www.thecourieronline.co.uk Tuesday 4 March 2014 Issue 1287 Stan Calv Free er C Pull- up Spec t o win ut guide ial s t this yand losse o the so ear’s Toon famed f rivar ly
The Independent Voice of Newcastle Students
BLIND DATE REVISITED From Spiderman kisses to mayo obsessions and even true love p.13
HIP-HOP-CRISY p.31
Est 1948
SUPER BUG SUPERIORITY p.35
Image: Chiril Matei
Poly pip posh to end Stan Calvert drought
Rowdy students cough up £20k in new ‘on-the-spot’ noise fines
EXCLUSIVE
By George Sandeman Editor Noisy students have been fined more than £20,000 under a new university policy aimed at tackling anti-social behaviour. As previously reported by The Courier in October 2012, the new ‘on-the-spot’ noise fines disciplined first-time offenders for excessive noise without any prior warning. The fines can be issued up to £200 per student and came into effect last academic year on 24 September 2012. The Courier can now reveal that during the last academic year (2012-13) 169 student households were issued with fines with the university collecting
•
University has collected £22,887 in 18 months
£12,692. During the current academic year (2013-14) 86 student households have been issued with fines with the university collecting £10,195.
for implementing the policy, about what impact it has had in areas such as Jesmond, Heaton and Sandyford. She said: “The university is most reluctant to take action against students
To date, during the 18 months the policy has been active, 255 households have been issued with fines and the university has collected £22,887. The Courier spoke to Maggie Donnelly, head of the student progress service which is the university body responsible
in the community. “Unfortunately a relatively small number of students do seem to create a fair amount of disturbance, especially at key times of the year and late at night. It is deeply regrettable that some students were not following the guidance that we
“It is deeply regrettable that some students were not following the guidance that we have been proactively communicating for years”
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New policy has been enforced on 255 student households
have been proactively communicating for many years. “Therefore Newcastle University, as with a number of other universities with large student populations in some residential areas, was put under considerable pressure to take action.” However, some students have described the fines as unfair because the process doesn’t allow them to make their case before being told to pay up. Speaking to The Courier, second year law student Ria Fretwell-Deery described how two men knocked on her door, took down everyone’s details and issued them with a £240 fine without any kind of consultation. She said: “It seems to me that many students are getting hit by, in my opin-
ion, undeserving and excessively high fines. A scheme with prior warnings – perhaps a three strike system and an agreed definition of what amounts to a ‘disturbance’ – would be a fairer and more reasonable approach.” Rebekah Finney, a third year ancient history and archaeology student, spoke about her attempts to appeal a £150 fine. “We tried to dispute the fine but the university and council came to Continued on page 4
Fair fine? Tell The Courier what you think at:
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News
2
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FLYING HIGH
First year to represent England in national fly fishing competition
4 6
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its
ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”
We consider the rivalry of Stan Calvert - too far?
9 10
END LAD CULTURE
An impassioned argument on why it’s not just banter
SPORT WELL AWAY
Does the away goal still have a place in footy?
38 39
BOUNCING AHEAD
Trampoliners leap high to earn victory
Loch Ness monster enthusiasts have expressed their distress at a lack of sightings for the first time in 90 years. Veteran expert, Gary Campbell, said no one has come forward in the last 18 months to say they have seen the monster. He said: “It’s very upsetting.”
- Albert Einstein
COMMENT POLY VS POSH
Lost Ness Monster
ix
Marrow Newcastle prepare for their coastto-coast cycle
e h t
Myths & Legends
m
ON YER BIKE
Wise Words:
The Courier
News Editors: Anna Templeton and James Simpson Deputy News Editor: Sabine Kucher and Emily Keen courier.news@ncl.ac.uk | @TheCourier_News
In
NEWS
Tuesday 4 March 2014
Medical mystery
Bravehardt (Flickr)
Chinese firecracker
A Chinese woman experienced a stomach explosion after eating and drinking too much. The 58-year-old was hospitalised after developing severe abdominal pain and was operated on at the Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital in China. During the operation, fire broke out when gas burst out of her abdomen. The incident occurred due to the ethyl alcohol in the patient’s stomach coming into contact with the electric surgical knife.
Doh!
Trillion dollar man
Michael Williams, from South Carolina, attempted to pay his restaurant bill with a “trillion dollar bill” after his debit card was rejected. The incident led Williams to being arrested at the restaurant. However, authorities decided to ignore his alleged claims of being a trillionaire and instead reprimanded Williams for a pending contempt of court charge.
Anna Templeton
Pandemic
Adrenaline Russian
Paternity
It’s lice to see you Not Geordie sure The craze of taking selfies has contributed to a head lice problem, experts have warned. Lice expert Mary McQuillan said: “I’ve seen a huge increase of lice in teens this year. Typically it’s younger children, because they’re at higher risk for head-to-head contact. Selfies are fun, but the consequences are real.”
Historical object
On that bombshell
A grandfather who believed he found a precious silver ring was surprised when he discovered it was a pin attached to a hand grenade. John Hill, 67, pulled what he thought was an ancient ring from the ground but then discovered the ring was attached to a pin hanging out of live WWII grenade. A bomb disposal squad were called to the scene where they detonated the live bomb.
Extreme sport
One in six Geordie fathers fear their child is not theirs. According to a poll. more than 1.2 million British men are unsure as to whether they are their kids’ real father, with almost 16 per cent from the North East.
Celebrity cuisine
Pasta la vista baby Italian chef, Gennaro Contaldo, was overseeing the finishing touches to Jamie Oliver’s new restaurant in Newcastle this week. Jamie’s business partner and mentor, as well as star of BBC series Two Greedy Italians, gave 102 members of staff a pasta-making lesson. “I really love it here, look at that view,” he enthused, gesturing at Grey Street.
A Russian daredevil has racked up thousands of hits online for his video where he sets himself on fire and jumps off of a five-storey building. The man, known as Sanya, explained to the police:“I am into this kind of extreme thing. I have been doing it for several years now.”
Troublesome teens
Livin’ the Fifa Loca A mother, whose son racked up a £4,000 bill playing FIFA 14, criticised games companies for making money out of the “misfortunes of others.” In a game fuelled spending spree the 13-year-old boy spent £1,000 in 24 hours on “Player Packs” to get an “Ultimate Team” in the game. The outraged mother, known only as Sue, said: “There should be more controls in place to ensure the cardholder or adult is aware of what’s happening.” EA Sports, the makers of FIFA 14, have declined to comment.
Bizarre Big business
The Magpies score images_of_money (Flickr)
NUSU, King’s Walk, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8QB. Tel: 0191 239 3940
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Newcastle United have profited for the third year in a row after cutting players wages and increasing commercial income. The club made a profit of £9.9m, up from £1.4m in the previous tax year.
More than hiccuple... A teenager has been struck with a hiccup attack lasting two months, causing him to hiccup more than one million times. Chris McKernan started on November 20 and is averaging 25 hiccups every minute. “My girlfriend doesn’t seem to mind, but it would be better for everyone if they went,” he said.
Editor George Sandeman Deputy Editor Tom Nicholson Web Editor Ben Brown News Editors Anna Templeton and James Simpson Deputy News Editors Sabine Kucher and Emily Keen Comment Editors Lydia Carroll and Joe Wood Deputy Comment Editor Victoria Armstrong Culture Editor Sam Summers Lifestyle Editors Evie O’Sullivan, Elizabeth Archer, Hazel Parnell and Katie Smith Fashion Editors Amy O’Rourke and Frances Stephenson Deputy Fashion Editors Rebekah Finney Beauty Editors Amy Macauley and Safiya Ahmed Arts Editors Millie Walton and Charlie Dearnley Deputy Arts Editor Laura Wotton Film Editors Muneeb Hafiz and Jacob Crompton-Schreiber Music Editors Kate Bennett and Ian Mason TV Editor Beth Durant Deputy TV Editor Helen Daly Science Editor Lizzie Hampson Deputy Science Editors Peter Style and Emad Ahmed Sports Editors Nick Gabriel, Freddie Caldwell and Francesca Fitzsimmons Copy Editors Lucy Davis, Emma Broadhouse and Megan Ayres
NewGameNetwork (Flickr)
The Courier is printed by: Print and Digital Associates, Fernleigh House, 10 Uttoxeter Road, Derby, Derbyshire, United Kingdom, DE3 0DA. Established in 1948, The Courier is the fully independent student newspaper of the Students’ Union at Newcastle University. The Courier is published weekly during term time, and is free of charge. The design, text, photographs and graphics are copyright of The Courier and its individual contributors. No parts of this newspaper may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Editor. Any views expressed in this newspaper’s opinion pieces are those of the individual writing, and not of The Courier, the Students’ Union or Newcastle University.
The Courier
news.3
Tuesday 4 March 2014
Who gives a flying book?
The University’s library service ranks among the top five in the UK competing with the famous likes of Oxford and Cambridge. News Editor James Simpson sat down with University Librarian Wayne Connolly to unearth some startling and surprising facts about the University’s Robinson, Walton and Law libraries
1,067
£6
in late return fees
3,189
8,778 students have never borrowed a book
which is around 36% of the student population
947,486 Total number of books owned by the Library service
65% s are of book d renewe
Longest book loan in days
Gray’s Anatomy for Students
13th Century manuscript
was the most borrowed book
426
books were reported
2.95 million
‘missing’
Individual e-journal articles downloads
ts Me dical studen
325: the
most students in the Robbo at 2am The University Library encompasses the Robinson Library, the Walton Library and the Law Library with the facilities used by students on a daily basis. The library service has carried out a student survey in a bid to understand student response to the developments that have taken place over the last four years. The developments have cost around £2 million which included the installation of new workstations such as the research reserves and YourSpace. One of the key findings was the student desire for more computers available in the library, an opinion held by 42 per cent of students. Another change, which was greatly received by the student body, was the introduction of 24-hour opening times. Wayne Connolly, University Librarian, explained how “this was something
The oldest text in the library is:
oo ks
3 5 3 , 2
Books purchased from late charges
bo rrow most b the
we trialled in the summer term of 2012”. It was made a permanent fixture in the first semester of 2013 and is now a feature available continuously throughout term time. The consultation, with over 900 students participating, also concluded that students would like to see more quiet individual study desks and more group
incorporated into plans to extend the library to “provide more library space on campus” and to “meet the increasing demand from students who obviously find that the libraries are the best place to work.” As displayed in the above graphics, The Courier has gathered some little known information about the libraries.
working space whilst a small proportion also emphasised the wish for more social space. The results from the survey will be
The library provides access to 947,486 printed books and over 9 million ebooks and journals which can be accessed from anywhere in the world with
“The most people we have ever had in the Robinson library at one time is 1827 on 15 May 2013, so you can see we are getting very close to capacity”
a university log-in. There is currently capacity for 2590 students across the three on-campus locations with the Robinson library accounting for 1872 spaces. “The most people we have ever had in the Robinson library at one time is 1827 on 15 May 2013, so you can see we are getting very close to capacity at the busiest times,” said Connolly. He added: “It’s not good enough when people walk in and think it’s too busy so will turn around and leave.” Connolly believes the library should have enough capacity and space that students feel comfortable enough to work there in spite of heavy use and that’s why he’s keen to make sure every student has the opportunity for a space to work. “We expect all three libraries to be very busy during the summer revision and exam period immediately after
Illustrations by Emily North
Easter, so from the beginning of next term we are aiming to provide extra revision spaces on campus which will be managed by the library.” Another interesting statistic came from the total amount of library fines collected in the last academic year. The amount totalled over £62,353 which works out at around £2.72 per student currently enrolled. Connolly was also keen to stress, that even though money was raised through library fines, all of it is reinvested into the ‘Books on Time’ scheme. He said: “The rationale is that if people bring books back late they are preventing other people from using them, effectively reducing the supply of books to other students”. He went on to add that 1,067 new books were purchased last year as a direct result of the scheme.
4.news
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
Marrow society wheely ready for charity cycle By Lizzie White Volunteers at Newcastle Marrow are taking part in a 225km coast-to-coast cycle ride to help raise funds towards finding a cure for blood cancer. A 100-strong team of volunteers will set off on their bikes on March 29 from Whitehaven and aim to tackle the exposed and hilly route in under two days to reach Tynemouth the following evening. The students have been training hard and have had to deal with the recent windy and wet weather conditions in order to prepare for the ride. Tarni Duhre, one of the event’s organisers, told The Courier that, with just under five weeks until the ride, excitement
The charity has been working for over four decades to find and match people willing to donate their bone marrow to patients in need of life saving transplants. According to statistics provided by the charity, every 20 minutes someone in the UK is diagnosed with blood cancer and around 1,800 people in the UK require a bone marrow or stem cell transplant each year. Last year the volunteer group were successful in signing up over 500 students to the bone marrow register and raised a staggering £29,500 for the charity, topping the amount raised by any other marrow society in the country. Newcastle Marrow were also fundamental in the #match4martin campaign
Last year the volunteer group signed up over 500 students and raised over £29,500 for the charity levels were high amongst the cyclists and organising team with all eager to take on the challenge that awaits. It is the second year that the event has been held and the group are hoping to top last year’s efforts where they managed to raise a huge £25,000. Jessica Roberts, President of Newcastle Marrow, said: “The more fundraising we do, the more potential donors we can recruit onto the Anthony Nolan register and the more lives we can save.” Newcastle Marrow is a student-run group who supports the work of Anthony Nolan, a charity that helps saves the lives of people with blood cancer.
last year which The Courier adopted in a push to find third year biomedical student Martin Solomon a donor. The society’s achievements were recognised at the NCL+ awards where they were named most improved society. The group hold a number of donorrecruitment and fundraising events throughout the year and are urging more young people to sign up to the register. Their next donor clinic is from 1-7pm on March 5 and the society are encouraging students to spare 10 minutes of their day to sign up and want to emphasise that donating marrow is a similar procedure to giving blood.
RIDE ON: Marrow hope to best last year’s #match4martin fundraising effort. Image: Newcastle Marrow
“Sick of students moving into Jesmond and Heaton and making the community look bad” continued from front page the conclusion that because we were students we were probably being too noisy and bothering the nice couple downstairs. “We tried to put our point across to the university member of staff, especially the fact that the neighbours were lying about noise at times when we weren’t even in the house, but she argued she was sick of students moving into Jesmond and Heaton and making the community look bad.” The University were keen to point out positives that the policy had brought about including that all proceeds from the noise fines go toward the student hardship fund. “We have seen a fall in the number of repeat problem households. In the past we had to deal with more repeat cases.” She added: “The police are keen for us to manage student community issues and, because we do so, they often don’t follow through on criminal prosecutions when they would or could otherwise do so.” Emily Waller, welfare and equality officer in the Students’ Union gave her thought on the fines: “Obviously, existing first and foremost to represent students, we would rarely support the fining of students, especially on such a scale as is being carried out in these instances. Household fines can be anywhere in the region of up to £200 which is an extortionate amount to charge students who are already paying so much to attend the University.” She added: “Being respectful of your neighbours in the community isn’t difficult however and, though I do think these fines are out of proportion to the misconduct, it is, at least, not hard for
students to avoid them altogether.” However, third year english language and literature student Elizabeth Archer said she was annoyed about the blinkered way in which fines were handed out. “We held a small party at our house on a Friday night and were out by about half eleven “We would a neighbour rarely support but rang the police to the fining complain about the noise and was of students anespecially on particularly noyed because such a scale as somebody had is carried out in been running up down in front these instanc- and of a speed display es. Fines can board trying to be anywhere see how fast they go. in the region of could “We appealed £200 which is part of the fine, on an extortionate the grounds that we didn’t know amount” the person who was running up and down the road, but in the end we had to pay as the university assumed the person had been from our party.” She added: “I was annoyed because we’d been penalised for something which didn’t happen on our property and which we therefore had little control over.” Donnelly also stated: “Students bring a lot economically and culturally to the city and many also do voluntary work in the community. It is important to try and publicise this wider perspective of students in the community. The problem is only with a minority.”
