in case you 

need them or pick up an emergency 

numbers wallet card from Support & 

Advisory Services or College Security. 

If you would like to discuss personal 

safety issues please email Support- 

AndAdvisory@rhul.ac.uk or SecurityRHUL@rhul.ac.uk 

or speak to the 

Police Safer Neighbourhood team at 

one of their campus surgeries in the 

SU. 

More advice on personal safety can 

be found online at www.rhul.ac.uk/forstudents/support/personalsafety.aspx 

which the Bab al-Mandab seaway and 

Nejd Plateau were passable. He said: 

“Archaeology without ages is like a 

jigsaw with the interlocking edges 

removed – you have lots of individual 

pieces of information but you can’t 

fit them together to produce the big 

picture,” he says. “At Jebel Faya, the 

ages reveal a fascinating picture in 

which modern humans migrated out 

of Africa much earlier than previously 

thought, helped by global fluctuations 

in sea-level and climate change in the 

Arabian peninsula.”


Hypochondria: 

a health condition 

in its own right. 

Kate Brook 

Features Editor 

No one gets through life without 

a health scare. Everyone knows 

what it is to rush to the doctor in 

a panic, or to scour self-diagnosis 

websites with bated breath and 

sweaty palms. After a trip to the 

doctor, however, and perhaps a test 

or two, the majority of us go back 

to everyday life and forget all about 

it. But some do not. Some cannot. 

Some remain so convinced that 

their symptoms are the sign of a 

terminal disease that no amount of 

reassurance can convince them otherwise; 

others are so scared of what 

their doctor might say that they are 

unable to make an appointment in 

the first place. Hypochondria, now 

known as health anxiety or illness 

phobia, is frequently dismissed as 

needless fretting, a trivial concern 

of the neurotic and the self-absorbed. 

But in reality it is a genuine, 

disabling psychological condition, 

and it can have a devastating effect 

on a sufferer’s ability to lead a 

happy and fulfilling life. 

When I was sixteen, I spent the 

best part of a year convinced I was 

dying of multiple sclerosis. It began 

when I watched ‘Hilary and Jackie’, 

the biopic of the legendary cellist 

Jacqueline du Pré, whose career was 

cut short by MS when she was in 

her twenties and who died of the 

disease at the age of 42, fourteen 

years after it was diagnosed. By the 

end of the film, du Pré, played by 

Emily Watson, is confined to her 

bed, unable to control a single muscle 

in her body and dependent on 

carers to feed, wash and dress her. 

It was perhaps not a wise film 

choice for someone with a chronic 

fear of disease. But I didn’t think 

of that. I just thought it was a good 

film, so I watched it again, and 

again, and as I watched it, something 

happened in my brain. In 

the weeks that followed, I began to 

wonder if I wasn’t exhibiting some 

of the same symptoms du Pré had 

experienced in the early stages 

of her illness. The tired feeling I 

sometimes had in my legs, especially 

when I climbed stairs – did it 

mean something was wrong with 

me? My hands trembled sometimes 

too – should I be worried? The 

tingling sensation I occasionally felt 

in my back made me uneasy, as did 

the muscle palpitations that seemed 

to be occurring with increasing 

frequency. My concern rapidly 

turned into fear. Before long I was 

convinced that something terrible 

was happening to my body. 

Panicking, I googled ‘multiple 

sclerosis’. Reading the lists of 

symptoms brought me out in a 

cold sweat; those I had not already 

noticed I began looking for obsessively. 

After reading that uncontrollable 

head or tongue movements 

were always cause for serious 

concern, I found myself in front of 

the mirror, examining my tongue 

for signs of abnormal movement. I 

scrutinised my hands and panicked 

over the slightest tremor. I held 

my arms and legs in strenuous, 

unnatural positions and told myself 

that any resulting pain or muscle 

fatigue was evidence of something 

sinister. I even watched my shadow 

for twitches and shakes. It comes as 

no surprise to me now to learn that 

health anxiety is often classified 

within the Obsessive Compulsive 

spectrum of anxiety disorders. 

According to Terri Torevell of the 

charity Anxiety UK, some sufferers 

of health anxiety will go to their 

doctor ‘countless times’. Negative 

test results and verbal reassurance 

from medical professionals do 

nothing to quell their fears. Others, 

like me, are the opposite – they 

avoid doctors because they are too 

afraid to face up to the diagnosis 

they believe to be inevitable. 

I didn’t just avoid telling my 

doctor – I avoided telling anyone 

at all. For months, I kept my fears 

to myself. I longed for the reassurance 

doctors had offered me in 

the past, but I didn’t for a moment 

believe I would get it. There was so 

obviously something wrong with 

me, I thought, that anyone I told 

would have no option but share 

my concern. Whenever I considered 

going to my GP I imagined 

her recommending, with a grim 

expression, that I go to hospital for 

further tests, and I simply couldn’t 

bring myself to make the appointment. 

However miserable they were 

making me, I preferred to live with 

my fears than risk having them 

validated. 

Had it occurred to me at any 

point that I might be suffering from 

an anxiety disorder rather than an 

actual physical condition, I would 

undoubtedly have been able to 

move on much quicker than I did. 

Seeking help might have opened 

my eyes to the fact that being 

‘healthy’ doesn’t necessarily mean 

being entirely pain or sensationfree, 

and crucially, to the possibility 

that my constant state of fear might 

not just have been the result, but 

the cause of the symptoms I was 

experiencing. 

‘Anxiety produces very real physical 

symptoms,’ says Torevell. ‘With 

people suffering from health anxiety, 

they misinterpret these normal 

physical reactions to anxiety, and 

believe them to be signs of their 

feared illness. 

