What really annoys me about the whole “prime minister shagged a dead pig” scandal is that, if I’d known Oxford University was full of orgies, I’d have tried a hell of a lot harder to get in. Why oh why, when state school kids like me were told we could possibly apply to the top universities if we toiled and toiled, did nobody tell us there would be parties like these? Parties involving the abuse of substances so mind-altering that you might actually desire to become one with a recently deceased farmyard animal? For this is the allegation: that our honourable member, David Cameron, inserted his rather less honourable member into a pig. I have no evidence that this even happened, or that drugs were involved, but just think what fantastic drugs they must have been. The week before, he was overheard slagging off Yorkshire people, something that only earns him respect from Yorkists such as myself. I have never liked Cameron more, having never liked him at all.
All of this outreach work that Oxbridge does with the state sector: coming round to our schools, telling us that a world-class education isn’t just for the rich. If they’d simply come to my sixth-form college and explained that hanging out with future leaders of the realm didn’t mean we’d have to stop taking ecstasy, we’d have jumped at the chance. As it was, most of my friends applied to Manchester, so we could carry on raving, rather than spend three years somewhere we suspected we’d have to speak ancient Greek to buy a packet of crisps. Had I known that Oxford also offered something called a Piers Gaveston party where you can, it is rumoured, watch live sex shows, I’d have reworked my life plans accordingly.
As a sixth-former, I had an interview at Cambridge. When they asked me what I liked doing at weekends, I seized up and became uncharacteristically shy. Wishing to hide my secret life, standing waiting for the drugs to wear off in fields outside Leeds, I muttered that I did “a bit of babysitting”. Dull was something I truly believed might be required here: don’t let them know the real you; pretend to be purely hard-working and good.
If only I had realised that what I actually needed to say was that I tended to read a few chapters of Machiavelli’s The Prince before downing three bottles of Jameson, raising a toast to the Queen with my braying pals, and then gently lowering my genitals into the buccal cavity of a dead swine. I mean, this is the sort of information that needs to be fed through to state school kids as a matter of urgency. It could really level the playing fields.
My friend Dawn went to a comp in Wales which had never sent anyone to an elite university. She and some other local children, chosen for their brightness, were put in “a van” (as she puts it) and driven to Cambridge, where they were shown around by a posh girl called Tiggy (clearly a made-up name). A lecturer announced that he had no idea why there was nobody from Cardiff in his college, but would anyone like to hazard a guess? Dawn was already underwhelmed, and then found out that, on top of the standard £20 for a UCAS form, she’d have to pay £15 to apply to Cambridge. Given that this was the price of a wrap of speed, she decided she’d rather spend the money on amphetamines, and applied to Sussex and UEA instead.
More recently, another friend had an interview for a junior teaching post at an Oxford college. On entering the ancient don’s ancient office, the two men sort of recognised each other, but couldn’t quite work out where from. It was only when the younger man got home that he realised he had seen his future employer, fully and frontally naked, when they were exchanging photos anonymously on the gay dating website Grindr. Again, this is exactly the sort of exciting information I could have done with when I was 18, back when I still feared the dreaming spires might contain only the oldest and deadest of dreams.
Still, I can see why Cameron isn’t fond of Yorkshire. It’s a respectable place where we look very, very dimly on the shagging of pigs. Where I’m from, we much prefer sheep.