The Courier
news.5
Tuesday 4 March 2014
Business school welcome second ever female David Goldman Visiting Prof. By Anna Templeton News Editor Lucy Armstrong has been appointed as the new David Goldman Visiting Professor of Business and Enterprise. In an interview with The Courier, she spoke about the potential for business in the North East, advice for student start-ups and the position of women in the professional world. Armstrong is currently chief executive of The Alchemists, an organisation that works with fast-growing entrepreneurial companies. She has been named the 11th David Goldman Visiting Professor and will hold the position for a year. She spoke about her business credentials and experience with family and privately run businesses, emphasising the economic importance of mediumsized enterprises. “Most of our economy is based on those kind of business. If we’re going to grow the economy, if we’re going to grow opportunities for graduates and postgraduates to stay in the North East after they’ve studied here, then we need more medium sized businesses. Graduates need the opportunity to have a thriving career and we need to create that environment.” Armstrong emphasised her connections in Westminster and stressed how she wants to break down the perception that business in the North East is underperforming in contrast to London.
“There’s only about two percent of the UK’s population who live and work here, in a big space. London is an incredible magnet, it’s not a British city, it’s a global city and everybody gets sucked to the magnet. One of our biggest challenges as a country is how to get that rebalance and if I can make a small contribution to that then I will try.” When asked about the potential of Newcastle and the North East, she commented how “there aren’t many Universities where you can jump on the “I’m not here Metro and be on the beach in 15 to burn bras, minutes. It might because I think be howling a gale, we’ve already but you are on the beach and you done that” can barbecue and if you’re brave you can go in the sea!” She advised any students thinking of going into business to surround themselves with a supportive and diverse team, listen well and come up with simple but effective ideas. She used two examples of innovations in dog walking to explain the thought processes behind business start-up concepts. “One I thought was fabulous is the ball launcher. No shoulder strain, no back strain, the dog has to run further so the dog is fitter - less strain on the NHS because you’re not knacking your back! “The thing I think is really poor is the retractable dog lead, the dog and
the owner are both confused. Some of these extremely violent dog cases may be because people haven’t been trained to train their dog. “Two lovely examples of, in theory, taking problems away or solving problems. But it’s not rocket science, it’s not an amazing new something, it’s not Google. You can walk on Tynemouth beach and see those two things making life different for people, and that’s what a good business does.” Armstrong is only the second female to be selected as the David Goldman Visiting Professor. “Two is better than none,” she said. “It’s a question of, ‘yes I’m a woman’ so therefore if younger women see that as helpful and think they can do things then great. But I’m not here to be burning bras because I think we’ve already done that. Now we just have to carry on being equal and also better than, and just carry on. “There’s no need to keep banging the drum, you just evidence it by being good and doing your job well.” Lucy also explained how, despite being based in the Business School, she wants to create interest across Newcastle University as a whole. “I see this more about getting the spirit of enterprise and being business-like across the University. It’s not the exclusive domain of the business school to be where businesses are born or where businesses grow and develop from.”
SHARP: Armstrong is a trained chainsaw user. Image: J. Thompson
Mackem linguist beats native speakers Jack Deverson, a Modern Languages student at the University, has won the Hainan Provincial Chinese Speaking Competition whilst on his year abroad in the Far East Asian country. The 21-year-old from Sunderland, who also studies German, says he never imagined winning and had to be convinced to enter the prestigious competition by his teacher. After winning the initial round, Jack qualified for the province’s competition. Each province has a similar tournament which is funded by local governments and potentially leads to a national competition in Beijing later in the
9.1 out of 10 to secure him third place. In round two, he recited the poem ‘Goodbye Cambridge’, leaving him tied in first place with another contender. He describes it as “a really lovely poem about a guy who went to study there and really didn’t want to leave.” For round three, Jack made full use of his ‘party trick’ by playing the ukulele and, ironically, singing a catchy song about the difficulties of learning Chinese. “After my score was announced, nobody could make up the difference, so I finally relaxed. It was at that point when Vicky and Dave, two friends, ran round to the shop and smuggled a celebratory box of beers into the theatre – brilliant!” Talking about the North/South divide
year. The competition, which is open to all Chinese-language students, is split into four parts. The competitors must introduce themselves for one minute, perform in Chinese, prepare an artistic performance and introduce a cultural aspect from their home country. Jack told The Courier: “There were other contestants from Singapore and Mongolia (both having Mandarin Chinese as a national language), two who spoke Cantonese at home and others who’d been in China for a number of years studying. I was massively daunted.” For the first round, he prepared a few photographs of Sunderland and spoke about his hobbies, he managed to score
in Britain during the final round, Jack compared getting the Metro and chatting to your neighbour with taking the Tube, sitting glumly and reading the newspaper. The scores were revealed and Jack was crowned winner. Describing the experience, he said: “Before coming to China, I would no more have seen myself playing a ukulele and singing on stage in front of 800 people than fly in the sky to be honest! “The Chinese students here have really helped me with my spoken language but it’s still a bit weird on the odd occasion when people recognise me. Now, I don’t want June to arrive. This year has been the most fun of my life and I’ve done things I never saw myself doing.”
By Alice Kirkland
Jack made full use of his ‘party trick’ by playing the ukelele and singing a song about Chinese
HAWAY: Jack’s performance infused some Mackem spice into proceedings. Image: Hainan University
6.news
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
Fresher looking to fly high on global stage By Emily Keen Deputy News Editor Marine Biology student James Atkinson has made it into the England fly fishing team and will compete in this year’s international championship. The finals will take place in Lough Owel, Ireland between 28 May and 31 May. This will be James’ first senior level event and at the age of nineteen he will be the youngest competitor in the competition. Despite his youth, expectations will be running high. He has already competed internationally at youth level, winning multiple junior championships, including a heat “I put a lot of on the very same pressure on lake at Lough myself, with Owel two years ago. a past of James told The success on the Courier: “I tend lake, I have to put a lot of high expecta- pressure on myself, with a past tions” of success on the lake, I have high expectations.” Having started fly fishing when he was seven, James started competing at the age of thirteen when his uncle introduced him to a member of the senior international team. He explained how fly fishing runs in the Atkinson family: “I started fly fishing with my grandfather when I was seven years old. My father is also an avid fisherman and we have a long-running family competition,
which I have been winning for the past two years. “I am very thankful for the support that my father has always given me. Fly fishing requires time, travel and resources so without his commitment I wouldn’t be where I am now.” The final will be physically and mentally demanding, competitors will spend eight hours on a boat with just one other partner and must catch as many fish as possible within that time, receiving points for their haul. James will have two days to practice on Lough Owel beforehand, he emphasised the importance of this, explaining that “practice gives you confidence in what you are doing and allows you to stay relaxed”. Here at Newcastle, James is in his first year studying Marine Biology and gets out on the lakes as much as possible. “There’s not a team at Newcastle but I can train a bit locally, the river Derwent is particularly good when in season.” James also receives consistent support from the University. He has a sports scholarship and is part of the Elite Athletes Squad. Through the squad he attends strength and conditioning classes and regularly goes to the gym to maintain his strength. Despite his success so far in fly fishing, James plans to pursue a career in ecology and fisheries management after graduating and is keen to work abroad in America or Australia. He explained how “it’s very hard to make a career out of fly fishing as it’s not very well paid, but I’ll always keep it as a pastime.”
OPPOR-TUNA-TY: The marine biologist will be flying the flag in Ireland at Lough Owel. Image: James Atkinson
The Courier
news.7
Tuesday 4 March 2014
“It’s almost like living in a gas cooker” By Anna Templeton News Editor
ON THE BUBBLE: The Bubble Foundation has given the Kennedys hope for the future. Image: NCJ Media
Fraser Kennedy, Performance Sport Manager here at Newcastle, has helped raise £8,500 for the Bubble Foundation, a unit which helps provide for children with rare immune system problems. Fraser’s three-year-old son Finlay has a condition which cannot be diagnosed by experts. He spoke about one of the first meetings with doctors where they speculated about Finlay’s condition. “The Professor initially thought that Finlay had hyper-IgE syndrome STAT3 mutation. So you leave the room and you go ‘what’s that?!’ You look on the internet and there’s only 800 people in the world with it. It’s horrendous, all these horrible conditions with all these horrible names you can’t spell.” The money given to the Bubble Foundation will help provide toys for children, care for families and a much needed boost to the vital research into unknown and rare immune disorders. Over the past few years, experts at the world-leading Bubble Unit at the Great North Children’s Hospital have done a number of tests to try and identify Finlay’s condition. Newcastle is only one of two places in the world where research is focused on rare immune disorders, which Fraser says is “unbelievable”. “What’s happening in Newcastle is something the North East should be extremely proud of,” he added. Fraser’s fundraising involved an evening with up-and-coming dance acts and a match between the former and current members of Sunderland AFC ladies’ teams. Newcastle University Hospitality and Accommodation also supported the cause with a Christmas raffle. “£8,500 isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things, but the Bubble Foundation nearly disbanded just before Christmas due to a lack of support, so donations are vital for them,” he added. As well as fundraising money, another key way of contributing to the cause is by giving blood. Finlay requires a blood infusion every week, something which
Fraser and his wife Leanne have learnt to do at home. The infusion process takes the Kennedys between 45 minutes and a few hours depending on Finlay’s mood. Fraser described the process and the psychological bearing on both Finlay and his parents: “It can be really difficult to protect the bond between mother and child and not let them separate. “When he says ‘mummy don’t hurt me’ and he thinks that his mum is hurting him, then the psychological side of it can have an impact as well.” The significance of donating blood is of fundamental importance for any sufferers of rare immune conditions. stressed “I still have the Fraser how giving blood faith that he’ll does not have any get bigger and monetary commitment, just an stronger” hour of time. “I think everybody in the world will no doubt need blood at some point in their life, or know a family member or close friend that needs blood,” he said. “There are almost 24,000 students at Newcastle University, if they could give blood it would be as important as donating money to whatever foundation or charity.” When asked about the impact Finlay’s condition had on his family, Fraser said it was “almost like living in a gas cooker.” “It’s at night when you go to sleep and you don’t know if you’re going to have a good or a bad night, you don’t know if you’re going to have to rush to A&E.” Despite the unknown condition, Fraser said how he felt “hopeful”. “I still have the faith that he’ll get bigger and stronger. He’s little at the moment but maybe he will get better. You do hold on to that.” When asked about how Finlay was coping, he said: “He’s a tinker, he’s got my patience, which is non-existent, and all my bad traits. “I fell asleep on the sofa last night, he was still up, and the next thing I know he’s smacked me right in the face and run away!”
Justice for Khojaly massacre victims By James Simpson News Editor
The Azerbaijan society held a stall outside the Students’ Union last Wednesday to gain petition signatures and raise awareness of the Khojaly massacre. The students were part of a global move by citizens of Azerbaijan to make the international community aware of the events which took place in 1992 during the conflict with Armenia. The petition calls for the United Nations to deal with the ethnic cleansing in the appropriate manner as a ‘crime against humanity’ in line with international law. The massacre took place in a small town called Khojaly which saw the death of 613 Azerbaijani people which included 169 women and children. As well as the high death toll 1275 civilians were taken hostage with the fate of 150 still unknown. The atrocity was committed by Armenian forces that attacked the town viewing it as a stronghold in the war effort. Civilians started to flee but, as they were been attacked from three direc-
tions, had limited options of where to run. The Armenian forces “brutally” murdered Azerbaijani civilians who were trying to escape. A cease fire between Azerbaijan and Armenia was signed in 1994 but the people responsible for the killings have never been held to account. Final year Information Systems student and Presi613 people of Azerbaijan killed including dent Society Orkhan 169 women Seyidov said: “We are inviting all our and children fellow students and friends to sign the petition and support us to bring the peace, make our voices heard and say no to war”. In line with the rest of the campaigners around the world he said “[we are] trying to show the world that this is genocide”. He added “we cannot bring their families back but we can bring their homes back.” The petition so far has 200,000 signatures and has been acknowledged by a number of countries adding to the pressure placed on the UN.
8.nationalstudentnews
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
NEWS STACK Flyers flock far-right ideas
ROYAL HONOUR: VC Chris Brink receiving the Queen’s Anniversary Prize. Image: Newcastle University
Job Title: Website Administrator Employer: Jago Europe Ltd Closing date: 31/05/2014 Salary: Exceeds National Minimum Wage Basic job description: Improving and administering the company’s e-commerce websites and optimising and enhancing images using Photoshop for web display. Assistance with basic website merchandising to drive sales through social networking websites and assisting with public relations campaigns. Accounting using exel, general adhoc office duties. Person requirements: The ideal candidate will possess basic knowledge of building a website, be IT Literate in MS Office, have excellent skills in Adobe Photoshop suite or similar, ASP.net (useful but not essential), HTML, SEO & an understanding of the workings of an E-commerce site; CMS & CRM. Location: Gateshead Job Title: Telephone Interviewers Employer: Explain Market Research Closing date: None given Salary: To be confirmed Basic job description: You will conduct outbound market research interviews for various clients across a range of sectors and topics. Working from a scripted questionnaire, you will be required to follow questions on screen and input the respondent’s comments in real time whilst ensuring the conversation remains on track. Person requirements: Good command of the English language, spelling, grammar and keyboard skills are all essential skills for this role. Computer literacy skills are essential as you will be required to use Microsoft Word and Excel as well as other data capture software where training will be provided. Experience in customer service, sales, research, administration or other telephone based roles are desirable. Location: Newcastle upon Tyne Job Title: Safety Rescue Boat Staff Employer: Derwent Reservoir Sailing Club Closing date: None Given Salary: National Minimum Wage Basic job description: Derwent Reservoir Sailing Club are looking to recruit 2-3 part time Safety crew to work weekends and Wednesday afternoons. Derwent Reservoir is located within easy reach of Newcastle upon Tyne. The reservoir is 3.5 miles long and has a thousand acres of clean and open water devoted entirely to windsurfing & sailing.
Person requirements: Must be reliable and able to work as part of a team. Must hold full driving licence and have own transport, full powerboat and first aid training will be provided. Location: Derwent Reservoir Job Title: Brand Ambassador Employer: Retail Marketing Group Closing date: 14/11/2014 Salary: £75 per day Basic job description: Brand Ambassadors are required to increase sales by giving demonstrations of LGs 2013 smart TV range. Person requirements: You must be smart and confident with a genuine interest in the technology sector. Location: North East Job Title: Brand Representative Employer: The Big Choice Closing date: None given Salary: £8-10 per hour Basic job description: BigChoice Group Ltd work with some of the UK’s largest recruiters and lifestyle brands including Bacardi, Wetherspoons, M&S, Credit Suisse, BP, Trek America and Fireball. They have opportunities available in Social Media Marketing, Dtabase Building and Outdoor Marketing. Person requirements: A confident people person with a large network of student friends, online and offline. Tough, resilient, and persistent with the ability to think on your feet and multi-task. Location: Newcastle University Campus. Job Title: Newcastle Work Experience Content Marketing Assistant Employer: Clear Editorial Closing date: 09/03/2014 Salary: £600 bursary Basic job description: As a fresh new enterprise, Clear Editorial offers applicants the opportunity to play a genuine role in moving the business forward. Working on new clients as diverse as butchers and magazine subscription businesses, mattress manufacturers and physiotherapists, students will be encouraged to use their own resourcefulness to help shape the direction of content strategies across websites, social media and other digital and print marketing channels. Person requirements: The successful candidate must be creative and driven with exceptional writing and communication skills. Client and competitor research will pay a key role in this placement, requiring
excellent organisational skills, a familiarity with social media platforms and competence with Microsoft Word and Excel. Location: North Shields
Warwick University’s Anti-Racism Society expressed concern after several far-right posters and stickers had been found in library toilets and on lampposts across the university campus two weeks ago. National Action, the group suspected of dist r ibut ing the right wing publicity, are a small, clandestine organisation run by students recruiting white males aged 15-29. They have previously been known to operate in the Midlands area; distributing banners in Birmingham and running a flash demo in Coventry
Car cleaner consumption
Five Liverpool students were admitted to hospital after ingesting a car alloy-cleaning chemical. PoJob Title: Merchandiser lice were called to halls Employer: Tesco of residence after two Closing date: None given university students Salary: Competitive and a 16-year-old Basic job description: A Merchandiser girl had been is required to work 9.75 hours per week rushed to hos(evenings) with Oakwood Merchandispital as a result ing (a wholly owned subsidiary company of consuming of Tesco PLC) in Newcastle. Your main the substance. responsibilities include; utilising briefs to The group ensure a first class merchandiser service were successis delivered in stores; checking product display areas and replenishing to capacity fully treated following plans and guidelines as required. and soon discharged. Only Person requirements: Must be able to a day later, three work evenings and be flexible regarding more students working hours and times. Ideally have were taken to hosexperience of working in a retail or merpital from another chandising role. Be able to develop and accommodation site for maintain excellent working relationships taking the same substance. with peers and customers at all levels. Detective Superintendent Chris Location: Newcastle upon Tyne Green of Merseyside Police, confirmed Job Title: Sales Consultant Employer: LK Bennett Closing date: None given Salary: Above minimum wage Basic job description: Temporary Sales Consultant required to work for L.K. Bennett, a fashion concession within Fenwick Department Store. Person requirements: Experience in a similar fashion retailer at a similar level is necessary. A positive attitude is essential. Location: Newcastle upon Tyne
to protest against halal meat, which they claim is “unfit for human consumption”. Their website describes a detailed far right ideology, also alluding to “generation hate… desensitised, brutalised and completely irreverent of their parents’ values”. The many things it berates, include: “Cultural Marxism, liberal politics, and socalled ‘moderate nationalists’ who don’t openly identify as racist”. Most articles found on the group’s website appear anti-Semitic and contain numerous racial slurs.
that all six individuals had taken a product called ‘Geebs’, normally used to clean alloy wheels. Also known as Gamma-butr yolactone, it has previously been described as “coma in a bottle” due to being a natural high. ‘Geebs’ is legal when used in industry, but illegal when ingested. Possession can incur a sentence of up to two years, while supplying the chemical can lead to a maximum of 14 years in prison. The drug came into the public eye in 2009 when it was linked to cases of sexual assault.