‘One of the things we often say 

to people on the helpline, when 

they’re calling in the throes of a 

panic attack, is that nobody has 

ever died from a panic attack,’ she 

continues. ‘The worst thing that 

can happen to them is already 

happening. And panic attacks and 

prolonged anxiety cannot go on 

forever. It has its ebbs and flows, it 

has peaks and troughs and it will 

ease eventually.’ 

Calling a helpline such as this 

might have saved me months of 

misery. Instead, I let my fear take 

over my life. It cast a shadow over 

everything I did. I couldn’t bear 

to think about the future – about 

going to university, or starting a 

career, or travelling the world – 

because I didn’t believe I would 

live that long. I was plagued by a 

constant, nagging worry, which regularly 

escalated into panic. Sometimes 

I was so scared I couldn’t 

think straight. There was no respite, 

no situation in which I could feel at 

ease. I simply could not escape it. 

Eventually, when I could stand 

it no longer, I told my mother 

everything. Just talking to someone 

made me felt better, although it by 

no means solved everything. But as 

the days and weeks went by, I found 

myself feeling more relaxed. I began 

considering the possibility that my 

symptoms were nothing more than 

my body telling me to do some 

exercise. The less I worried, the less 

I noticed them. Gradually, they 

disappeared altogether, taking my 

anxiety with them. 

But my experience with health 

anxiety has left its mark. Even now, 

five years later, I avoid reading, 

watching or listening to anything 

that so much as mentions multiple 

sclerosis, and while I don’t fear it 

like I did, I do fear the appearance 

of some new and unmistakable 

symptom. I fear the blind panic 

that will inevitably ensue. I fear the 

sinking feeling, the cold sweat, the 

rising heart rate. Most of all, I fear 

the possibility that next time, my 

worries will be justified. 

Health anxiety is not trivial, and 

nor is it comic. It can ruin people’s 

lives. It ruined a good few months 

of mine, and I am fully aware that 

it might do so again. But next time, 

at least, I will know that I am not 

alone, and that help is out there, 

and that I do not have to suffer in 

silence. 

Anxiety UK is the nation’s 

leading anxiety disorders charity. 

Advice and support for sufferers of 

conditions including agoraphobia, 

post traumatic stress disorder and 

social phobia can be found at www. 

anxietyuk.org.uk, or by calling the 

helpline on 08444 775 774. Lines 

are open Monday to Friday between 

9.30 and 5.30. All members 

of staff have personal experience 

with anxiety.


Features 

25 

Menswear: 

coming out of the 

shadows 

When there is so 

much to shout and 

be excited about in 

men’s fashion, I often 

wonder why there 

are not more people 

shouting and getting 

excited. To an extent, 

I am probably pandering 

to my deepest 

insecurity that menswear 

is not as valued 

as it should be. However, 

the simple fact 

is that menswear is 

constantly overshadowed 

by its opposite 

– womenswear. 

Yes, it’s true, the 

so-called more 

artistically beautiful 

womenswear far 

outshines menswear, 

which is viewed as 

a more boring and 

subdued spectacle. 

The simplest way to 

analyse the difference 

between the two 

is to glance at the 

press coverage and 

celebrity turnouts 

during their fashion 

weeks; menswear 

will have very little of both, while 

womenswear will have an abundance 

of both. The feeling I get is 

that generally, Menswear Fashion 

Week is perceived to be too dull 

overall to spark any real interest, 

whereas the endless glamour and 

decadence of Womenswear Fashion 

Week is deemed a nutritious feeding 

ground of superior quality for 

fashion-hungry predators. I, of 

course, disagree with this notion. 

Womenswear, without question, is 

exuberant, exhilarating and charismatic, 

but menswear has a sharper 

aesthetic and exudes raw power. 

The finer details, such as the cut of 

a suit, are everything. Menswear 

does not need to perform – it just 

needs to be. 

Josh Minopoli 

Milan’s annual Autumn/Winter 

2011-12 Menswear Fashion Week 

has just concluded, and if ever 

proof was needed that menswear 

can be as intriguing and compelling 

as womenswear, then it can 

be found here. Versace put on a 

jaw-dropping feast for the eyes 

that had me on the edge of my seat 

when I looked through the photos. 

The clothes emitted smart, Italian 

prowess with quilted leather jackets 

and trousers, embellished sweaters 

and slicked hair. Shots of electric 

blue were also fired through the 

black of the collection in the form 

of gloves and coats. Indeed, if you 

ever thought menswear was scared 

to add colour to its winter collections, 

then take a look at this year’s 

Milan shows. Dolce & Gabbana, 

Sarah Burton for 

Alexander Mc- 

Queen, Moschino 

and Bottega Veneta 

all had blasts of 

bold red in their 

collections – a 

definite must-have 

colour for Autumn 

2011-12. Burberry 

Porsum enjoyed 

showing off peacoats 

in an array 

of colours which 

included yellow, 

red, blue and tangerine 

orange. In a 

sophisticated collection 

enthused by 

the vanity of man, 

Frida Giannini for 

Gucci described 

the average male 

Gucci-wearer as 

‘elegant, sophisticated 

– and proud.’ 

For me, these three 

words also sum up 

men’s fashion more 

generally. 

I can only hope 

that menswear 

continues to make 

a larger splash in 

the fashion world. There is hope, 

even if us male fashionistas aren’t 

as well provided for as women, 

with their monthly publications 

of Vogue. It has recently been 

announced that Jimmy Choo is 

launching its first collection of 

men’s shoes. Music to my ears. 

