Singular life
University challenge
Petronella Wyatt
It's time I threw in my ten cents worth Over the Laura Spence business. First of ail, if I hadn't got into Oxford I would probably be too embarrassed to say so. It certainly wouldn't occur to me to blame the selection panel for discrimination. Hey-ho to personal responsibility and all that. Why can't Miss Spence simply concede that she may have muffed the interview. Or perhaps she was already whingeing during that? ,. At any rate, I did get into Oxford and do You know what? I agree with Gordon -'1.?wn. The place is disgracefully elitist and intimidating. I am amazed some young geople dare brave its Gothic portals, recausei despite the allegedly level playing- field on which we all gambol (gamble), it .is ; terrifYing place. A terrifying place, that is, Or people educated at private schools. Brideshead Revisited? What rubbish. That sort of thing was over 60 years ago. I tell Yoi Ili anyone with a middle-class accent, let alone a toff one, is up against a redbrick diaries As my dear late father said in his recall patronage ain't what it used to be. I ecall his telephoning a tutor at one of the el{lleges and being told, to his astonish- _ ent, that the applicants had to pass an e ntrance exam. I ask you. The very idea. a After the indignity of being put through public examination — they didn't do that tithe 4th duke's day — one was obliged to wirier questions in front of people to du,(311.1 one had not been formally intro- hafd. Receiving notice, presently, that I things acquired place at a certain college, What became even more intimidating. hums azilieadd become of the spacious 'rooms. ' inh at.t Sebastian Flyte and his Where was the deferential scout? Where was the hock and the baskets of gulls' eggs?
The student accommodation would be a subject for litigation on one of those BBC agony programmes. For a start there were no curtains on the windows. Scratch that, there were no windows. They wouldn't do that to convicts. Talk about privilege. It was a privilege to get to the bathroom before the other 20 male undergraduates sharing the floor did. There was nothing in my pri- vate school education that had prepared me for this.
The closest you get to Evelyn Waugh is in the library. The most uninterrupted theme tune is the sound of undergraduates vomiting after too much beer. It was quite iniquitous how everyone made fun of stu- dents with 'posh' voices. I felt like writing to the home secretary. What beats me is why people like Laura Spence are so keen to go to the place. Just as good an educa- tion can be had from Bristol or Edinburgh or any of those other universities. It was quite appalling, moreover, how few balls and parties there were. I remember reading a book that described how, in 1719, the Duke of Chan- dos sent his son Henry to Cambridge. In history he apparently mastered two pages on Ethelwulf in six months. I don't know where dukes' sons go nowadays, possibly Cirencester Agricultural College, but it cer- tainly isn't to Oxford. The best thing that university is good for now is turning out a sort of complaining civil servant type who has banality oozing out of every pore. There is little difference between Oxford and a redbrick university except that in the latter the bricks are cleaner and less depressing. Everyone sits around earnestly discussing non-existent 'issues', as if they were trainees for some middle ranking managerial job on Newsnight. And that's only the dons. Oxford is poky, unglam- orous, seedy and parochial. With that I am off to dine at High Table at Trinity.
`Congratulations, you've clearly got what it takes.'
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