Protester cleared of assault A student protester arrested for chalking the University of London foundation stone was cleared last week of assaulting two police officers but found guilty of criminal damage. Ms Duff was not found guilty of attacking Special Sergeant Liam Souter as he and a fellow officer tried to arrest her inside the University of London Union (ULU) on 16 July last year. She was also cleared of assaulting Police Constable Paula O’Grady as police officers escorted her into a van during the arrest. However, Judge Nina Tempia found Ms
Duff guilty of criminal damage for defacing university property with “sick pay, holiday and pensions now” along with “support the cleaners’ struggle”. Judge Tempia sentenced Ms Duff to three months’ conditional discharge as well as charging her £810 to repair the stone, along with a further £200 to foot the bill for prosecution costs. The judgement took place following a two-day trial which reeled video footage that contradicted the testimony of the police officers who had claimed they had been assaulted.
Images: Nicholas Smale, Chris & Mayet Placio, West Midlands Police
Will Ibbott
The Courier
.9
Tuesday 4 March 2014
Comment thecourieronline.co.uk/comment
Comment Editors: Joe Wood and Lydia Carroll Deputy Comment Editor: Victoria Armstrong courier.comment@ncl.ac.uk | @Courier_Comment
Stan Calvert: is it just banter? Considering the often classist and elitist nature of chants and insults, not to mention the risk of drunken confrontations in the aftermath, we asked: Is the Newcastle / Northumbria rivalry a good thing?
YES
Rivalry is a healthy and natural thing for students to engage in. It brings edge to the competition and encourages student involvement even where there isn’t interest in sports. That’s not to say that there isn’t, on occasion, people who go too far but they are the exception and not the norm. The majority of people I know view the Stan Calvert Cup as a fun chance to have banter with our Northumbrian counterparts and actually look down on those who engage in any elitist jokes. It tends to be good-natured and often where jokes can seem classist or insulting, they are not intended or taken as such. Furthermore, we cannot deny that it gives our sports clubs something to work towards outside of national competitions. Additionally, Newcastle and Northumbria are not alone in this kind of competition, it can be seen throughout the UK, for instance, Oxford and Cambridge or Queen’s and Ulster. No one states that the competition is too fierce or damaging to university reputations in these circumstances. Rivalry is a characteristic of all sports and this is just an example of it at a university level. Victoria Armstrong
YES
‘The insults are farcical and superficial in today’s culture’
I’m not normally one that sits on the fence, but really, who is the Northumbria / Newcastle rivalry harming? Yes, insults are hurled and derogatory comments made concerning which university you attend. And yes we are supposed to live in an age of democracy and one in which class disparities do not exist. But that is precisely the reason why the insults are farcical and superficial. If groups of the landed gentry went around in the Victorian era yelling insults at the poor, then the lower-classes
had every right to feel deep inflicted injury. ‘I’d rather be posh than a peasant’ is inoffensive as the social class of the peasantry ceases to exist. Everyone is in the same boat, so to speak, the conflict is based on a past difference that disintegrated long ago. ‘I’d rather be Poly than a c*nt’ is just harmless banter and, for that matter, I’m sure there are c*nts at Northumbria too. It doesn’t mean anything, everyone knows it’s a joke, and that’s why I have no strong feelings for it. I am impartial. But maybe that’s because I go to Newcastle... Kate Dewey
Illustration: Rebecca Irvine
NO
NO
While I’d go as far as to say that a little competition in sport is a healthy thing, there are always people who take it too far. Much like the Tyne and Wear Derby, the Stan Calvert Cup can bring out the ugly side of having two relatively large universities co-existing in the same city by using forces of hatred that are completely unrelated to the sport at hand. The intellectual snobbery that comes from Newcastle students and is directed at students at Northumbria is something that is relatively close to my heart considering that fact that most of my closest friends went to or are currently studying at Northumbria. To hear the intellects of my nearest and dearest being called into question due to the choice of university that they attended is not something I find easy listening to when I class my social network as one of the most creative, articulate, and just plain decent group of people anyone could choose to associate with. This is nothing but a form of prejudice which surely the “enlightened” Russell Group University attendees should be intelligent enough to rise above. Jamie Shepherd
NO
‘Elitist jibes are rooted in petty, childish playground logic ’
When it comes to the Stan Calvert Cup, I truly fail to see how elitist chants are in any way relevant to the sport at hand. It’s simple, childish playground logic; ‘you beat me at squash, but my dad still has more money than your dad’. Not only are such insults cringingly unnecessary; they also based on incorrect assumptions about the ‘betterness’ of Newcastle, and the entitlement of certain students and classes to this assumed higher quality. This has very little bearing on the reality of student life, of course. Newcastle’s heritage is not much grander or more elaborate than
Northumbria’s; it wasn’t until 1963 - just six years before the formation of the Northumbria Polytechnic - that Newcastle University even became an independent institution in it’s own right (that is, separate from Durham). The two share a city, the two similar-looking campuses are almost adjacent to one another, they both share similarly positive student experience ratings, and a degree from either costs the same. Is it really fair to continue to defend our sports match losses with cheap, classist jibes when the student experience at both universities is clearly so similar? Lydia Carroll
THE VERDICT: NO MORE ELITISM
Football/rugby images: Korso87, NiteLynx.
NO
I do not feel strongly about the whole ‘Poly vs Posh’ competition. On the contrary, I think it’s pretty stupid. Like, homeopathy levels of stupid, but that’s just me. In fact, the only real problem I have with this inter-university rivalry, or rather pissing contest, is that I am apparently a ‘Posh’. I do feel strongly about this because I am about as posh as a vajazzle. No, really, if you took a vajazzle around JJB sports with a Big Mac in one hand and a halfsmoked tab in the other, it would still manage to come out with more decorum than I have on a good day. As a result of this I have never been to one of these ‘PVP’ affairs because I refuse to wear a top that says ‘Your dad works for my dad’ – partly because my dad’s a handyman – and partly because white is just not my colour. So please, if only for me, stop it. Just stop it now. Stop it forever. Thanks. David Leighton
Everyone agrees that there’s nothing wrong with a bit of competitive sporting rivalry, but when it comes to elitist jokes, the majority of our writers felt that it had gone too far. Although, as Kate pointed out, these dated insults no longer really represent the backgrounds of the actual student populace - which are now much more similar across both universities than the chants suggest - it would seem there’s no room in modern sportsmanship for jibes like ‘your dad works for my dad’ anymore.
I’d like to start this by stating that I’m not wholly averse to rivalry. A bit of rivalry never did anyone any harm (and in the case of sport, it can be beneficial). But when the age-old redbrick/poly rivalry rears its ugly head during every match between Newcastle and Northumbria, culminating in infantile terrace chants, and chaos during every atrocious ‘Posh vs. Poly’ bar crawl (of which I had the displeasure of attending shortly after Freshers’ Week. I won’t be doing that again anytime soon) I really believe it’s gotten out of hand. And what’s more, Newcastle is often on the giving end of such elitist jibes. Sadly, this seems to be de rigueur for every city throughout the country large enough to accommodate both a Russell Group university and an old polytechnic. It seems to be an attitude that students automatically adopt when they arrive, but whether they believe in the snobbish slurs is another matter altogether. How I’d love to take aside anyone hapless enough to don a tacky T-shirt bearing the legend ‘Your dad works for my dad’ and tell them how much they stick out to the human eye like a prize turd! So please: refrain from cracking wise with any ‘impoverished poly’ jokes when in my presence. Will Ibbott
10.comment
SOAP BOX
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
‘Lad culture’ be gone
YOUTUBE YouTube has probably entertained me for more hours of my life than anything the outside ‘real’ world could ever offer. It has sustained me through many an essay, many a deadline and more long journeys than I can count, which is why I feel the keen knife of betrayal slipping from my hands and into the spine of the world’s number one video sharing sight as I write this. Why do I feel this way? Because of adverts. YouTube is becoming more saturated with adverts than ever before. I actually had one interrupt me half way through a little while back. We are a frog and YouTube is a bowl and the adverts are water. YouTube is slowly heating that water up, something that will inevitably lead to us overloading with adverts and melting. Stop trying to sneak them in YouTube or someone else will come up with a better site that isn’t filled with consumerist bullshit…well until it gets popular anyway. David Leighton
NORTH EAST The British media is obsessed with the North East. It has been for a long time and, being born and bred in Sunderland, it’s really starting to boil my piss. You could say it started with a generation of kids glued to SMTV Live and the antics of Ant and Dec or the seductive and dulcet tones of the Big Brother voiceover man back in the days when we were innocent virgins to the memory of Kinga and THAT bottle. But innocent the North East is no more. This is, at least partly, thanks to the influx of reality shows we’ve had here in the past few years depicting us as the hedonistic barbarians that Hadrian should have built his wall a little bit lower to separate us from the rest of genteel Britannia. Last summer I went travelling around Europe and when I told people where I was from the first question I was asked was “oooooh, is it just like Geordie Shore” and y’know what… YES, it is just like Geordie Shore in the same way all of London is like Eastenders and all of Africa is like The (bloody) Lion King. Jamie Shepherd
MONARCHY I’d like to use this little soap box to declare my resolute republicanism (NB: NOT in the American political sense). Agreed, the Royal Family/Liz and co./whatever you wish to call ‘em, are an easy lot to pick on, but is anyone going to fiercely disagree with me when I say that they hold no affinity with me or most other people living and working in the UK? And please, save me the argument about their being a means of international income (which usually culminates in nothing more than throngs of listless tourists gawking outside Buckingham Palace in the feeble hope that Philip will trudge onto the balcony to throw a mighty ‘two fingers’) I’ve heard it all before. In most cases, the argument in favour of keeping the Monarchy usually comes from nationalists or anyone who belongs to my grandparents’ generation. It seems that there are still many people who have yet to get to grips with the reality that the royals are no longer performing as the glimmering sheen of a country standing at the helm of a boundless empire. Will Ibbott
Image: Emily Waller
Despite the ‘lad culture’ summit at London Southbank University last week the issue of lad culture’s influence over male students is stronger than ever What are the real issues? Laura Bates, of Everyday ment) to “calm down dear”, it’s UniLad telling us Sexism (check out the hashtag on Twitter), took to that they “don’t condone rape without shouting Emily Waller the stage to explain how, when NUS released their surprise”, it’s the hypersexualisation of lesbianism
L
ad culture. The phrase immediately divides audiences, and causes many to switch off. This was evident for anyone following the #ladculturesummit hashtag on Twitter last Friday. Women attendees were labelled “hairy humourless harridans who can’t take a joke”, whilst men were pelted with homophobic abuse. For those present at London Southbank University, the response on Twitter was no surprise. Lad culture, defined by students at the summit as a mixture of “pack” mentalities, “banter”, sexism, homophobia, sexualisation and objectification of women and sexual harassment, is normal for many. What’s difficult about this culture is its fluidity: men and women dip in and out of it, which means that a guy you’re having a perfectly normal conversation with one day can be making rape jokes the next. Many take issue with its labelling as “lad culture”, claiming that it demonises a whole gender. But whatever you want to call it, it’s real. Terminology aside, we need to start addressing the real issues.
SPICY HOT NEWS
Katie Hopkins does it again
K
atie Hopkins makes a storm with her new programme How to Look Good Poor. In the new series she finds some of Britain’s most deprived individuals with the intention of unearthing all the possible ways you can kick a dead horse. Speaking to SHN Showbiz Editor Piers Fitzfullofshit, Hopkins describes how “we go round the country, you know to all the places with those jobless layabouts, the North and that. I shout at them, tell them how worthless they are, I’ll always go for a spit for good measure.” “Eventually, (after the fun) I whack a paper bag on their head and ask them why they can’t get a job. You know, that’s how we do it here in the business world...’’ Miss Hopkins has been criticised for her demeaning portrayal of those out of work, such as Percibel Lefty Whinebags: “she isn’t actually a businesswoman, she’s just this thing’’. In reaction to these criticisms, Miss Hopkins sacrificed an impoverished child at an altar of Donald Trump whilst spewing her infamous verbal slurry. Images: João P. M. Lima, lawrencegs
2010 Hidden Marks report proving that 68% of female students had experienced sexual harassment whilst at university, it was largely ignored by institutions too concerned about their reputation to tackle a very real, very obvious problem. Lad culture excuses this harassment; it hides it
behind the barrier of “humour”. But when you stop and you look at the stories of lad culture, they’re just not funny. And the stories at the summit were innumerate, upsetting and sadly familiar. Lad culture is being groped in a club, it’s rape jokes, it’s rating girls out of 10. It’s telling women who speak passionately in seminars (or Parlia-
so that asking a lesbian couple if you can “join in” is “banter”, whilst asking a heterosexual couple the same would just be downright creepy. It’s men being called gay when they stand up against “banter”. Lad culture is Pimps & Hoes themes, Tarts & Vicars themes. It’s themes where men can wear what they like as long as women wear next to nothing. It’s male students singing misogynistic, racist and offensive chants on a bus in Stirling, it’s a circulated email encouraging students in Oxford to “spike a female fresher’s drink”, it’s a student club night in Leeds releasing a promotional video that encouraged students to “rape a fresher”. The message from the Lad Culture Summit was clear. Whether you’re a man or a woman, be that person who stands up and challenges the rape jokes and the sexist comments. Who defends the guy on a night out who doesn’t want to get wasted and gets called a pussy as a result? Make Newcastle a place where people can challenge behaviour without fearing that their friends will laugh at them and call them “uptight”. It’s pervasive, it’s claustrophobic, it’s bullying, it’s sexist, it’s objectifying women, it’s belittling men. It’s lad culture, and it needs to go.
SPICY HOT NEWS
SPICY HOT NEWS
“Men can wear what they like as long as women wear next to nothing”
Miley’s death-licking pandemic
would ever be licked’. In extracting and spreading the virus, commonly known as McVittie Fever, the controversial pop star has ‘doomed humanity’.