Even more encouragingly, Net-a- 

Porter are soon to be launching 

a male version of their fashion 

retail website, candidly entitled 

Mr Porter. Subtle advances like 

this in the world of men’s fashion 

demonstrate the growing market 

for menswear and its more serious 

presence in the industry. One 

small step for man, one giant leap 

for menswear. 

Is life without 

Is life really possible without Facebook? 

A recent survey of London 

students found that nearly 40% 

were being distracted by Facebook 

to the point where their studies 

were affected. Apparently, we’re 

not the only ones. 

A couple of universities in the 

US have experimented with social 

media bans, with some alarming 

results. In a post-Facebook 

world, it seems we would suddenly 

set about swapping photos with 

nearby strangers. At Harrisburg 

University, within 24 hours of a 

Facebook ban, a photo-swapping 

society had been set up, where 

random students could hand over 

their photos to relative strangers, 

stare, comment, and then hand 

them back. They also set up a diversity 

society, suggesting that life 

without Facebook meant having to 

make do with boring neighbours. 

But Harrisburg University’s 

students also found themselves 

less stressed. They started reading 

more and spent more time 

together. Without Facebook, we’d 

get more work done. A quarter 

of Harrisburg students found it 

easier to concentrate after the ban, 

and a fifth claimed to do more 

homework, according to Christian 

Science Monitor. 

? 

Facebook really 

possible? 

Nyasha Madavo 

Another university that experimented 

with a Facebook ban was 

the University of Maryland in the 

US. Students were banned from using 

social media, phones and iPods, 

with devastating consequences. 

Some students reported withdrawal 

symptoms similar to those of drug 

addicts. “I noticed physically, that 

I began to fidget”, said one student. 

Another stated “When sitting in 

the library reading my textbook, I 

actually did hear some vibrations in 

my head”. 

But there were some upsides. 

Apparently, not having Facebook 

or iPods forces us to engage with 

others. A student reported: “It was 

actually somewhat peaceful. Walking 

to class all day was different.... 

[I looked] around more at other 

people and actually [paid] attention 

to what was going on around me.” 

So if you want to avoid Facebook, 

how can it be done? 

A Kent-based company has created 

an application for students to 

limit time spent on Facebook, aptly 

called iFreeFace. You can set your 

own time limits or block Facebook 

to study. Alternatively, you could go 

completely cold turkey and delete 

your Facebook account. But as Harrisburg’s 

experiment proves, things 

can get a little crazy. 

The Founder is looking for new 

writers 

Simply write an article of no more than 700 

words 

and send it to features@thefounder.co.uk 

before Monday 28th February


Features 

Handling 

Homesickness 

Felicty King 

When I was growing up, the idea of 

going to university always seemed 

so far away. It was this huge grown 

up thing that tall clever people did, 

and it was nothing with which to 

concern my naïve, Disneyed little 

mind. It came as quite a shock to 

me, therefore, when all of a sudden 

I found myself here at Royal 

Holloway. All of a sudden, I found 

myself saying, when people asked 

what I was doing with my life, that I 

was at university, and that’s when it 

really hit me. I’m at university. I am 

officially THAT old. 

Now, I always assumed that by 

the time I got to university, I would 

have grown out of my weird fears 

and habits. I would have become a 

sophisticated and civilised woman 

who would handle university easily, 

and who would not lock herself 

out six times in two weeks, forget 

to return library books, or miss 

home. The problem is, I am not this 

sophisticated and civilised woman. 

I’m the same person I’ve always 

been – we all are. We all are the 

same nervous six-year olds who 

don’t like getting on the see-saw 

with our elder brothers because 

they always bounce us off. We’re 

all still scared. It’s just that we’re 

getting to the tragic stage where it 

becomes unacceptable to admit it. 

Well, I don’t care, I’ll admit it. I’m 

terrified, and I have no idea what 

I’m doing with my life, and I miss 

home. 

The bane and the beauty of life 

is that it doesn’t bother waiting 

for you. You can have a bad day, 

or a sleepy day, or a sick day, but 

you can’t ring up a helpline and 

claim the next 24 hours back again 

to enjoy properly. They’re gone. 

It’s over. It’s like going for a really 

satisfying walk – you’re daydreaming 

away in the sunshine when 

suddenly you check your watch and 

realise it’s half four in the afternoon 

and the whole day’s gone. Life’s 

mean like that – there I was playing 

with dolls and watching The Wild 

Thornberrys when all of a sudden 

I found myself buying tea towels 

and unique-looking mugs so ‘the 

other people in my flat at university 

wouldn’t mistake them for their 

own mugs’. Excellent advice, there, 

Mum, but when the hell did I start 

going to university? I swear I’m still 

13 at heart. 

Like any 13-year old, I still miss 

home. A lot of us do, and even 

more of us do but just don’t admit 

it. It is perfectly natural to miss 

home, however, and nothing to be 

ashamed of. On the contrary, it’s 

a good sign – it means you have 

a home that is lovely and happy 

enough for you to miss, and like 

everything, homesickness will pass. 

We are incredibly lucky – we have 

phones, Skype, email, Facebook and 

a billion and one other ways to keep 

in contact with the people we love. 

If you think you’ve got it bad, take 

a trip back to medieval times when 

the only forms of communication 

were carrier pigeons and grunting. 

‘ 

The problem is, I am 

not this sophisticated 

and civilised woman. 

I’m the same person 

I’ve always been ’– 

we all are. 

Even in the last hundred years, 

letters were the only way of keeping 

in touch, and yet people survived. 

