Food & Drink Face Off Interview - Varsity

Features Editors: Tash Lennard and Josh Sutton
18 VIEWFeatures features@varsity.co.uk
Friday January 25 2008
varsity.co.uk/features
My Cambridge Amateur Dramatic Club
Your fair selves in this fair city
Cumming On
Greed
>>Pizza Express. Ritual
post show pizzas and self-
congratulation.
>> The River. For
thespy moonlight
River Tours; reciting
Shakespeare
and practising sad
faces.
Face Off
They’re fit, you’re fickle. Who’s fitter There’s the pickle
Round 2: Trinity versus St John’s
>>Anywhere.
We’re
never seen without
script in hand.
The best time to die if you’re
a celebrity is when you are
still famous, and people will
still be moved to natter wistfully
about how important
and valuable you were. The
worst time to die is when you
have wilted, like a neglected
runner bean, and the only
people who’ll shed tears are
your loved ones. 2007 was a
particularly bad year for apt
twig-leaving, and was instead
notable for the number of
stars going out with a whimper,
rather than a bang.
One suspects this was
particularly disappointing
for Evel Knievel, who spent
an entire career attempting
to claim his life insurance
(and there’s a windfall) with
an abrupt, loud, motorised
noise. In his last interview he
claimed to have “beat the hell
out of death”. Whilst it might
seem slightly churlish to
ascribe hubris to a man whose
chosen vocation was to ride
motorbikes into the sky, one
has to wonder whether it’s
ever very sensible to claim immortality,
particularly when
one is so clearly dying. Another
who slipped rather than
dived into the murky pool
was Ike Turner, the extravagant
performer and producer
credited with being one of the
founders of rock and roll. An
argument could be made for
the significance of rock and
roll as an art form, and for its
invention as an achievement
worthy of posterity. Unfortunately
for poor Ike he will
be remembered uniquely for
punching Tina Turner, a gesture
which would have been
fine if not uniquely admirable
had he not been married to
her at the time, and had he
not stated quite so clearly
how uniquely admirable he
felt his actions to have been.
All of which begs the question
of what we actually value in
our public figures. Is punching
Tina Turner more culturally
important than inventing rock
and roll No. But crucially, it
is slightly funnier. Wife-abuse,
however, is not amusing in
the slightest. Is Evel Kinevel
dying slowly, off his bike,
funny Horribly, crucially,
yes. Is it funny for those close
to him No. Keith Richards
snorting his dad ‘s ashes is
funny, as is him falling out
of a coconut tree and needing
“trepanning”, to use his
own richly evocative phrasing.
Your own father snorting
Keith Richards, on the other
hand, would be very perverse.
It would most likely be very
embarrassing if a member of
your family fell out of a coconut
tree, and in fact slightly
shameful that they were up
there in the first place.
Oddly the most tellingly
pertinent story of the year so
far has been the saga of the
Nuremberg City Zoo’s polar
bears, Vera and Vilma, and
their young. The bears are
the stars of the zoo; national
celebrities and a persuasive
draw for tourists, yet just two
Mother bear: menace
weeks ago Vilma decided, in
the middle of the night, to eat
her two babies. This is not uncommon,
for polar bears; there
are, after all, bear necessities
we do not understand. Moreover,
it’s difficult to suppress
a chuckle when one thinks
of the faces of the hordes of
tourists, cameras primed, as
Vilma nonchalantly strolled
out of her cave in the morning,
licking her chops. Yet
it has provoked such fears
amongst the keepers about
Vera that they have removed
her own baby, Knut, from her
potentially cannibalistic care.
They will raise the cub by
hand, so he can be a star all
of his own. It’s unnatural, but
he might have died otherwise.
Nobody goes to the zoo
to see real life anyway. Do we
mock or console Looking at
this week’s photos of Britney
Spears, I think an earnest,
nervous laughter seems appropriate.
Aldous is a graduate Historian
and Felicity is a 2nd year
English student
Tom is a 2nd year Philosopher
and Luciana is a 3rd year English
student
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