NSA Celebrity Glasses
T
he World Health Organisation has issued a level 11 warning as an uncontrollable virus breaks out through the American peninsula. At an emergency press meeting researchers warned ‘do not leave your homes at all cost.’ The source of the virus is only starting to be understood. ‘The virus began mutating when large amounts of different micro-organisms which usually would never make contact did. The source appears to be the mouth of ex-Disney star Miley Cyrus. Miss Cyrus seems to have licked us into an imminent extinction after she licked Eric Pickles’ back.’ The scientists explained how Mr Pickles’ back had been known to harbour some of the ‘fiercest diseases on the planet’ but that ‘no-one expected it
I
t’s finally here! The all new NSA Celebrity Glasses Camera lets you watch some of your favourite celebrities day and night, 24/7. Speaking to close friend, our very own Rupert MacHackphone, NSA spokesman, Will Bewatching, explained the new product-line. ‘‘Well, we’ve already been doing this for a long time, we’ve got a lot of practice knowing every detail about people’s lives. But there was a niche still missing which we hope can be filled. Now the public doesn’t have to wait for a picture of Justin Bieber or Cara Delevingne running their lives into the ground to be gobbled up by social media; they can watch it live!’’ In other news: Ukraine teeters towards civil war as separatism grows, Uganda enact barbaric anti-gay law, and religious sectarian violence reach calamitous levels in the C.A.R. Joe Wood
The Courier
comment.11
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The
Snowden donned by Glasgow
Voice of
Reason
The NSA whistleblower has been hailed as a hero by some and as reckless by others. Is he deserving of his latest accolade as Rector of Glasgow University? Antonia Velikova
C
ongratulations on your new job, Edward Snowden! Rector of one of the UK’s leading universities – why that’s quite impressive. I’m sure there will be many personal assets that you will be able to bring to the job, the voice of students now will certainly be promptly heard in front of the managing body. Well done everyone who voted for you in the ballot – they have surely made a choice that would guarantee the prosperity of student representation at Glasgow University. Oh, wait, hold the phone – what? You’re in Russia? And you’ll be there for a while? Oh, never mind then. Electing deliciously random and, more importantly, absent people for the rector position is definitely a settled tradition within the University. A famous case includes Winnie Mandela, elected in 1987, who spent most of her time as a rector blissfully unaware that she had been given the prestigious post. Another one worth mentioning is Ross Kemp – yes, that burly bloke from EastEnders. What do you know? Apparently all Glasgow University students are very keen on EastEnders. It’s been said plenty of times that the entire point
of the rector position in Glasgow and, surely most Scottish universities, is to make a statement and to show the world that they are (often politically) engaged. Yes, fine, that is all very good – I support and completely stand behind everything that Edward Snowden represents. But is university the time and place for political statements? Some would probably say ‘perhaps’, because yes, students need to have a political and citizen aware-
“Electing random, absent people for the rector position is a settled tradition” ness of the world we live in and the world they will most likely be thrown into after graduation. I say, however, not quite. It is not in any way acceptable for educational institutions of any sort to promote particular ideas via the faces that represent them, for whatever reason, and however good and noble they may be. Certainly not while stripping the student body of a much needed representative figure.
For those unaware, the position of Rector in Scotland exists in the four Ancient Universities (St Andrews, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen) and in Dundee, also regarded as possessing the ‘Ancient’ status, and is the third-ranking official in university governance. The Rector has a very integral role in student representation and their say is essential in shaping the University’s agenda. At a time when Glasgow University is facing massive budget cuts and economies, Edward Snowden’s election as Rector purely because of its value as a political statement can be classed as simply irresponsible. Which leads me back to my main point of appointing famous faces and message-bearing bodies into university. The students, who nominated Snowden, might feel very strongly for his cause, however that is no cause to flaunt the said cause about and make all their peers, willingly or not, stand behind it. As one of the students quite rightly pointed out: “We could have given him an honorary degree or something’’. Of course students should elect their own representative body – however, there are informed decisions, and there are uninformed decisions. But that’s a tangent I’d best venture onto. Have fun with your famous Rector, Glasgow students; I personally would like to see that choice reasoned again, in say, a year’s time.
Image: The Guardian
Ukraine, Europe and Nigel With Ukrainian unrest possibly leading to the admission of a large new member to the European Union, is the anti-Europe stance a tactful position? Victoria Kaye
T
he recent clashes in Ukraine have raised several interesting questions, namely why are Ukrainians prepared to die for the prospect of EU membership when we are allowing Farage and his swivel-eyed loons to lead us away from the EU? Nobody well versed in economics is quite sure. UKIP’s arguments are that we pay too much for membership, gain too little in return and that most of the money we pay into Europe is frivolously wasted. Instead, he proposes that we should leave the EU and trade with it in much the same way that Norway and Switzerland do. Sound reasoning surely? Except that Norway and Switzerland pay hand over fist for their already well-established trade agreements, which are sustainable with their small populations and booming economies. If we were
to follow suit our future is unlikely to be so bright, as Norway and Switzerland will not welcome our competition and the greater amount of money we would be paying for fewer trade agreements is bound to put the lights out on our recovering
If anyone is wasting money it’s Nigel as an MEP boasting of his £1 million expenses claim economy. It should also be noted that if anyone is wasting money in the EU it’s Nigel who as an MEP boasted that he once managed to claim over £1 million in expenses. It’s beggars belief that while Ukraine is fighting to define itself politically, socially and try-
ing to establish viable trade agreements, we are entertaining the idea of voting for a man who claims that the EU system is too expensive and open to abuse, and he should know, because he’s the one who abused it. UKIP are in essence England’s answer to the SNP, they have no real policies; they have simply spotted a common ignorance in the British voting population and cultivated it into a grievance. Nigel’s position on Europe is about as coherent as David Sylvester’s claims that gay marriage is causing the floods (it’s Leviticus that speaks out against homosexuality David, not the gospels. If you’re going to be bigoted while hiding behind your religion, you might as well do it properly). The clashes with Ukraine should, really be used as an opportunity to open our eyes. Yes, the EU is large and cumbersome, and it is sometimes ineffective - like any bureaucratic body, but economically it’s our best option, and we should feel pride when we look at Ukraine. It should remind us that we are a part of something worth dying for.
No. 11: Stan Calvert
T
he horrors of humanity never cease. The Sochi sport malarkey is now, let us be grateful to all pug deities in existence, over with. But something even more terrifying has slimed its way into my everyday life like a disgusting plebeian snake, spreading its poison every – Hold on just a minute. [Pugs runs after a football for fifteen minutes, barking with joy, and is afterwards not very elegantly shooed off the pitch] Ah, that egregious bastard! Who does he think he is, kicking a noble pug off the pitch like that? Why certainly, I’d bet I would have gotten the ball into the goal much, much faster than he could ever imagine! I do outnumber him in the number of legs, after all. Where was I? Ah, yes, my dear chipotle burritos, it is, once again, that time of the year. The Stan Calvert Cup, taking place exclusively in Newcastle, exclusively in March, and features exclusively, well, me. Many exclusive things in one place, I know. Rah! Forgive me. Timmons has been dragging me to every single one of these rotten events. My judgment of him was rather hurried. He is, indeed, one of these obnoxious sports-obsessed people who’d prefer to spend their days away watching plebs poking each other with tiny sticks, throwing and kicking balls and various other objects around, jumping around, and various other nonsensical objects! My brain cells are slowly dying with each stupidity I manage to witness next. My intelligence is diminishing unassailably. Send help. If I have to be completely bona fide with you all though, I do find some aspects of these shenanigans quite enjoyable. For instance, the sustenance, while it is definitely not my favourite sirloin in wine and honey marinara, is certainly plentiful. Furthermore, being in a plebeian gathering such as this, one cannot resist but stealthily sneaking into rub my teeth against someone’s ankle (purely accidentally, of course) and then see the stupid commoners squabbling with each other, all of them quick to blame the stupid poodles inevitably hanging about. Naturally, the plebs can see just how pedigree I am and would not even think to point their dirty fingers at me. They might actually be getting brains. Very significant progress! Oh, how I miss my wonderful armchair. The plush of its cotton pillows. The firewood crackling in the fireplace, watching the world of plebs move outside my window with its nearly obsolete speed, instead of being forcefully dragged into – I’ll be right back. [Pugs runs over to bite one volleyball player’s ankle and is once again, even less elegantly, shooed off the pitch.] Ha! The pleb deserved that! He completely destroyed my tail after performing what felt like an interpretative dance on it this morning. Someone is moaning that they have lost a game. What? I care not, and I am very much not bothered. My man Timmons has informed me that this festivity is named after one Stan Calvert fellow. Once again, a naming opportunity unfortunately missed. However, I am already famous enough – I need not boisterous festivities named after me. Everyone knows after all, the great Pugs is but one. Yours,
Pugs
Overheard by Antonia Velikova Illustration by Flora Anderson
Pugs has got a new iPad, and he’s been dictating tweets to his manservant Timmons. Follow him on Twitter at @LaVoiceofReason
12.lifestyle
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
Lifestyle Editors: Evie O’Sullivan, Elizabeth Archer, Hazel Parnell and Katie Smith
How to spot a ‘rah’ They’re living among us, it could be your best mate. There could be one sitting next to you right now (especially if you’re in pret). Learn to spot the signs and avoid.
The hair
Number one rule when spotting a rah - look for the hair. The girls typically scrape their un-brushed locks into a high ponytail with a scrunchie, whilst the boys favour either the tousled just out of bed ‘do or slick it back. They use either copious quantities of hair gel or their own natural juices, I’m yet to establish which. A new fashion I’m yet to fully understand is ‘the man bun’ sitting atop their heads, first modelled by Made in Chelsea’s Proudlock and popping up on male rahs’ heads ever since.
The gap yah
As a geography student, I have observed how rahs use any mention of the continent of South America, in any context, to tell an endless anecdote of some near death experience during their ‘gap yah’. They will often continue at length under the delusion everyone else is interested. So, if you’re wondering if a friend is a rah, pop a sneaky mention of Peru into your next conversation, though I won’t be responsible if they’re still waffling on by next Tuesday…
The fashion
As well as the delightful anecdotes, rahs like to pick up a few fashion items upon their travels. Most favoured is the Aztec-patterned woolly fleece to keep them warm on chilly Newcastle mornings and the Indian linen striped tunic for nights out in Club Trop. Rahs often seem to favour a look that I have heard described as ‘90s charity shop’ or, more bluntly, ‘homeless ’. Come on rahs of Newcastle, no one thinks those neon- patterned bomber jackets look good on repeats of ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’, let alone the streets of well-to-do Jesmond.
The beanie
The most notorious piece of rah clothing is, of course, the beanie hat. Seemingly super-glued atop many a rah head, they seem strangely unable to remove them even when indoors. Who knows, perhaps they all suffer from some terrible dandruff and I shouldn’t be mocking, or maybe it’s just one of those rah mysteries us commoners will never truly fathom.
Lack of attention in lectures ‘It’s who you know, not what you know’. This definitely seems to be the life motto of many rahs, who frequently wonder into lectures without having scraped off the debris of the night before, gagging anyone in a ten metre radius with the incredible arom-rah of sweat, stale smoke and alcohol. Attention once the lecturer starts speaking is often limited, with more important tasks such as drinking a Starbucks or eating sushi often taking priority.
Freeman’s Hall
As any resident of Castle Leazes will testify, Freeman’s hall is definitely rah HQ. Frequently stopped strolling into reception from the direction of Freemans, often sporting a pair of skis on their back or a set of full tweed in case we were left in any doubt of their bounteous wealth, this rah agglomeration may also explain why they all seem to know each other. Alice Fishman
Poly v Posh: Blind Date
Jay Hoggett, 2nd Year Northumbria meets Callum Horn, 2nd Year Newcastle
Jay on Callum Describe your first impression of him in three words. Easy-going, friendly and confident. How was the experience of going on a blind date? Surreal. I’ve never been on one before and so I didn’t know what to expect. But it was a really great opportunity, and I had a great time. Were you nervous? I was very nervous before hand, especially as I arrived quite early. But when we met that all disappeared. What is your usual type, and does he fit it? My type is quite masculine, talkative and sociable. And he ticked all my boxes. Were there any awkward moments? Not really, everything went quite smoothly. We clicked too well for things to be awkward.
Callum on Jay Describe your first impression of John. Piercings, friendly and camp. What made you want to do a blind date? Just to do something different and it’s usually straight couples so it’s cool for The Courier to do something different. What did you talk about? Normal stuff. We talked about how we both came out, which is a normal thing to come up on a gay date. Were there any funny or awkward moments at the start? Oh yeah, I was on my phone for ages because someone from the BioSci society needed something, and I really needed to reply but it took ages and I kept apologising.
What did you talk about? All sorts, we talked about our courses, his work in the BioSci Society, my work in the Students’ Union, experiences with house and flat mates, amongst other things.
What do you think is his best feature? Personality. It sounds like a bit of a cop out but we were really similar and got on really well.
Why is he single, do you think? I think he’s single because he hasn’t wanted anyone yet. If he did, he certainly wouldn’t be single.
And if you had to name a worst...? I’m not a fan of lip piercing’s, but each to their own. Shag, marry or see-ya-bye? Marry. We’d get on really well.
What were his best and worst features? His best feature was his easiness to talk to. Conversation just flowed and there were hardly any moments where we were stuck for something to say. I can’t really think of any features that I didn’t like.
Do you think there will be a second date? I don’t think there was a spark but we had such a good time drinking cocktails and chatting. I’d love to do it again. We should definitely wing man each other.
Would you introduce him to your mum? Yeah, I think him and my mum would get on well.
Would you describe him as cute, sexy or hot? Cute.
Shag, marry or “see ya bye”? Oh dear... errrm. That’s for me to know and for him to find out.
Would you describe him as clever, funny or sweet? Funny.
Would you see him again? I would love to see him again.
Do you have a usual type, and if so did John fit the bill? Tall, dark and handsome (but a little bit baby-faced). He wasn’t my usual type but in terms of personality we clicked.
Cute, sexy or hot? A decent mix of hot and cute. Funny, sweet or smart? Again, a mix. This time of sweet and smart. How did you finish the date? Anything cheeky? We said goodbye outside of the bar, shook hands and walked off. He went off into town and I went home, so nothing cheeky. Rate yo’ date: 7/10 As first dates go, it went well.
At any point in the date did you understand why he is single? I don’t know, to be honest. I think he’s busy, he does a lot of volunteering and stuff for his union.
Unlucky in love? The Courier is here to help! Send your details to the match-making fairies: c2.lifestyle@ncl.ac.uk
How did the date end, anything cheeky? He said: “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Knowing I had to meet my friends. I think we hugged or shook hands. I’m not sure I was quite drunk. Rate yo’ date: 7
Culture The Courier
.13
Tuesday 4 March 2014
thecourieronline.co.uk/culture
Culture Editor: Sam Summers Sections: Lifestyle, Fashion, Beauty, Arts, Music, Film, TV and Science courier.culture@ncl.ac.uk | @CourierOnline
Blind Date revisited: The good, the bad and the excessively hairy Vicki Grattan So Vicks, any gossip since the date? Unfortunately, the ginger worked his charm and now I can’t get rid of him. After the date he surprised me by taking me to Fat Buddha for a birthday meal. He said I could have the cheapest thing on the menu, the charmer. Just kidding, he actually met me with flowers so I knew I had a keeper. In the space between October and December we were even graced by the presence of our estate agent walking in on us during some intimate under the covers activity. So I guess you could say we have gone public after all. Facebook status included.
Josh Cadman Are you and Saf still in touch after the double date Josh? No, unfortunately not. I’ve glimpsed her a couple of times in my wanderings around Jesmond though. My awkward smile and glazed eyes definitely sent her the right signals. I know it...
Safiya Ahmed What’s been going on Saf? Any news from Josh? I saw Josh, or at least someone who looked a lot like Josh, at a birthday party but I didn’t speak to him. I have no idea why. I have also seen him wandering around Jesmond a few times and I’ve just given him a smile. No contact, no Facebook friends, nothing. The good news is, I did spot him at a Courier meeting, which is a great sign as he said on the date that he had never even read The Courier. Baby steps and all that.