Take every opportunity you can 

to talk to the people you love, but 

don’t worry if you haven’t got time 

to do it as much as you feel you 

should. The amount you do it is not 

a reflection on how much you love 

the people you’ve left behind, only 

on how well you are able to cope 

on your own. Don’t feel bad if you 

can only call your parents once a 

week, but similarly don’t feel bad 

if you call them every day. They’re 

your parents – if you can’t obsessively 

harass them without getting 

arrested, then who can you? 

Being at university is brilliant, 

but I think a lot of us can feel like 

it’s crept up on us unseen, and that 

we’ve found ourselves here without 

any previous experience of living on 

our own. Keeping in touch with the 

people at home is an important part 

of learning to grow up. We all have 

those nights when we want nothing 

more than to be in our own beds, 

or the days when we just want to sit 

around in our living room and piss 

off everybody else in the family by 

watching ‘Friends’ episodes backto-back 

(because nobody else in my 

family likes ‘Friends’ – a random 

but truly shocking bit of domestic 

information about my famille for 

you there). The important thing to 

remember is that although we have 

found ourselves alone at university 

for the first time, we are all 

alone, so if we’re all alone together, 

we’re not really alone at all. And 

by now, if you’re all as lucky as 

me, you’ll have found some truly 

wonderful and crazy individuals 

who become another kind of family 

for you – and this one, I am pleased 

to say, appreciates ‘Friends’ as much 

as I do.


Features 

27 

In defence of Tony Hayward 

Ashley Coates 

Under my parents’ front garden in 

Bristol there is a lead pipe that once 

provided the main water supply to 

the house. In 2003, the pipe was 

capped off and a new water supply 

via a plastic pipe was installed in 

its place. The lead pipe lay a foot 

underground and was entirely 

forgotten about until June last year, 

when I went through it with a rotary 

hammer. Mains pressure water 

began to flow into the front garden. 

I decided to use a procedure known 

as Top Kill, where the lead pipe 

is repeatedly struck with a mallet 

until it closes off the leak. With this 

having failed and more and more 

water pouring out of the ground, 

my family began to ask serious 

questions about my handling of 

the spill that was endangering their 

precious front garden. 

Day 2 and the leak continues. 

With Top-Kill having failed, I initiate 

Tap-Kill. Somewhere underground 

in a 40 by 40 foot area is a 

tap, or a number of taps, that can 

be turned off and end the leak. It 

takes hours of digging to follow the 

pipe until finally I find a tap. There 

is great optimism in the household, 

but it turns out to be a subsidiary 

tap that cannot turn off the main 

leak. Things are getting ugly for me, 

politically. Day 3. My parents call in 

their own experts to assess the situation. 

The plumber questions my 

original estimates for the amount 

of water being leaked into the 

front garden, suggesting the spill 

was much worse than had been 

originally assumed. He goes on to 

question the whole way in which 

I had gone about dealing with the 

spill, starting with Top Kill: ‘You 

were doing what with a mallet?’ 

By Day 4 of the spill my mother 

was under intense pressure to be 

seen as being in control of the situation. 

In a live address to the rest of 

the family she said: ‘we will make 

Ashley pay for the damage he has 

caused to our front garden.’ Earlier 

that day I had been overheard 

telling a friend that ‘I want my 

life back’ and that I ‘would like to 

spend some time doing something 

other than digging up the front garden 

trying to find taps’. This went 

down very badly in Bristol. Day 7. 

A week since the rotary hammer 

had struck the old mains pipe. I 

had dug a trench, one foot deep and 

over 20 feet long before I found the 

stop-cock for the pipe and the leak 

finally came to an end. 

Now, I know what you’re thinking. 

1) I’ve lost it, or 2) I am, like so 

many other upstart young journalists, 

trying to be clever by talking 

about politics with reference to 

my own life. In fact, both of these 

things are true but my experience 

over the summer genuinely gave me 

some sympathy for former BP CEO, 

Tony Hayward. 

Like me, Tony Hayward was the 

public face of an environmental 

disaster, albeit a far larger one 

than the one in my front garden. 

In May 2010, a few weeks into the 

spill, he told a US reporter ‘I want 

my life back’ – one of the biggest 

PR mistakes of modern times. The 

press leapt on it as an insensitive 

remark coming from the CEO of 

the company that was officially 

responsible for the disaster. Two 

months later, Tony Hayward was 

photographed on a yacht on the Isle 

of Wight, prompting anger from 

those that felt he should be ‘sorting 

out this mess’. The truth was that 

Hayward was on the Isle of Wight 

supporting his son in a boat race. 

It was the first time he had seen his 

son in three months. As he said to 

BBC’s Money Programme recently: 

‘If I had a degree in public relations, 

rather than geology, things might 

have gone differently for me.’ 

Another parallel with my summer 

and Tony Hayward’s summer 

was that every time I did something 

that I thought would stop the spill, 

it failed. When things break, hitting 

the offending object is just one of 

those things you do, so bashing 

the pipe with a mallet was entirely 

sensible given the circumstances. 

After this failed, I took the next 

logical step and tried to push stuff 

into the pipe that would block it 

up, stuff like gravel and mud. This 

was directly inspired by BP. Top 

Kill, where BP pumped mud and 

golf balls into the blowout preventer, 

seemed silly but it might have 

worked were it not for the force of 

the oil acting against it. Top Hat, 

another scheme I imitated on a 

micro-scale, involved placing a 

huge ‘hat’ on top of the leaking well 

and funnelling the oil up onto a 

barge on the surface. For my Top 

Hat I used a hose forced onto the 

hole in the pipe, but alas, nothing 

could be found that would hold it 

in place. BP’s ‘hat’ became blocked 

by oil deposits before it could be 

placed above the leaking blowout 

preventer. 