Hazel Parnell Are you and Josh still in contact Hazel? Well, we met in November and after a lot of trebles I lost him in Sinners. Although he was very nice and also from Sheffield (brownie points), sadly it wasn’t true love. Unfortunately he did not share my love of mayo, diet coke or cats, which is a massive deal breaker for me. But shout out to any cat lovers out there.
Max Camozzi What’s gone on since the blind date Max? Vicki must have a thing for gingers with big heads because I managed to keep her talking to me after the date. The smooth moving guy that I am took her out for a meal on her 21st birthday (flowers and champagne involved of course), and since then she has been all mine. I knew she was a good girl when I drank two bottles of port, smashed my teeth and face up falling over on the Millennium bridge, and she still came over to clean me up at 1am in the morning. That was a tough one to explain to her parents the next week. But, all in all, everything with me and Vick is amazing; apart from when she eats all my beef jerky, drinks my protein shakes and munches on my amino acid tablets. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Al Cawthorn So Al, any news from Amy since the date? Ah Amy, the Irish temptress. Although I thought fate would bring us back together, sadly it’s not worked out that way. I haven’t seen Amy since the date.
Amy Macauley Any news from Al then Amy? Or was the romance as short lived as your time spent in the comedy club? I haven’t seen Al around, but I once got a very drunk message from his friend (and lifestyle editor) Katie Smith, saying something along the lines of ‘Al wants to see you again, go for it, he seems like he would be a good snog.’ So you never know.
Josh Batham Have you seen Hazel since your crazy night in Sinners Josh? I‘ve seen her around a few times but there was never a second date. She seemed a lovely girl and as much as I love a treble or three, I think her crazy obsession with Sinners along with an unhealthy love for cats, mayonnaise and diet coke meant that it just wasn’t meant to be.
And now for the hairy lad and the Spider-man kiss... Harriet Foden So Harriet, what’s gone down since your date with Tom? We only text afterwards to say I’d gotten home safe, so no we haven’t met up and I haven’t bumped into him either, which is a relief seeing as I slated his hair in my interview. Sorry, not sorry Tom,
Tom Hepburn Any fresh encounters with Harriet since the date? No fresh encounters I’m afraid. I guess she’s just not into hairy guys, which is a shame, because for her, I’d be willing to shave it off. And I mean shave it ALL off, except the eyebrows, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
Anne Murray So Anne, how did you top your Sinners romance? Despite pulling out all the stops on that very boozy date, our relationship has never moved beyond the cage. The only thing we still share is the third floor of the Robinson Library.
Caleb Jones Spider monkey, have you anything cheeky to report since your date with Anne? We didn’t meet up because I’m lazy and it just never happened. It should’ve happened because we got on really well. Maybe I’m just too promiscuous as there was an Irish beauty waiting for me on the other side of the fence (Amy Macauley).
14.lifestyle
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
Lifestyle Editors: Evie O’Sullivan, Elizabeth Archer, Hazel Parnell and Katie Smith
Owen Bull Ergogenic aids. The magic bullet to solve all sporting issues. Faster. Quicker. Harder. Stronger…But do they really work and are they putting your health at risk?
I
n the wake of the annual Stan Calvert tournament between Newcastle and Northumbria University you may have discovered you have a severe disinterest in the watching of sport. This may also have made you aware that being stuck in a social situation where you may be the only one who doesn’t like sports can be hard and rather boring. Jamie Shepherd gives you some tips for the future to get you through any sporting event you may be obliged to attend in a collected, classy, and effortlessly sassy manner.
Athletes have been using ergogenic aids (that means any substance that improves performance btw) since way back in the Aztec times when eating a delicious and protein packed fresh human heart was all the rage to improve athletic performance. Fast forward to the 21st century and that blood lust for victory still exists, with many athletes choosing to take a host of concoctions, some legal, some not. This article will reveal what will give you that edge in performance, what is just snazzy marketing with no actual scientific backing and what is so bad it will literally destroy your gingangoolies.
1
Keep a copy of Grazia or Vogue to hand. With all the balls flying all over the place and those athletes moving pretty quickly, it’s hard to keep up with what’s happening on the pitch, so why not stuff the sports and keep up with the latest trends by having a copy of a glossy to flick through when it all becomes too energetic to handle. That way you can ensure that when you arrive at the next event you’ll look bang on trend and all eyes will be on you and not on the game.
3
Find yourself a hottie. Never let them go. Let’s face it, athletes are generally pretty sexy. So why not become seriously obsessed with the cutest player on the pitch and find out everything you can about them. Don’t just stop at their name and favourite Subway sandwich. Find out what course they’re on and turn up at their lectures in a wedding dress or tux and beg them to marry you. I guarantee that this will be the start of a relationship that will last for a million years.
“So bad it will literally destroy your gingangoolies” Creatine - The body builder’s choice. What is it? Taken as pill or powder, creatine is a compound that helps increase the energy system in place for short bursts of high intensity energy, like pumping a massive barbell. There is a vast base of evidence to support creatine’s use in off season muscle gains. Taurine - This supplement is taken by athletes who believe it will markedly improve strength, power and endurance. Unfortunately, the athletic gains of taurine are comparable to that of lucky underwear, nothing but a psychosomatic effect. Taurine is an amino acid that is actually present in most protein containing foods and is made in our own bodies. The sporting advantages mistakenly associated with taurine have now been put down to the fact that sports supplements containing taurine almost always contain Caffeine as an adjoining nutrient. Caffeine - But that’s just a chemical in coffee used for late night cramming sessions in the Robbo? Wrong. Caffeine is actually on the Australian Institute of Sport’s list of scientifically accredited ergogenic aids and its effects in improving athletic performance are so profound that it has been previously banned from the Olympics. So how does it give you the edge? Caffeine aids muscle fibre recruitment and influences the central nervous system in a way that decreases the perceived rate of exertion, meaning you can push harder for longer. My tip would be to take a pill an hour before exercise; coffee is an unreliable source as amounts vary dramatically between blends.
“Many users are unaware that there is a drastically increased chance of serious liver damage” Anabolic steroids - We all know they are the cheater’s potion to large muscle gain but boy those extra bicep inches come at a costly price to human health. There’s the obvious mood swings yet many users are unaware that there is a dramatically increased chance of serious liver damage and coronary heart disease. To top that off there is testicular atrophy (that’s shrunken balls) decreased sperm count and if that set of nasties hasn’t put you off the quest for a stupidly bulky physique, then perhaps the intensely elevated chances of contracting acne will ward you from these injectables. This is just a quick review of a few interesting ergogenic aids but if you fancy a deeper delve, visit the Australian Institute of Sports website for a comprehensive overview or inbox me personally and I will be happy to help.
Be a sassy spectator
I
2
Spend your entire loan on a gourmet picnic hamper so you don’t get papped eating fast food. While hot dogs, chips, and burgers may seem plentiful and cheap avoid them like the plague. Just think about it, with all the photographers that are bound to be covering the event it will be almost inevitable that a BNOC such as yourself will be papped. Therefore, be sure to pack a hamper filled with Waitrose’s finest quinoa, walnut and rocket salads, the finest bottle of Prosecco your loan can afford, and a freshly made pear tart from the Grainger Market, that way, when your picture gets plastered all over The Courier you can at least make out that you are a dedicated sports lover with sophisticated tastes.
4
Never forget that you love disco. When a friend turns to you and asks you what you think the outcome of the event will be, casually turn to them and just say: “I don’t care who wins. I hope that both sides will find a way to resolve their differences and be really nice to each other and listen to lots of Donna Summer”. As let’s face it, the only sport we should all be interested in is dancing to disco and having a really good time.
Restaurant Review: Za Za Bazaar
’m going to assume that there are a few Newcastle students out there who, perhaps, live under rocks, and therefore have yet to hear about the latest addition to The Gate: ZaZa Bazaar. If you haven’t managed to take advantage of their recent student promotions, or just couldn’t face the five hundred strong queues, don’t worry it’s not going anywhere. Believing in safety in numbers we, The Courier sub-editorial team, headed to ZaZa’s as a group of 20 strong. And here truly is the undeniable beauty of buffeting: It doesn’t matter if you’re mates with a veggie, but you’re craving a Nando’s, an international buffet caters to all. As one said: “I could have had a roast dinner with a stir-fry, if I’d wanted.” Another great thing about a buffet is that the food is waiting for you, you are not waiting for it. Regrettably, other than its fantastic interior (futuristic oriental), this is where the list of ‘great’ things about ZaZa Bazaar begins to dry up. Yes, it does take you on a trip around the world but is it worth making all the stops? Is an average (and tentatively eaten) portion of sushi, matched with overcooked pasta (ironically reminiscent of aeroplane
Za Za Ztrategy
“The food is waiting for, you are not waiting for it.” food) better than just choosing between YoSushi! and Scalini’s? Are you really getting the best of both worlds? I would say it depends on what choices you are making. The Indian section had everything you’d want from, well, India. The chicken tikka massala was delicious and if there is something I love, its unlimited portions of naan bread. A hop skip and a jump away in China, you can self-service your stir-fry. Choose the type of noodles, the meat, whatever veggies and choosing the level of spice, hand it over to the chef, and voila. This is where I feel the best advice regarding ZaZa’s can be given: go for the stuff they make fresh right in front of your eyes. It’s just less likely that it’s been sat there all day stewing or that a child has sneezed in it. All in all, ZaZa Bazaar is worth a visit, at least to say you’ve been, or just to make up your own mind on Newcastle’s latest culinary sensation. Even if the savoury stuff can be a bit disappointing, the desert selection will leave you on a high, chocolate fountain anyone? Katie Smith
James Simpson: Overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the buffet I decided to pin point individual cuisines. I started with the Tex Mex followed by Chinese and then Indian. I was careful to avoid carbs to stop peaking too early so avoided the Italian pasta and pizza station until around the 9th plate when I felt I could apply the pressure on Freddie. With every mouthful of chewy dextrose infused chicken I felt pain. My inspiration came when I hit dessert and pulled the perfect Mr Whippy. I felt like a king. I became overconfident and loaded my plate up with jelly which only sat like a gelatinous layer on top of my already brimming stomach. Never before had Lance Armstrong words rang so true “pain is temporary, pride lasts forever”. After becoming victorious I realised I had made a grave mistake. The walk home brought with it vomit, sweat, and tears. I may have beaten Freddie, but I had been truly defeated by the Zaza. Freddie Caldwell: You are about to enter a buffet prefaced by, when juxtaposed, the four greatest words in the English language: “all you can eat”. You should not treat this phrase as a suggestion, it is more of a requirement. In order to maximise your ability it is important not to starve beforehand – this will simply make you weak and you will need your strength for the task ahead. Secondly, make sure you take some form of exercise; only by being fit in both body and mind will you achieve true buffet greatness. One of the adages associated with buffet eating is that you shouldn’t stop when you feel full but rather when you feel ashamed. For the very best, the gap between these two stages is a significant one. Once this point has finally been reached, only a fool believes that the test is over. It is now imperative that your prize continues its journey through the digestive tract rather than being rudely ejected back from whence it came. To aid this process it is important to resist the temptation to become completely sedentary – slow and gentle movement should ensure a strong finish.
Photos by Katie Smith and Hazel Parnell
The Courier
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Tuesday 4 March 2014
thecourieronline.co.uk/lifestyle c2.lifestyle@ncl.ac.uk | @Courier_Life
Give piste a chance
Snow doubt about it, winter sports are a great way to have fun and keep fit
Suzie Bliss
Are you a double hard bastard?
Ignorance is Bliss
YES
NO
I
t seems as though the student struggle to consume five portions of fruit and veg a day is a thing of the past. Gone are days of cooking everything from frozen and the microwave meal is practically pre-historic. This thought struck me as I hungrily and happily tucked into my all-fried full English breakfast, whilst my housemate made a concoction of yoghurt, apple, honey and a mere sprinkling of muesli. I then continued to make my morning scroll through Instagram and was stunned and certainly not jealous of the images of quinoa porridge and superfood smoothies that were gaining ‘likes’ left right and centre. #happyandhealthy #summerbod #cleanandlean did make me feel a bit guilty as I polished off my last rasher of bacon, but then again it tasted so good…#sorrynotsorry.
Text and illustrations by Elizabeth Arch er
I can think of nothing more boring than polishing snow. Apart from watching other people polish snow maybe...
I prefer to be on solid ground than hurtling down a hill. S
NO
YE
YES
NO
“I did feel a bit guilty as I polished off my last rasher of bacon, but then again it tasted so good”
Do you see winter as an enemy which needs to be conquered?
YES
NO
Have you got more tea trays than sense?
Do you dream of having your life narrated by David Attenborough?
YES
YES
NO
YES
NO
Do you secretly think you’re James Bond?
NO
Luge
Biathlon
Curling
If you think sliding down an almost vertical slope on a glorified tea tray sounds like fun, then luge could be the sport for you. True, it can be difficult to practise with Newcastle’s disappointing lack of snow, but with plenty of rain recently, why not create a new sport called Mud Luge in Jesmond Dene? It should be perfectly safe as long as you avoid sliding head first into trees, or the river, or Hunter-wellie-clad dog walkers for that matter.
Perfect for the Made in Chelsea set, the Biathlon combines the two all time favourite rah pastimes: skiing and shooting darling. But being the only Olympic sport to start as a military training exercise, it’s more Pierce Brosnan circa The World is Not Enough than something Spencer and the gang would be caught dead doing. Try making it more entertaining by doing shots of vodka instead of actually shooting things before cruising down the slopes.
If, like Monica from Friends, you have the wild desire to polish everything in sight, from the telephone in your apartment to strangers’ cars in the street, then congratulations! You’ve come to the right place. Curling may not have the high-adrenaline factor of other winter Olympic sports, but it certainly gives those upper arm muscles a work out. Try practising on your kitchen floor before moving onto the real deal.
Competitive snowman-building Sports aren’t for everybody. All that moving around risks straining a muscle, or worse still breaking a sweat. If that doesn’t sound like your kind of thing, then perhaps give competitive snowman building a go. It has all the thrill of competitive sports without the inconvenience of moving, or dedicating long hours to training. It’s a sport of the mind rather than of the body.
This isn’t to say that I am against balanced diets. But bearing in mind some recent information I discovered, the healthy option may not be the expected detoxing dream. In my bid to keep up with my ‘clean and lean’ contemporaries I decided to forgo my usual cheese sandwich staple lunch and grab a mere mango and passion fruit Innocent smoothie and some yoghurt covered cranberries. It seems to me that yoghurt covered anything immediately makes it ‘healthier’. In fact, adding yoghurt to a dried cranberry makes it rather naughty. One hundred grams of dried cranberries contains 308 calories. The yoghurt coated equivalent works out at 482 calories - should have had a Mars Bar. However, this is not the nutritious revelation that brought my healthy lunch crashing down around me. My Innocent smoothie claimed to be nothing but pure fruit juices. The jovial website that speaks to you as though you are a child in reception claims that they are ‘here to make it easier for people to do themselves some good (whilst making it taste nice too)’. Why then, did my tiny 250ml bottle contain the same amount of sugar as three and a half Krispy Kreme original glazed donuts?! That’s 34.3 grams of sugar, which works out as nearly 30% more sugar per 100ml than Coca-Cola. The not-so-innocent smoothie also claims to be two of your five a day and while you feel victorious in your 2-in-1 fruit and veg consumption, your liver is also taking a hammering from the high fructose sugar content. So, why then do we feel obliged to choose this sugary drink, disguised as a wholesome smoothie rather than giver Homer Simpson a run for his money and chow down on the donuts instead? Living a healthy lifestyle is an idea that has been hijacked by various food companies, as they all try and sell us products that are supposedly ‘good for us’. In light of my latest discovery, I shall no longer be duped into buying what is essentially a healthy lie. My ignorance to the high sugar levels of drinks like Innocent smoothies has made me realise that I could have been selecting my chosen beverage from the whole range, rather than aimlessly pondering whether I am more likely to enjoy the taste of beetroot and ginger juice or goji berry, vanilla and agave nectar smoothie. What we can all learn from this is to just buy a drink you actually like drinking and be done with it – because in the long run, even Deliciously Ella has been drunk in a club, and all those VKs you know you are going to be knocking back in Flares have enough sugar to send a rocket to the moon.
16.fashion
v
Tuesday 4 March 2014
Fashion Editors: Frances Stephenson and Amy O’Rourke Deputy Fashion Editor: Bex Finney
The Courier
My Clash of the Titans campus fashion week in Hannah Fitton braves the rival campus to determine who would win the fashion face-off fashion Posh
Amy O’Rourke
I
’ve never been able to walk in heels, and it’s probably a skill I’ll never master. Grasping onto anything in sight to help me trot at a remotely normal pace and tumbling down (sometimes two) flights of stairs in an incredibly un-classy fashion became an all too regular occurrence. Yes, I was that girl you sniggered at, the girl clinging onto the banister in Sinners trying to hoist herself up without losing the mere scrap of dignity she had left. So, I decided to banish heels from my wardrobe, for good. So, it’s much to my satisfaction that this season flats are most certainly back; they’re chunkier, bolder and braver than the majority of the higher shoes on the high-street, meaning the search for the perfect pair is definitely less painful than attempting to walk in those skyscraper heels. When it comes to shoe shopping, find me the most hideous pair in sight and I’ll probably fall in love; I absolutely adore ugly shoes and the chunkier, the better.
“Trucker sandals shouldn’t work, but they most definitely do”
Topshop £38
With their chunky sole and strappy, sandal-esque shape, trucker sandals shouldn’t work, but they most definitely do. While it’s still a bit chilly, woolly socks, tights and smock dress are my go-to items when sporting the sandals, but they’ll be at the top of my list of items to take straight into my spring wardrobe meaning they’re a completely worthwhile investment. The revival of the 90s this year also meant a splash of grunge was infused into many of the styles on the shelves, perfect for a lover of ugly shoes. My inability to be lady-like means I’ve had to adapt items in my wardrobe, particularly my night-time attire, so they can be worn with flats without creating the illusion I stand at three feet tall; for example, bringing the hem up slightly on skirts and wearing higher waistlines means my legs still appear elongated. I’m not suggesting you grab every heel in sight and light a bonfire, but I am proposing you ditch them for the night, pull on the perfect pair of chunky flats and I promise you, you won’t look back.
Poly
Name: Chelsea Clarke Course/Year: First year Chemistry Uni: Northumbria Gingham print is everywhere this season, and these trousers from Topshop look great on Chelsea. The black brogues and fluffy black jumper compliment her outfit, and the oversized sheepskin coat creates a more casual look, perfect for the daytime.
Name: Dom Marshall Course/Year: First year Fine Art Uni: Northumbria
I like Dom’s casual dress sense. I love the navy bomber jacket he is wearing, it looks great for everyday wear and can be worn with lots of different pieces of clothing. The jeans look better than the usual trackies sported by most male students too.
Name: Will Lloyd Course/Year: Third year Medicine Uni: Newcastle Will’s casual yet tailored style works really well. The simple brown scarf looks great with the burgundy jumper, which is also a perfect colour for the winter months. The chilly breeze of the toon is gradually becoming less so Will can get away with not wearing a coat.
Name: Nina Hamer Course/Year: Second year English Uni: Newcastle
I really like how Nina has used a bold print and a vibrant colour to spruce up an all black outfit. The zebra print shirt is a vintage M&S piece from Nina’s grandma, and she bought the clutch in the Zara sale, so both bargain pieces.
Pack it up, pack it in
Kathryn Holland picks the four best back packs to make those library trips a little easier
’S OR T I ED VE FA
F
Topshop £65
or £65.00 this bag is a little on the pricey side, but then again who can put a price on style? Let the tassels do the talking and air with a simple light blue tunic dress or light denim jacket for a classic cowgirl look. However, if the Wild West isn’t for you this bag is so versatile just throw it on with any outfit and let it complete your look. Because of the material make sure you spray with a suede protector before taking out into the great outdoors because no-one likes spoiled suede.
W
Hype £25
ith a spacious interior, padded straps and lightweight fabric this backpack is great for taking into uni. Hype have come up with a range of bags each with a cool, fresh pattern. Whether it’s cosmo cats or peacock feathers you’re sure to find a style to fit you. Style this vintage animal version with a pair of grey cropped trousers and a black roll-neck. If you fancy adding a few more animals to your outfit Hype also do matching vintage animal socks and beanie.
W
Cath Kidston £45
ho can say no to this cutie? With its on trend floral pattern, water proof outer material and great size no wonder it’s one of Cath Kidston’s best-selling bags. An internal laptop pocket means it’s perfect for taking your laptop into uni. Also, because of its padded straps you’ll be sure not to get sore shoulders. Keep it cute and style with a pastel boyfriend style coat, frilly socks and brogues. When summer eventually arrives it’ll look great with a pair of denim shorts.
K
ASOS £40
eep it simple with this stylish leather and canvas backpack. Complete the look with a classic denim jacket, colourful slogan-tee black high waisted jeans and heeled boots. Alternatively if you want to keep it monochrome, style with a slouchy white jumper and black leather-look jeans, perfect for Newcastle’s less than perfect weather. This bag would also be perfect for a night out, kiss goodbye to the lost make up and phones with this stylish number.
The Courier
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Tuesday 4 March 2014
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Stan Calvert supporter safari
Whether on the rugby sideline or indoor court the Fashion Editors give you the low down on how to sartorially spot the crowd at this year’s sporting highlight
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his person is a common site at Stan Calvert, they go to uni, they’re pretty posh and therefore enjoy the standard ‘your dad works for my dad’ type chants but they have absolutely no interest in the actual sport.
“You know in my gap yah, in New York I saw Adam Chandler at a jets game and…” At this point you want to scream: “You don’t even go here!” The faux fan will only go to the rugby because ‘erm it’s like the only event worth going to’ and they will know each player by name without actually knowing each player. The most obvious thing about this
Crop top Flash a little flesh
Boyfriend jacket To show the other girls he’s yours
Not trainers, boots You’re still a supporter after all
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or the ‘uber fan’, watching a Stan Calvert match like any other civilised human being isn’t satisfactory. Shouting louder than everyone else, hurling abuse at the other team more than everyone else and wearing more face paint than anyone else are mandatory requirements, assuring all other spectators they are in fact, the biggest fan present.
“The foam finger is perhaps the most important piece of sports paraphernalia; an essential in any uber fan’s wardrobe” The foam finger is perhaps the most important piece of sports paraphernalia and an essential item in any uber fan’s wardrobe. In order to create maximum
person is their clothing attire; they own nothing remotely resembling the Newcastle sports kit so instead throw on a varsity sweater they bought on their gap yah around the American coastlines (think Harvard, Yale-no where they have ever studied but did visit the gift shop). Accompanying attire includes a puffa jacket (standard) and velvet hair scrunchie, probably in green or tartan. Whilst pretending to watch the game attentively they will spend majority of the time on their phone and only get involved when the poly thrashing chants begin. At half-time they will just need to go for a ciggie and when everyone else is talking about the match, who’s playing well and how bias the ref is, the faux fan will start up with “you know in my gap yah, in New York I saw Adam Chandler at a jets game and…” At this point you want to scream “you don’t even go here!”
The wannabe cheerleader
Mini skirt Tartan + school girl = win-win result to Newcastle
Gold hoop earrings Priceless family heirloom or a token of affection from your Rugby boy, keep them guessing with your accessories
impact, the finger must be styled accordingly with a coordinating outfit and face-paint, without taking an ounce of inspiration from Miley Cyrus. Yes, that means leaving the hot pants at home and covering every inch of skin in university related attire. When I say every inch of skin, it isn’t an exaggeration; this fan shows their dedication with a smothering of face paint, an integral part of their Stan Calvert apparel. They know no boundaries, and may even scrawl chants across themselves, a sure way for other people to know which team they’re supporting when their vocal chords surrender half way through the game. It’s probably wise to keep substantial distance between yourself and an uber fan; you’d suffer their deafening chants, foam finger flying in front of your face and fear of being assaulted if their team loses. There’s only one thing to do; raid your room for that Newcastle hoody, slap on the face-paint and warm up those vocal chords because, if you can’t beat them (which, you definitely can’t), join them.
Scrunchie To show you could be sporty if you tried
The wrong uni jumper Cos you’re that well travelled
The faux fan
Puffa jacket In case the beer blanket wears off
Converse You might need to make a quick get away
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irls you know the drill, pretending to be excited about sporting events is something that comes naturally to the majority of boys. When dressing for a big sports match, remember your presence is merely decorative. So in the words of Cher in Clueless ‘Sometimes you have to show a little skin. This reminds boys of being naked, and then they think of sex.’ With this in mind, expose a sexy shoulder and a hint of belly button to really get your guy going. Perhaps go bra-less for a celebratory peek of boob when your team scoreshint – make sure you know which team you’re supporting otherwise this could provoke some dissent amongst the rest of the stands, if you’re struggling just learn the colour scheme of their kit. Continue the fabulous 90s throwback theme by pairing your top and bottom half, co-ords are massive
Adithya Sharanya tells us how to restyle the boyfriend shirt
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en’s shirts are normally the comfortable yet funky part of a women’s wardrobe. What if you could use them in a cute and a feminine way? So grab your favourite hand me down from your boyfriend, brother, father or one of your guy friends (if you live in a house full of those like me) and get styling.
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Once you’ve picked out a suitable shirt, slip it on and button the shirt to the top leaving the top couple of buttons open.
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The next step, take the shirt off of your shoulders and adjust the tightness until it fits comfortably around your chest. Leave the arms loose by your sides.
this season, on and off the pitch, so emulate a sports kit by matching your skirt with your crop top for a look that perfectly marries Britney in her Hit Me Baby era with a hint of the Sochi style. Finally, people need to know you’re
“Sometimes you have to show a little skin. This reminds boys of being naked, and then they think of sex’’ Cher, Clueless kind of a big deal, as you’re dating the star striker…or is it goalkeeper…or is that football? So make sure you borrow one of his oversized sports jumpers to keep warm and to let everyone else know that you spent the night with that hunk of junk. Finish it all of with a double scrunchie, that’s right double scrunchie, one in the hair and one on the wrist, just cos you are that cool.
Any item of clothing remotely related to Newcastle Uni is a must
The ‘Uber-fan’ The foam finger creates maximum impact; but don’t take styling tips from Miley Cryrus
You must prove you are the biggest fan present; the face paint is essential
DIY: the boyfriend shirt
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Don’t forget to make sure to flatten the collar at the back of the shirt before the last step. It should be sitting comfortable around your chest.
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Finally, tie the sleeves into a bow at the front, add some colourful accessories such as a silky scarf or some chunky jewellery and you’re just about
finished. Using a patterned shirt rather than a plain one adds more interest to the finished dress; even a few lines or polka dots are better than a completely plain a l t e r n at i v e . This will add structure and make your dress stand out. Pair with shorts if you are conscious of your thighs like me. Use a bright shirt for a day look. It’s easy to do, accentuates your curves and is a great way to utilize the shirts the men in your life want to throw away.
18.beauty
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
Beauty Editors: Safiya Ahmed and Amy Macauley
Make-up Masterclass Charlotte Davies talks us through the hottest trends for dark skin and Martha Ngatchu shows us how to execute each look to perfection
In pursuit of perfection
Sara Macauley and Kaila Rooney discuss the pros and cons of cosmetic surgery and bodily modification which are increasingly becoming an accepted norm in today’s society
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iposuction, botox, mentoplasty, otoplasty and rhytidectomy – all types of everyday cosmetic surgery, yet I only know what half them are. (The last three refer to chin surgery, ear surgery and general surgery of the face FYI.) The NHS considers cosmetic surgery to be “a type of surgery used to change a person’s appearance to achieve what they perceive to be a more desirable look,” and the industry is, according to the BBC, ‘booming,’ with a massive 17% increase in cosmetic procedures performed from 2012 to 2013. This hair-raising figure demonstrates how the number of people completely altering their appearance in their strive for ‘perfection’ has reached alarming levels, yet shockingly, we don’t seem to be too concerned by it. Tales of cosmetic surgery are splashed across our tabloids and shouted about from our screens every day. I only have
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t’s a good day when you discover makeup that suits your skin tone perfectly. Finding the most flattering products for your complexion is often a gruelling task, and it’s no secret that for those with darker skin, this can be even more of a challenge. However, with the continuous expanding range of products and shades on the market, there’s no doubt the perfect products are out there for you no matter what shade you require. Unfortunately, it is time to ditch the drugstore and opt for the higher end products. Opting for a more expensive foundation will allow you a much better chance of finding your perfect match. Visiting a more expensive beauty counter means the advice of a professional is always close at hand, so you can avoid any skin matching mishaps.
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Products used: Matchmaster Foundation, Mineralise Skinfinish Sunpowder, Select Cover Up, Rose Blusher, Rebel Lipstick and Kinda Sexy Lipstick all by Mac, Browzing, They’re Real Mascara by Benefit Barry M Blusher in Bl4, Seventeen Precision Pen Eyeliner.
“I only have to scroll through Mail Online for 0.2 seconds before I come across ‘celebs’ under a magnifying glass’’
before injecting it back into the face. Sounds like a bloody nightmare if you ask me. If this bloodfest facial isn’t to your taste, what about palm line alteration? The new craze in Japan involves surgery with an electric scalpel to change the direction of up to 10 lines on your palm, which is then believed to change your fate. Obvs. Cosmetic surgery these days doesn’t just refer to a boob job or ‘casual’ bit of liposuction. As our quest to reach unattainable beauty ide-
t has long been said that, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder’’, meaning that beauty is a subjective topic, with everyone seeing it differently. What one person might see as beautiful, another person might not. This rule also applies to how people view themselves. It does not matter how many people tell you you’re beautiful, if you don’t see it, it can become very difficult to overcome. This is a major reason behind why a lot of women turn to cosmetic surgery to help them feel beautiful. The trend of cosmetic surgery started when older women wanted to look and feel younger and started to become more popular among younger women. However, they were not going in for minor procedures, these girls were dramatically altering their bodies. They would get breast implants, making them unnaturally large, and
“Darker skin allows you to play around with much bolder and more dramatic looks”
The good news? If you’re looking to compliment your darker complexion the trick is experimentation. Having darker skin allows you to play around with much bolder and more dramatic looks than those of a fairer appearance. Deep red lips can be a real showstopper. Add an even deeper lip liner to boost the drama. For eyes, the darker your skin the brighter the colours. For some extra umph, pair this with a black mascara and winged eyeliner. There are a lot less limitations for you if you’re of a deeper skin tone so start having some fun. So what do the experts say? Makeup artist Phil Ranger advises that yellow based tones work best for women of colour. Team this with a copper based bronze and slick of highlighter to achieve a truly flattering look. Derek Winfrey, makeup artist to Michelle Obama, advises using a lighter foundation alongside this on areas such as the chin and under eyes. It’s a look that says both sun kissed and natural. So there you have it, though finding the right match may require a little more trial and error for those of a darker complexion, there’s no doubt the perfect products are out there for you.
to scroll through Daily Mail Online for approximately 0.2 seconds before I come across a gaggle of ‘celebs’ under a magnifying glass, with stories of Sharon Osborne’s ‘frumpy to fabulous face’ and Kim K’s latest ‘vampire facial.’ If you weren’t already familiar, the vampire facial procedure involves drawing the patient’s own blood
some girls would go as far as to get liposuction when they did not need it. Due to extreme cases like these, cosmetic surgery began to be viewed negatively in the public eye. However, who is to say that having cosmetic surgery is too much? It is becoming more and more common for women to get these procedures done and it is especially popular among celebrities, who are constantly under pressure
“No one is ever forced into cosmetic surgery; it is always the individual’s choice’’ to look perfect. My personal opinion is, if it isn’t hurting anyone, then why should there be an issue? No one is ever forced into cosmetic surgery; it is always the individual’s choice. If a woman chooses to get botox, it would not
als becomes more and more intense, so too do the surgeries required to achieve such looks. According to the past president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, nowadays “it’s not uncommon for people to have two or three surgeries done at once.” Am I the only one concerned about the use of the phrase ‘not uncommon’ in that sentence? Justin Jedlica, perhaps more commonly known by the title ‘Human Ken Doll’, has reportedly undergone more than ninety operations to achieve the plastic look. Ouch. Call me old fashioned, but when I think ‘beauty routine’, I’m thinking more St Tropez than surgeon’s scalpel. Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand the use of cosmetic surgery as a last resort, in cases where patients suffer from extreme confidence issues which affect daily life. I just don’t understand the appeal of undergoing an eyelash transplant when you could just nip round the corner and buy a pair of falsies for a fiver. have any effect on the people around her. As long as these procedures are being carried out by legitimate doctors and are safe for the recipient, I do not see a problem. Even if a woman were to undergo a complete transformation, changing her face, body shape, hair, etc. As long as she feels beautiful then everyone should accept her decision. Cosmetic surgery is definitely apart of the modern day beauty routine. While it is certainly not for everyone, it is much more popular now than it was ten to twenty years ago. Everyone needs to remember that “cosmetic surgery” does not have to be extreme, even just the most minor procedure can make a woman’s self esteem improve dramatically.