The devastation that occurred 

in the Gulf Coast last year affected 

both marine life and the lives of 

communities that depend on the 

region for fishing and tourism. It is 

right that those responsible are held 

to account and that procedures are 

changed, but the media storm that 

encircled Tony Hayward meant that 

all the anger that should have been 

directed at a dangerous industry 

was in fact directed at someone 

who was entirely unequipped to 

deal with what was happening 

around him. I find it extremely 

reassuring that BP’s former CEO is 

a geology graduate with poor PR 

skills – that is exactly the kind of 

person I want to be in charge of a 

major oil and gas firm. The worst 

thing that could become of the 

Deepwater Horizon disaster is if the 

people at the top of these companies 

are expected to be brilliant 

communicators as well as, or at the 

expense of, being professionals in a 

relevant field.


Sport . . . . 

Svensson Says: 


Sports Editor 

…injuries suck! Not a very daring 

statement in all honesty, I’ll admit to 

that. But the weight of truth remains 

as heavy just the same. 

Michael Jordan once said: ‘My 

body could stand the crutches but 

my mind couldn’t stand the sideline’. 

The trouble with injuries is, there’s 

not much of a choice! You can’t 

choose not to squeeze the sideline 

and in all honesty, if you plan on 

clasping on to any level of sanity 

throughout, you better hug it like 

it was your best friend. In fact it 

NEEDS to be your best friend! After 

all it is the place where you will 

spend most of your time (save for 

the gym perhaps) and it is also the 

closest you will get to your sport, as 

much as you hate to acknowledge it. 

In other words, it is your link; a sort 

of bridge between where you are 

and where you want to be. 

I and the sidelines go way back. 

It probably knows me better than 

anyone else, and that’s saying something. 

We first hooked up years ago 

and our history has since then been 

characterised by agonising twists 

and turns and frequent disappointment. 

As in all relationships there 

have been hard times and challenges 

along the way. But I oughtn’t 

to be unfair; we have had our moments. 

Once or twice you may even 

find yourself savouring the thrill of 

progress! 

But then you reach that point 

in your journey: the point we all 

tf 

face sooner or later (and almost 

certainly both). The question ‘is it 

all worth the struggle?’ presents 

itself in blinking red neon lights and 

slaps you across the face. Perhaps 

the red should be taken as a sign of 

warning, but the mind seldom goes 

there. Along with this question tags 

a slippery slope. - Get too close to 

the edge and you risk a hasty voyage 

downhill. 

I want to break up with my sideline. 

We all do. But the little ****er 

lingers around, leaving the chains 

on. And so we reconcile with the 

fact: we sit down next to our friend 

and gaze dreamily across the bridge 

to the other side where, obviously, 

the grass looks – and is – much 

greener. 

Royal Holloway’s 

Emily Moss runs 

for England 

Royal Holloway’s runner and STARS student Emily Moss was selected 

to compete for England in Bratislava after excellent results 

this season. We asked her to give us an account on her experience. 

Emily Moss 

“The excitement was building in the 

lead up to the day, especially when 

all of my England kit arrived by 

courier to my house. I spent much 

of the afternoon trying on all the 

various arrangements and having 

a mini photo shoot in the garden, 

trying to decide what combination 

I looked best in. Seeing ‘England 

Athletics Team’ on the various 

garments made me feel especially 

proud and I knew I would feel very 

honoured to pull on my England kit 

when it was time to race. 

After winning the Northern 

Championships in an indoor 

personal best time of 2:10.22 for 

800 metres, which at the time 

ranked me 2nd in the UK, I was 

thrilled to be selected to race for 

England in an International Meeting 

in Bratislava on January 30th. 

“We met at the airport the day 

before the meeting and I was 

introduced to the team managers 

and the other athletes on the 

team; of whom several others were 

debutants. However, there were also 

several “legends”, as I call them, 

on the team, in the sense that they 

have competed for Great Britain 

at major Championships, so I was 

keen to speak to them and embark 

on their wealth of experience from 

such events. 

“The hotel in Bratislava 

was better than I had been led to 

believe, but still resembled something 

from the former Communist 

Eastern Bloc Countries in the 

1980s. It was literally like being in a 

time warp!! However, as an aspiring 

top-level athlete, I have to get used 

to this and be able to cope with 

anything that is thrown at me, so it 

was all good experience. 

“I did not feel I ran that 

well in my race, recording 2:11.44 

for 6th place. The leaders took 

the race out at a ridiculously fast 

pace – passing through 400 metres 

within world indoor record pace 

– and therefore it became a case 

of trying to hold on for as long as 

possible. I hung off the pace, but 

still found myself getting dragged 

into going far too fast in the initial 

stages and I consequently struggled. 

However, determined to do my 

best for my country, I didn’t give up 

and worked as hard as I could all 

the way to the end, and ended up 

overtaking two athletes with faster 

pre-race times in the final 50m. Although 

I felt I had struggled and I 

was disappointed with my time, the 

team managers were pleased with 

me as I finished two places higher 

than my pre-race ranking. Everyone 

had misjudged the pace, so 

no athlete was particularly pleased 

with their time. Why everyone 

went so fast I will never know. I had 

learned two things from the race. 

Firstly, that I need to work on my 

pacing and secondly that I am not 

yet in world record shape! 

“It was a great experience 

to be in such a fast race and I hope 

that it will stand me in good stead 

for my domestic races later this 

summer. It was a big step up in my 

first winter focusing on 800 metres 

and I certainly did not feel overwhelmed 

by the occasion, although 

I had hoped to do better. 