Joining the glitterati?
Glitter makeup was a divisive issue at New York fashion week. Charlotte Dickson and Martha Ngatchu debate whether to adopt the trend or leave it to the kids
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litter has always been a bit of a controversial trend in the beauty world, and many girls are split on whether it’s a do or a don’t. But with the bold eye makeup making an appearance on the majority of New York Fashion Week’s catwalks, glitter has been declared a big beauty trend for the fall. Though a bit of sparkle may seem like a daunting look to pull off, a hint of shimmer can awaken any look. When paired with natural looking make up on the rest of the face, glitter can make an exciting alternative from the standard black kohl/liquid liner cat eye flick, which can verge on boring when it is repeated over and over again. My favourite look from the runways was the one created at Altuzarra, which used hints of gold and green along the upper lash line using MAC’s Pro 3D Brass Gold Glitter. Vera Wang and Marc Jacobs also made use of silver sparkles, but Pat McGrath at Anna Sui went one step further. Using vibrant greens and blues on different models, she
applied the glittery shadow with a damp brush to the inner corners of the eye, helping to ‘reflect the light and open the eye, before sweeping the block colours over the rest of the lids. Taking inspiration from Fashion Week can be a great starting point when considering a new look, but perhaps tone it
“With a nude lip and matte skin, it can bring out the prettiest feature on any girl’s face”
down as some glitter looks were taken too far (see Rodarte and its brown and silver sparkly lips, a bit too much for any night on the toon). Glitter, overall, highlights the eye, so when paired with a nude lip and matte skin, it can bring out the prettiest feature on any girl’s face. Beauty is all about experimenting, finding the looks and styles that you like and suit you, so in not trying this new refreshing trend, you are missing out.
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admit, I am a bit of a magpie. I love a good glittery heel or a dazzling glitter clutch bag, I might even go as far as a glitter embellished blazer. However, glitter on my face is just not acceptable. In addition to the fact that the majority of us will just get this look horribly wrong, there are myriad other problems with glitter make up. This is one high fashion beauty look that should not transfer to everyday wear. Glitter makeup evokes images of dance perfor-
mances, drag queens and toddlers cutting and sticking at nursery. None of these images scream sexy makeup look. Although Chanel managed to successfully use glit- ter eyeliner at their SS14 haute couture show, I unfortunately don’t have a team of makeup artists at hand to prevent my face from looking like a disco ball. I’m not advocating a complete rejection of sparkly makeup, but there is a big difference between a little shimmer and outright glittery madness. A shimmery gold eye-shadow oozes sexiness whilst a glittery gold simply says: “I had no idea what I was doing when I put this on.” The trend simply doesn’t have any grown up appeal. I’m all for making a bold statement with your make up choices, but a flashy glitter sign around your eyes is just a touch (or two) too far. Moreover, glitter make up is notoriously hard to remove. You’ll be scrubbing at your face forever trying to get all the glitter off - which is not good for your skin. In spite of all the scrubbing, you’ll still wake up with glitter on your bedding, in your hair and all over your clothes. In fact, you’ll be finding glitter all over the place. It’s just not practical nor is it desirable. So, unless we’re looking to take beauty cues from Ke$ha, glitter makeup is not a trend we should embrace. In my opinion, this look should be best left to nursery children and princesses.
The Courier
beauty.19
Tuesday 4 March 2014
thecourieronline.co.uk/beauty courier.beauty@ncl.ac.uk | @Courier_Beauty
Dry your eyes, mate
Sleepless nights after your favourite team has lost their Stan Calvert match against the Poly? Rebecca Jackson shows you how to save your face despite the dark feelings of defeat
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t happens to the best of us, we gear ourselves up for a day of glorious Stan Calvert victories and then disaster strikes: Newcastle loses. But never fear, here are some of my best tips to keep you looking fresh on the outside no matter how dejected you’re feeling on the inside. The most important thing into saving your face is all about your skin. If your complexion looks bright and healthy - so will you! Firstly I make sure last night’s makeup is all off, using a cleanser (such as Anew Rejuvena-
tating Gel Cleanser), moisturiser and exfoliate. If you have time, wrap some ice cubes in paper towels or something similar and hold under your eyes for around 5 minutes to get rid of the dark circles/ tear stains. Put on a thin layer of primer or BB cream, I use Benefit’s That Gal. This stuff works miracles. Not only does it give a good base for foundation, but brightens your face and makes you look awake. I then use Maybelline Fit Me concealer under my eyes to get rid of the bags, which we all know are the biggest give aways. By just lightly patting it under your eyes it gives a natural and light coverage, but takes away the dark circles. It also reflects the light, leaving more of an illuminating finish. Using a foundation brush I then apply Maybelline’s Fit Me foundation, as the liquid form isn’t too heavy and lets your skin breathe, leaving a more natural and dewy finish. I then use a powder all over to set the foundation, and sweep a blusher over and just under the cheekbones for definition. A natural/nude coloured eye-shadow takes away the darkness and makes your eyes look brighter. Using a liquid eyeliner- Max Factor Masterpiece Glide & Define never fails – I then draw a thin line-
close on upper lashes. Don’t fully go into the middle corners of your eyes, but a centimetre in next to your lashes – it looks much more natural. I then lightly blend the outer corners with a small and thin brush to soften the line. And of course a few coats of the never old Great Lash Mascara on top finishes the look. I then add a few dabs of the face primer onto my cheekbones to just add some shimmer and glow, a small amount of light pink lipstick and I’m ready to go face the daylight looking entirely un-phased.
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Blokey beauty: Blondes vs brunettes
Since before we can remember there has been an age-old rivalry between blondes or brunettes. Tom Tibble give us the final say on what guys really think
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“Attributes of the female such as ‘personality’ or ‘interests’ are redundant since hair colour exists to very accurately demarcate what a female is actually like” are worth The Chase, means The Modern Day Lad’s hunting process is vastly quickened. Lads now understand that attributes of the female such as her ‘personality’ or her ‘interests’ are redundant since hair colour exists to very swiftly, visibly and accurately demarcate what a female is actually like. This
Alice Potts searches out the best French beauty products to stock up on during the ski season, at a fraction of the price
After
Illustrations by Emily North
londes vs. brunettes, who do you side with? Since the beginning of time these two opposing tribes have been engaged in a bitter duel as to whose hair colour may be pronounced The Hottest. Lads across the globe should be grateful. Ever since The Messiah Lad identified blonde and brunette as the only hair colours worth caring about, he afforded the rest of the Ladnation more time to hunt for appropriate female mates, as opposed to wasting it on the less rewarding hair colours such as that of ‘The Soulless Ginger.’ The Messiah Lad’s revolutionary step was that he reduced the female to nothing but hair colour. This breakthrough in research, as to which females
Ooh la la: aprés-ski
radical method of stereotyping has meant that the average Modern Day Lad now spends 27% less time than that of a Jurassic Day Lad in the hunt for a suitable female mate. The Messiah Lad discovered that The Brunette is often fit whilst The Blonde is often both fit and stupid. Thanks to this research The Modern Day Lad knows that the rest of the hair colour spectrum has nothing to offer, but how does he pick between The Brunette and The Blonde?
“The rest of the hair colour spectrum has nothing to offer” Advances in technology have made this part easier than ever. All that The Modern Day Lad has to do now is target a female and subtly obtain a lock of her hair. Upon completing this step, the Lad takes the lock of hair back to his Ladboratory where he runs the lock under extensive tests. The lock is processed through a machine which reads information from the hair strands and grades the female’s ability to cook, to clean and to shag. The machine then offers a compatibility rating against a lock of The Lad’s own previously scanned hair. If the female’s lock of hair meets the culinary, hygiene and sexual requirements of The Lad then he knows the female in question is worth The Chase. If he is unhappy with the compatibility rating then The Lad will return to the hunt, safe in the knowledge that the Ladboratory machine has saved the female’s hair data in case The Lad later changes his mind. And that’s how it’s done. Blondes or brunettes? The Modern Day Lad lets his Ladboratory decide.
I think that liking a female just due to superficial reasons is shallow and it’s the beauty that lies beneath that counts. Ha, just joking - as long as it has a pulse I don’t really care. Joe Stansfield
I prefer brunettes (but my girlfriend is brunette so I have to say that!). Gus Powell
Brunette says smart, sophisticated, witty ostentatious and feisty. Blonde says they probably don’t know what those words mean. Gagan Jagpal
I don’t care about hair as long as they have straight teeth with no fillings, I’m a happy chappy. Hannan Imran Brunettes, maybe because I’m a bit blonde and I have enough to make up for the two of us. Ben Sanders I don’t care as long as the person in question is female, the best way to test if you think a girl is genuinely pretty is to imagine them bald like Britney spears. Alex Jones
Beggars can’t be choosers. Tom Nicholson I kinda feel brunettes have a more classy aura about them. Definitely more sophisticated. I mean you don’t see that many blonde milfs walking around. James Simpson Brunettes, they are just leagues ahead of blondes. Calum Mackenzie
f you’ve been lucky enough to travel to the Alps this ski season and find yourself in France, then a must for any beauty junkie is to stockpile at La Pharmacia. During January I took a long weekend in Chamonix and had the thrill of purchasing their beautiful French skin care at a fraction of the price. Here is a selection of my absolute must-have products:
Bioderma Hydrabio H20 Cleansing Michelle Solution.
Anyone who follows beauty blogs will know the hype surrounding this French product and the difficulty of grabbing it in the UK. This bottle may look like dolled-up tap water but it is by far the gentlest cleansing water to remove make-up. Used morning and evening with a cotton pad it leaves skin feeling smooth, refreshed and clean without tightening the skin. As an ex-patron of the popular Simple wipes it would take a strong candidate to swap my love of the wipe, but Bioderma is as swift without rubbing at the delicate eye area.
La Roche-Posay Effaclar Purifying Foaming Gel. A really effective gel cleanser with a strong foaming quality that achieves a really clean-feel to the skin. La Roche-Posay products are brilliant for problem skin as an anti-irritant and this gentle cleanser can be used morning and evening without drying the surface. The brand is excellent for anyone looking to re-haul their skin care without any nasties to aggravate.
Nuxe Crème
Nuxe are most famous for their highly successful hair, face and body oils so as a new buyer of the brand I decided to try a night cream as I was looking for over-night hydration. This product is delicious i n formula and leaves skin silky and renewed by the morning. I was left looki n g more awake and found make-up looked more dewy with application. I’ll be definitely keen to t r y more in the range as it is sold in Space NK and John Lewis.
The Courier
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Tuesday 4 March 2014
thecourieronline.co.uk courier.listings@ncl.ac.uk | @Courier_Listings
Listings The Table March 4th Northern Stage
What do you remember from the Olympic Opening Ceremony? The rings on fire? Kenneth Branagh giving it the full Hamlet as Isambard Kingdom Brunel? The fact that Fuck Buttons and Public Image Ltd managed to get on the soundtrack? No, you idiot, it’s the puppets that everyone remembers. What do you mean, ‘I don’t remember any puppets’? You philistine. This show mixes puppetry with comedy and philosophy to help you expand your tiny mind as you laugh. Tickets from £12
AV Festival: Coal/A Man With No Name 4th March Star and Shadow Cinema
The north’s most popular avant garde art festival is this year taking the word ‘extraction’ as its theme, and appropriately enough this double bill focuses on the coal trade in China. The first, Coal, follows a convoy of trucks running coal around Tianjin, northern China, and the second is about an anonymous man who lives in some wasteland on his own somewhere in China and doesn’t see anyone. Sounds like a right laugh. Tickets from £3.50
Audio Asylum: Outlook warm-up 4th March World Headquarters
If you’re as excited as I am about Croatia’s Outlook festival (i.e. not that excited but generally in favour of the whole thing) then you might fancy popping along to see Paul Woolford, Pearson Sound and Jacques Green. Tickets £8
Chvrches 7th March O2 Academy
Constable and Turner: Sketching from Nature To June Laing Gallery
Despite sounding like a lost 1950s police procedural radio drama, this big new exhibition brings choice cuts from the Tate’s collection of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable’s back catalogues to illustrate how the two champs of late 18th and early 19th century painting took on the task of painting Britain’s countryside. Taking the easel outside was apparently quite a big deal in those days, pack-a-macs not yet having achieved the same levels of ubiquity as they have these days. Contemporaries of the two masters such as George Stubbs (who did horses), Francis Danby (who did big doomy landscapes) and John Crome (who did lots of stuff round Norwich, then went quiet for a couple of hundred years before coming back into prominence with his rap troupe, Chromeo). It’s probably the biggest exhibition of British art in the region since the Turner Prize show a couple of years ago, so go and have a gander. Tickets from £5.50
Fresh from hanging out with their synthpop antecedents Depeche Mode, being completely ignored at the Brit awards and winning the far more prestigious and worthwhile Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize for their single ‘The Mother We Share’, Chvrches are here as part of their spring jaunt around the UK. They’re properly ace, sounding a bit like M83 and their electro ilk, but with big choruses to boot. The two chaps on keyboards are given to wearing some fairly daft snapbacks, but that’s sort of a pop star’s job: looking like a dick and embarrassing themselves so you don’t have to. Tickets £15
Newcastle Film & Comic Con 8th & 9th March Metro Radio Arena
Comic conventions have a rather better rep these days than in the past. Formerly popularly considered the preserve of a subset of people who still lived with their parents long into their thirties, the re-emergence of nerd culture into the mainstream has given the comic convention a shot in the arm. If you like sifting through heaps of merchandise and nodding appreciatively at Happily, cosplayers won’t have to wander through town dressed in their regalia if they don’t want to - changing facilities and cloakrooms are provided. That said, if there’s ever a time and place to be out and about in fancy dress, it’s Friday or Saturday night in Newcastle. Tickets from £6
22.arts
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
Arts Editors: Millie Walton and Charlie Dearnley Deputy Arts Editor: Laura Wotton
Alt Lit. I
Lauren Vevers
’m nervous about writing this column because Alt Lit riles furious passions in both its supporters and critics – there’s a Vice article entitled ‘Alt Lit is for Boring Infantile Narcissists’ that encapsulates the latter nicely. At this point it’s probably worth addressing what Alt Lit actually is; this is tricky. Broadly, it refers to a body of “alternative literature” that interacts with the digital world through the use of memes, Gchat, YouTube and so on. It also encourages a Bukowksi-esque approach to editing (i.e. revise sparingly). Abuse of substances, notably Xanex, is a key motif in Alt Lit. This shouldn’t surprise anyone because recreational drug use and self-medication are basically literary traditions which many writers from Coleridge (opium) to Wolfe (LSD laced Kool-Aid) are wittingly engaged with. This and other familiar tropes – alienation, sexual ennui etc. – might be a reflection of contemporary youth culture in the West but aren’t necessarily groundbreaking in terms of differentiating from what came before. Surely, Alt Lit’s forte is playing with form; it sets up a dialectal relationship between fiction writing and online platforms to which Internet communities are integral. Like with the products of all genres or movements, it’s a case of weeding out the good, the shit and the somewhere in between – the responsibility to discern is down to the reader.