“I have a few more races 

planned this indoor season, where 

I really want to keep improving my 

time and win a medal in the BUCS 

Indoor Championships. It is going 

to be hard, but that is what I am 

concentrating on if I am feeling 

good on the day. Further ahead, I 

plan to take a short rest after my 

final indoor race to try and refresh 

myself and get myself back feeling 

good ready to hit the training 

hard in the lead up to the outdoor 

season. 

“Racing for my country has been a 

target of mine since I first started 

the sport as a 13-year-old, so it really 

was something very special to 

me. I really want to use this experience 

to make me a better athlete 

and I hope that I can stay healthy, 

keep improving and go on to bigger 

and better things over the coming 

years.”


29 

The Founder Sport 

sports@thefounder.co.uk 

thefounder.co.uk/sports 

Editor: Johanna Svensson 

MACS 

at 

LUBE 

L.U.B.E - i.e. the London Universities Bouldering Event – is a new 

student-led climbing event for universities from all over the country 

and our very own Royal Holloway Mountaineering and Climbing Society 

is currently competing in it. 

Alice Norman 

With over a hundred and fifty 

climbers and experienced teams 

from many different universities, 

this event is highly competitive and 

provides an excellent opportunity 

for us to show everybody what a 

great team of climbers we have here 

at Royal Holloway. 

The competition as a whole consists 

of 4 rounds, held at different 

locations across London: from the 

Craggy centre in Sutton to the Arch 

Climbing Centre in central London. 

Each university enters two teams 

of three climbers for each round 

as well as individual climbers who 

want to enter into the solo competition. 

You gain points for the 

number of successful climbs you 

complete but the points decrease 

depending on the number of times 

you try to complete a route so it is 

just as much about the tactics as the 

stamina. 

So far three rounds have been 

completed and we are pleased to 

say that our teams are doing really 

well. Our A-team currently holds 

the highly respectable grand total 

of 1,293 points and our B-team, 

another tremendous total of 1,184. 

This puts us in the top 15 universities 

in the whole competition. 

Special congratulations should be 

awarded to Jack Appleby and Chris 

Stroud who, competing individually, 

have achieved outstanding scores 

of 506 and 478 across the first three 

rounds and are, quite deservedly, 

currently ranked 18th and 23rd in 

the whole competition – and that is 

out of over 100 climbers! Congratulations 

should also go to Heather 

Rumble who is leading our female 

climbers with the number 22 spot. 

We would really like to thank 

everyone for getting involved and 

competing, as it is the first time that 

our university has been involved in 

such an exciting climbing and bouldering 

event and we want to wish 

our team members ‘good luck’ for 

the final round, which will be held 

at the Arch on Saturday 5th March. 

Sport 

. . . . 

A cracking Wednesday 

for RHUL Squash 

Ben Hine 

RHUL Squash marched onwards 

in all of their campaigns 

this Wednesday with key wins 

putting the club in continued 

high spirits. At home, the Men’s 

1st team were looking to continue 

their unbeaten run of five games. 

They hosted Brunel, a team with 

which they have a stormy past. 

Brunel inflicted the team’s only 

loss of this season so far in the 

first game of the year, where they 

surprised the boys with a strong 

4-1 win. The firsts were therefore 

out for blood and looking to take 

advantage of being on home soil. 

Simon Green (5) put in a good 

effort but lost 3-1 against a tough 

opponent, whilst Tim Scarfe 

(4) used all his experience from 

playing in leagues in Egham and 

Windsor to secure a 3-1 victory, 

placing the teams at 1-1. Arran 

Waterman (3) and Jamie Pearce 

(2) “a.k.a Mr Reliable” put in solid 

and consistent performances to 

push the overall score to 3-1 with 

3-0 wins each. This made Adam 

Robin’s (1) game a formality on 

paper, but in order for RHUL to 

jump to top of the league, a 4-1 

win was needed. Unfortunately, 

Adam could not capitalise on 

the no-pressure situation and 

lost 3-0, but a 3-2 win against 

Brunel 1st team is still a major 

Sports . . . . 

achievement and the lads should be 

commended. Jamie Pearce had this 

to say: ‘a hard fought win with signs 

that this team can push on for a cup 

win, even if the top of the table is 

out of reach.’ 

The ULU 2nd team travelled 

into London to face LSE 3rd team 

to defend their current 100% win 

rate and their position at top of the 

league. After facing the 4th team 

and coming out with a 5-0 victory, 

the players felt confident that the 

momentum was with them for this 

particular match up. Elliot Rawstron 

(5), Callum Chaplin (4), and 

Johnny Chapman (3) all cleaned up 

with superb 5-0 victories, showing 

that they are really paying attention 

in training and converting that to 

some really slick moves on court. 

Jason Dunn (2) struggled in the 

3rd game, whilst 2-0 up, due to a 

dodgy call by the referee, but came 

back strong in the 4th to provide a 

3-1 win and a 4-0 lead. Ben Hine 

(1) put in the only disappointing 

performance, allowing a different 

technique to upset his game, and 

not being able to capitalise on a key 

opportunity in the 3rd game, leading 

to a quick 3-0 loss. 

The Women’s 1st team travelled 

away to SOAS for their last league 

game of the season, aiming, more 

than anything, to ‘suss out’ their 

opponents ahead of an almost 

certain cup match up. Rachel Smith 

(4), Sofiya Sosyedka (3) and Laura 

Goswell (2) all lost, 3-0, 3-2 and 3-1 

respectively, whilst Julie Peachey 

(1) maintained her three and a half 

year unbeaten record with a 3-0 

win, putting the match score at 3-1 

in favour of SOAS. Despite the loss, 

the team are only looking ahead, 

and are looking to use what they 

have learned about their rivals to 

hopefully overcome them in the 

cup and reach a third final in 3 

years. 

As well as great competition 

results, RHUL Squash is also still 

recovering from the shock of their 

huge RAG success in RAG week 

last week. On Friday 29th January, 

several members of the squash 

club undertook ‘The RHUL Bears 

Squash Ninja challenge” and spent 

the day on campus collecting 

money in buckets in aid of Street- 

Invest, the designated RAG charity 

this year, all whilst dressed in full 

ninja costumes. In total, the club 

raised £490.66 on the day, and, in 

addition to RAG auctioning off Michael 

Krayenhoff, Hagen Brümmer 

and Mauricio Izquierdo for £45, 

the grand total raised was £535.66; 

making RHUL Squash the number 

one RAG contributor this year! A 

big thank you to everyone who contributed 

and huge congratulations 

to Rory Voake and Rachel Smith 

who individually raised £96.86 and 

£101.55 respectively. RHUL Squash 

is on a roll with no signs of stopping 

any time soon! 

The Next Deadline for the sports section is: 

Monday 28th February 

Correction: The photos from alumni sports and day should have been attributed 

to Tony Hart and RHUL Sports Office. More photos are availabile at 

www.tony-hart.com


Sport . . . . 

RHUL Polo 

Club Report 

tf 

More S.T.A.R.S 

ast summer our top polo team 

competed in the first ever International 

University Polo tournament 

in Thailand, along with only one 

other UK University. This was such 

a huge event we were very proud 

to have taken part in, and hope to 

again this year. 

We are planning an exhibition 

match in the Summer Term at Holloway. 

This will be a great day 

for Royal Holloway students and 

help us raise money for the club. 

We also run great social events 

for our club taking them to see 

polo matches such as the huge 

arena event at the o2 this month 

– the first ever International 

Arena Championship – the 

Cartier and Gold Cup. We also 

hope to take our teams out to 

Argentina next season for its 

renowned polo scene 

Helene Raynsford 

Rowing 

-Gold Medalist at Beijing 2008. 

First British Woman to win a Gold 

Medal for rowing at Olympic Level 

-2006 World Champion 

-Sports Women of the year 2006 & 

BBC South 2008 

-GB Wheelchair Basketball Team 

04-06 

Christopher Hall 

Athletics 

-U20 Welsh Athletics Squad 

member 

-Competed in the BUCS Indoor 

and Outdoor Athletics Championships 

-Division 2 British Athletic League 

Team Member 

Sebastian Schyberg 

Golf 

-Danish National Junior Squad 

Member 

-Twice winner of Junior Club 

Championship in Denmark 

-Wentworth Golf Bursary 

Helen West 

Korfball 

-Bronze Medalist at the U16 Youth 

Talent World Cup 2006 

-U16 National Team Champions 

-Invited to join England Senior 

Korfball Squad. 

Simon Clement 

Golf 

-Winner of ISGA Shire Trophy 

-Surrey County Golf Player 

-Wentworth Golf Bursary 

Jennifer McGeever 

Fencing 

-Ranked 1st in GB for her category 

-Ranked 23rd in the World 

-U20 National Champion 2009 

- 34th Individually at U20 World 

championships 2010 

-13th at U23 European Individual 

Championships 2010 

Mayowa Olonilua 

James Thomas Newman 

Paul Webster 

Rugby 

Rugby 

Rugby 

-Plays for Blackheath Rugby Club 

-National Plate winner 

-Kent County Player 

-Plays for Richmond Rugby Club 

-East Sussex County Player 

-Selected to train with the Bay of 

Plenty in New Zealand before the 

2005Lions Tour 

-Plays for London Scottish Rugby 

Club 

-Attended the Vikings Rugby 

Academy, Durban, South Africa 

-Played for Southern Natal 1st XV 

whilst in South Africa 

-Selected for Scottish Exiles U20 

Royal Holloway 

Lacrosse’s 

defence defeats 

Kings 

Charlie Allen 

After having a number of 

matches postponed due to adverse 

weather conditions Holloway Men’s 

lacrosse team were looking forward 

to finally playing a match. So far 

in the league they had had it fairly 

easy but knew that this would be 

their first real test. After playing a 

very close alumni match (5-4 to the 

current team) the day before the 

boys knew we would have to step 

up their game for Kings. 

After winning the first draw a 

first goal for Holloway followed 

just minutes into the first quarter. 

This gave them the confidence 

boost they needed and soon goals 

came flooding in. Defence was so 

strong that the Kings players had 

difficulty even getting close to goal 

and when they did the pressure was 

so great that few of their shots were 

on target. Kings however, being the 

team that they are, weren’t going to 

give up without a fight. A score of 

7-0 to Holloway wasn’t enough to 

guarantee a win. 

The first draw of the second half 

was won by Kings and a goal was 

almost immediately won against 

us. After that however, Holloway’s 

defence regrouped and Kings 

weren’t able to score again, despite a 

considerable step up in attack 

A special mention should go to 

Matt Eccles, man of the match. 

Although always a useful player, 

Matt transformed his game and 

scored a hat trick before getting a 

rather nasty head injury during the 

3rd quarter. It is clear from the final 

score (14-1) however that every 

member of the team deserves to be 

congratulated.


31 

Undergraduated 

Nicholas Blazenby 

I am here to tell you all that every 

once in a while a man shoots way 

above his weight and scores. Now 

I’m an average looking guy with 

good taste in clothes, music and 

newspapers and I usually get fairly 

average looking women with bee 

sting breasts and an irritating sense 

of humour. My motto has always 

been if they talk to me then they’re 

fair game. This, however, somewhat 

changed last week. 

The Rower had invited me to a 

joint birthday/Valentine’s party he 

was having with some bloke from 

his course. It was at a proper party 

house in The Green and by the time 

I arrived with my bottle of Jacques 

and a belly full of Crosslands’ J.D. 

and coke the party had definitely 

started. Nobody answered the 

door so I went round the back. As 

I skulked round the corner I was 

spotted by The Rower. 

“Nic! Mate!” He yelled. “Let’s get 

you DRINKING!” 

I waved my fruity cider in front 

of him and he grinned then swayed 

a bit. He was only wearing his 

boxers and a tiny, pink girl’s vest 

top that barely covered his chest. 

I think he might be a bit…you 

know… suppressed, because he 

dresses up in girls clothes at every 

opportunity and makes out with 

guys then blames it on the alcohol. 

He’s a very macho guy and does 

loads of sports and manly things, 

but he does have the legs for Drag. 

The Rower wandered back 

indoors and I spotted a space on 

the wall between the patio and the 

“lawn” (i.e. dried out mud with 

various bits of barbequed debris 

from last summer and a bizarre collection 

of traffic signs (some from 

overseas it seemed) in amongst 

copulating couples). I opened my 

drink and downed half in an effort 

to avoid talking to the strangers all 

around me. 

I took a deep breath then turned 

to strike up a conversation with the 

person next to me. Unfortunately I 

got the shock of my life when I was 

faced with a girl mid-breakdown. 

She had vomit on her chin and was 

crying so much her make up looked 

like a Scream mask. This party was 

starting to seem like a really bad 

idea. 

As she was convulsing out the 

words “My boyfriend dumped me 

for…” and putting her arms around 

my shoulders someone came up to 

us. 

9. Erection 

Special 

“Greg! It’s so good to see you! 

Coming in for a drink?” 

I looked up in surprise and was 

presented with a rather mature, 

sober looking girl with blonde hair 

and wearing a polo shirt and jeans. 

I then noticed she was holding a 

near empty bottle of wine so maybe 

she wasn’t that sober. 

“Hi, er yeah…” I said rather unconvincingly. 

“Why don’t you come inside, 

mate?” she replied and motioned 

her head towards the Bunny Boiler 

looking at me with glazed eyes. 

I finally got the message and 

gently placed the drunk girl on the 

floor. I followed my mystery rescuer 

into the house, thanked her for 

helping me and told her my actual 

name. I think she may have said I 

looked like a distraught little lamb 

and she’d felt sorry for me. A real 

manly start, then. 

We found a spare seat and half 

on a sofa and squeezed into it. I 

looked down at her chest (force 

of habit) and two things struck 

me. Firstly she had “New Lyell” 

stitched on her shirt and secondly 

she had THE biggest bosom I have 

ever witnessed that close up in my 

life. Now the New Lyell thing has 

puzzled me for a while. I’ve seen 

people on campus with those shirts 

on and always wondered what the 

fucking hell they were up to. Were 

they interested in building because 

of the little hammer thing? Or was 

it Holloway’s not-so-secret society? 

She explained what it actually 

meant, but to be honest the size of 

her knockers distracted me for the 

rest of the evening and I’ve forgotten 

what she told me. 

Now, these boobs weren’t just 

large, they were excessive. And they 

looked so inviting, like an actual 

pillow from that Brim Full of Asher 

song. Turns out she was on her 

third bottle of wine so didn’t really 

notice me staring at her chest (I 

literally could not avoid it) and was 

a postgrad student. Older women 

for the win. 

This Postgrad with Giant 

Pendulums of Bliss chatted to me 

quite a lot, in fact for the rest of the 

night and we got on like Founders 

toasters on fire. There was a slight 

awkward incident when Usher’s 

classic anthem ‘U Remind Me’ 

came on and she went all nostalgic 

and emotional and suddenly kissed 

me. Obviously I was over the moon 

that she made the first move but I 

Photo: Flickr/seier+seier 

had just taken a gulp from a vodka 

and coke I’d found abandoned on 

my way back from the toilet, so 

during the kiss the beverage somehow 

transferred from my mouth to 

hers. As we parted lips she stared at 

me and slowly swallowed the drink 

that had spontaneously arrived in 

her mouth. I looked on wide eyed 

and braced for a good slap. But she 

just burst out laughing and went 

outside. 

I followed and got her number. 

I also got a sneaky fumble on the 

‘lawn’ and let’s just say I might be 

getting more intimately acquainted 

with those delicious orbs of boob 

jelly in the not too distant future. 

Who needs friends when you’ve got 

gigantic lady floatation aids at your 

disposal. 

God, I love boobs.

For 

and my 

career 

Your future in business 

Wednesday 9 March 2011 | 6.30pm – 9.30pm 

CIMA has teamed up with Royal Holloway, University of 

London to offer you a great opportunity to hear directly 

from leading employers about careers in business, finance 

and accountancy. Network with Royal Holloway alumni and 

explore the range of opportunities available to you. 

A reception with complimentary food and drinks will follow 

the presentations. 

Companies attending include: 

• Deutsche Bank 

• NHS 

• JP Morgan 

• Thetrainline.com 

• CIMA 

Venue: 

Booking: 

Transport: 

CIMA Head Office, Chapter Street 

London, SW1P 4NP 

www.rhul.ac.uk/for-alumni/eventreg 

coaches depart Royal Holloway at 4.15pm 

and return at 9.30pm 

in association with: 

www.cimaglobal.com

Menswear - The Founder

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