Some Suggestions: Read These. Or Don’t. TaiPei – Tao Lin
Architoonture Rebecca Norfield takes us on an architectural journey through Newcastle, introducing the biggest and best and of the city’s hidden buildings...
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ewcastle is almost as famous for its striking and varied architecture as it is for £5 trebles; from the award winning Northern Stage on campus, to Foster’s famous The Sage down on the Quayside, the Toon is packed with architectural gems. The historic old town boasts beautiful Victorian buildings and monuments, whilst the Tyne’s riverscape highlights the city’s journey through industrialism into the modern day. Although most of us have become all too familiar with the architectural phenomenon that is Sinners’ cage, how often do we actually stop to take in the amazing city we are living in? Surprisingly, we architecture students do occasionally leave the mystical and soul destroying place that is the studio, and step foot into the Greggs-filled city around us; so here on this rare occasion, I take you on a journey through Newcastle and its past to a few of my favourite architectural spots. Heading out of the architecture building and under the arches, I pass those new (and slightly creepy) stone heads as I head towards our first stop: The Civic Centre. The huge square tower of this imposing government building has become a central landmark of Newcastle, as well as a way of navigating to Munchies after a night out. The architect George Kenyon was employed by Newcastle’s infamous city council leader T. Dan Smith,
“T. Dan Smith aimed to bring Newcastle out of its industrial past to create a cultural capital” TaiPei follows Paul, a novelist navigating the literary scene in New York, who shares many similarities with Lin himself. The novel has, according to a zealously enthusiastic article on The Guardian, the potential ‘to breathe new life into literature’. Bret Easton Ellis has raved about it too – for obvious reasons.
Alone With Other People – Gabby Bess
Alone With Other People is a collection of poetry and prose published by Civil Coping Mechanisms; it includes undue levels of disaffection and misery that speaks to my not-so-inner emo.
Lolito – Benjamin Brooks
As the nod to Nabokov suggests, Lolito is about a young boy’s relationship with an older woman. Brooks has written six books and he’s only 21. Even though I can’t personally testify to their quality (because I haven’t read them all) that’s still mightily impressive. Disclaimer: I’ve only scratched the surface of the Alt Lit abyss. Here are more words to Google: Pop Serial, Steve Roggenbuck, i am Alt Lit, Marie Calloway, Beach Sloth.
who aimed to bring Newcastle out of its industrial past to create a ‘cultural capital’ of modernism in the 60s. He’s to blame for the brutal concrete buildings, flyover footpaths with no destination and the horrendous motorway into Jesmond (where you feel like you are definitely going to die when a Geordie taxi driver who hates students has you in the back of his cab). Smith was eventually jailed for corruption but a lot of the modernist eyesores he forced upon the city can still be seen, The Civic Centre i s one part of his masterplan that actually proved to be quite successful. We all pass by on our way to and from uni, yet it is still largely unvisited and unappreciated by students. The ring o f
golden seahorses that sit on top of the building reflect Newcastle’s past as a sea port; this link to the ocean is a theme throughout. To enter you pass under the huge and unnerving bronze statue River God Tyne and by the water
“There is a huge auditorium on stilts surrounded by a modern interpretation of a medieval moat” feature Five Swans in Flight which represents Newcastle’s links with Scandinavia. There is a huge auditorium on stilts surrounded by a modern interpretation of a medieval moat (basically a pond) which is lit at night. The only probable reason for any student to enter would be to buy a Jesmond parking permit, however next time you’re on the way to the library and are looking for a new way to procrastinate, have a wonder into the Civic Centre’s grounds and take in this unexpectedly exciting building. Moving further into the city centre, past the monstrosity that is Haymarket, I head towards Central Station and to our next stop: The Lit. and Phil. Library. This beautiful 19th century neoclassical building was designed for Newcastle’s Literary and Philosophical Society to meet. Their current president is no other than Pointless’ Alexander Armstrong, so you never know, you might spot a celeb if you stop by for a visit. The complete opposite to the Robbo, this quaint and charming Grade II listed building is the largest independent library outside London, and is home to over 150,000 books. Its reading rooms are definitely the main feature; they are lit from above by huge skylights and, as well as all the books, are home to a collection of paintings and busts. This was the first place to be lit by electric light and has had many famous members over the years. The adjoining society building, Bolbec Hall, is currently up for sale (for anyone who has a spare 1.5 million in their trust fund). The society host book launches, concerts, lectures and readings that are open to both members and non-members and is well worth a visit, however beware; you might find yourself being guilt tripped into signing up to the society by the cute old librarians behind the counter. Next on our tour is The Black Gate and a visit to the medieval part of the city; we are all aware there is a castle in Newcastle (and not just in the name) but probably the nearest most of us get to it is pre-drinking in nearby Empress. The whole of the castle was monitored from the Black Gate, which was added in 1247 AD by King Henry
III. As the military use of the castle was no longer needed, it began to decline and by the 19th century the Black Gate had almost disappeared as it was reduced to slum dwellings. When the railway was built a lot of the surrounding buildings were removed and the Black Gate was restored by Society of Antiquaries who still use it as a meeting place and library. The building gets its name from a previous occupant, Patrick Black, and is currently undergoing a project to add a modern lift; this is almost finished and will be an interesting addition. Passing The Black Gate and Castle keep I turn the corner and head down one of Newcastle’s famous ‘chares’, the Long Stairs. A chare is basically a narrow alleyway, and at one time there were 20 of them in the city, though a lot were destroyed in the great fire of Newcastle in 1854. The long stairs says it all in the name; it’s a narrow alleyway of long stairs (shocker). There are a few chares left along the Quayside,
“The Cooperage is one of Newcastle’s oldest and supposedly haunted buildingsdon’t go down there at night” such as Plummer Chare and Castle Stairs and they are great little places to explore. Long stairs runs parallel to the high level bridge and leads down to the Quayside; it opens up next to one of Newcastle’s oldest and supposedly most haunted buildings, The Cooperage, which is featured on city ghost tours - my advice is not to go down there at night. And so we end our tour on the Quayside, with Bessie Surtee’s House. These two 16th century merchants’ houses are an example of Jacobean domestic architecture and have a beautiful rich interior. It gets its name from Bessie Surtee who lived in the house and is said to have eloped to Scotland in 1772 from a first-floor window (romantic) with John Scott, a coal merchant’s son who eventually became Lord Chancellor of England. The building is now English Heritage’s regional office and a museum which is open 10am-4pm weekdays and is free (so there’s no excuse not to be cultural and pay it a visit). From here you could take a stroll across one of the Tyne’s many amazing bridges and look back at the beautiful and fascinating city that we know and love, however it’s freezing and windy so I think a visit to another of Newcastle’s architectural landmarks is in order – the Quayside Wetherspoons. Images: Rebecca Norfield
The Courier
arts.23
Tuesday 4 March 2014
reviews
Pic of the Week: #nclarts
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thecourieronline.co.uk/arts c2.arts@ncl.ac.uk | @courier_arts
ach week we choose the best arty Instagram pic to feature in the paper. Whether its taken on campus, on a night out or in your own house, we want your snaps!
Simply hashtag #nclarts and we’ll pick a weekly winner. Besides featuring in an award winning paper, the winning pic is worth a delicious bag of sweets too. Get instagramming folks! This week’s winning pic is ‘No Practice On’ by Instagram user bethmai
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The Stand
aving watched WitTank’s sketch bites on Russell Kane’s ‘Live at the Electric ‘ I wasn’t sure what to expect from the gig. However this show exceeded all my expectations, beyond belief and had the whole audience crying with laughter. The pure genius of the trio shone through in their innovative approach to showing public school life, with mind blowing acting skills, the ‘seemless transitions’ and hilarious set sketches. The show was by no means perfect, but their extraordinary improvisation skills came to light in the event of technical failures. Audience participation and improvisation ensures no night is the same. The show was personal and intimate, something lacking in the performances of top comedians. The public school theme was rigorously maintained, with a whole school audience photo, and school badges being handed out. With comedy becoming repetitive in nature I highly commend the trio for coming up with something innovative. It is genuinely one of the funniest works of comedy I have seen to date, WitTank are certainly ones to watch. Cinthu Vivehanathan
previews
Dishwashers
The School
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Theatre Royal
his was very nearly a great play, Morris Paynch’s ideas are brilliant, but some momentary patches of clumsy script writing and unconvincing acting were hampering. David Essex, magnificently playing head dishwasher Dressler, schools recently redundant new boy Emmett. Emmett complains his way through dishwashing and despite Dressler’s efforts to enlighten Emmett’s narrow mind, Emmett quits, regains his corporate job and returns to drunkenly insult Dressler. This play, though billed as one, is not really a comedy. If people find it funny then they’re missing the message. Dressler enjoys his typically dreaded job and though he might well be the best dishwasher in the world; he doesn’t need celebrity stardom or a huge wage in order to value it. The beauty of Dishwashers lies in its critique of how self-worth should not be dictated by society’s constructs of value. A tax lawyer is paid to find profit enhancing loopholes and a dishwasher washes dishes. This play wonderfully reminds us that money is not a sign of value and that you can’t eat your dinner off a tax loophole. Tom Tibble
MUST SEE Last
Tyne
Arcadia
yne is set to take us on a journey down this iconic river, whose history and soul is interwoven with the writers and artists of the North East. After a sell out run at Live Theatre for its 40th Birthday celebrations, Tyne will now be at the Theatre Royal for just one week. The play draws on Michael Chaplin’s stories recorded in his book, Tyne View, after he journeyed the tidal length of the river. The production also boasts a wealth of Northern writers whose works will feature and undoubtedly contribute to the essence and the atmosphere of Tyne. These names include Tom Hadaway, Julia Darling, Alan Plater and Sid Chaplin. The music in the production is inspired by the sounds of the river, whilst also featuring tracks from the homegrown Geordie superstar, Sting. This production is a mélange of the best of the North, a celebration of the men, women and children of the Tyne. Expect melancholic pride and northern soul from a production that fluidly intertwines harsh reality with a tone of sentimentality and hopefulness.
UTS’ Ruth Bader, who already has No Time for Fig Leaves from last year under her belt, tackles Arcadia, the Tom Stoppard classic, which has been dubbed ‘the greatest play of our time’ by The Independent. Set in an uncanny time-lapse between two centuries, the play’s ingenious plot mixes wonderfully with the plethora of fascinating characters. Thomasina Coverly lives in 1809, and is mathematically far beyond her time. Standing at her side at all times is her tutor, Septimus Hodge, who’s also apparently very close with Lord Byron. In the present, everyone is busy investigating something a hermit living on the grounds, the life of Byron, and the turning point in Thomasina’s life. Mysteries are revealed in the most shocking of ways. The set design is something to particularly look forward to in Arcadia. The time-lapse is presented with occasionally appearing/disappearing props, a table, and a tortoise. And as the plot unfurls time begins to blur and multiple time zones entwine. Starring Saroj Spickett as Thomasina and Aidan Flatt as Septimus, Arcadia will be one of the mustsee productions in this NUTS season. Antonia Velikova
The Table
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Northern Stage 4-6 March
unique production that had sell-out runs at both Edinburgh Fringe and London International Mime Festival in its debut year of 2011, theatre group Blind Summit now bring their award-winning play, The Table, to Northern Stage. Praised rapturously for its inventive form, The Table revolves around the life of the two-foot tall puzzled and petulant puppet, Moses. The play’s grouchy hero finds himself stranded on a table, and since that is all that Moses can be certain of in life; he proceeds to tell the story of his last twelve hours in order to find some meaning to it. How did he get there? Why is he there? Why this table? Moses’ quest is a roller-coaster. Often sidetracked by showing off his ‘running man’ impression, and even falling out with his own puppeteers, finishing his story before his table-top world collapses is set to be a challenge. This comedian come philosopher puppet might never find the definitive answer to his mystifying subsistence but Moses may still learn something about himself along the way, and so might you. Tom Tibble
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Theatre Royal 4-8 March
Desert island books My Family and Other Animals Clare Balding
Clare’s journey of sporting success and self-discovery is happy, sad, funny and serious. Riding a horse becomes a metaphor for life, you love and hate it as it brings you pleasure, pain and upset, sometimes things are just out of your control but hard work can bring great rewards. A great island read!
Aimee Vickers
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Culture Lab 7-9 March
Pillowman
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Northern Stage 4th-6th March
artin McDonagh’s award-winning play The Pillowman is the very definition of black comedy. Set in an unnamed totalitarian state, it tells the tale of fiction writer, Katurian and his mentally defective brother Michael. When the gruesome content of Katurian’s work (all bar one are stories of child murder and abuse) begins to be re-enacted in real life, he and his brother are brutally interrogated by two policemen who follow their own laws. The Irish dramatist’s infamous blithe approach to murder, mutilation and dismemberment allow for some uncomfortable laughs that emphasis the darkness at the heart of the script, but also serve to alleviate the tension in places where it might reach unbearable. The small cast and complex themes guarantee that this will be a challenging and interesting production for NUTS society, but given their unfaltering reputation it is likely that they will handle the difficulties with ease. It promises to be a compelling watch and if all goes right on the night it might well be a highlight event in the NUTS calendar. Millie Walton
This week, Laura Wotton reveals the four sporting books she’d take for company whilst stranded on a desert island
Not Out First Ball Roger Grenville Describing with comic ease the ins and outs (quite literally) of a failing cricket club, the book makes us privy to its personable members united more through their love of the sport and less through their actual capabilities on the pitch. A cricket book for even the least sportily-inclined, it’s this year’s comic must-read.
Open Andre Agassi It’s really got something for everyone. For me, I love my casual reading to be just that, casual. And trashy. Think Chick Lit. Providing insight into Agassi’s tumultuous celebrity relationship with ex-wife Brooke Shields, as well as goss on how he stole his missus Steffi Graf from a racecar driver, Open is everything I want when chilling by the beach.
Marathon Man William Goldman Babe Levy is a post-grad student but also an aspiring marathon runner. That’s about as far the connection to sport goes. Instead you should expect diamond smuggling, spy agencies, escaped Nazis, and the most horrifying trip to the dentist you’ll ever come across.
24.filmfeatures
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
Film Editors: Muneeb Hafiz and Jacob Crompton-Schreiber
Lights, camera, fiction
Editors’ Pick Can film adaptations ever be better than the books? Lauren Hickin
and Rebecca Dooley fight their respective corners
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Sporting Gold
or every great moment in the real sporting world, there is a counterpart on the screen. Every sport out there is pretty much guaranteed to have a film based around it; from curling (Men with Brooms) to arm-wrestling (Over The Top) there is something out there for every sports fan, no matter how popular the sport is. Not all are great but every once in a while a film comes along that has a truly iconic and/or emotional sporting moment, so memorable you can recall it as if you were there when it happened. Here we countdown some of our favourite sporting moments in film:
3 Quarterback Sacking in Rudy Rudy often flies under the radar in great sporting film lists but when Rudy, the loveable, determined, fearless underdog of all underdogs, straight-up nails the opposition’s 6-foot something quarterback, the crowd, of course, goes wild, but you also get goosebumps and want to jump and punch the air. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s based on a true story of epic triumph, or how Rudy is carried off the field on the shoulders of those who are now his equals, or maybe it’s just how after countless knockdowns, Rudy’s plucky spirit transports him to victory.
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s an English Lit student, part of me can’t believe that I’m writing this article, but although there are admittedly some lamentable adaptations out there, not all films with literary inspiration should be tarred with the same brush. Changing the medium of a story can be illuminating, fore-grounding aspects of the plot left more ambiguous in a novel. Moreover, a film adaptation is not intended as a word-forword translation of a novel, but as a complementary piece inspired by the original. Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons is regarded as a modern classic, but this exercise in adaptation could easily have gone wrong. Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the book upon which the film is based, is told entirely through letters. Obviously, this mode of storytelling is hardly cinematic – two hours of watching actors composing at a writing desk would not make for an interesting film. However, the film’s makers fortunately had another adaptation of Laclos’ novel to turn to for inspiration: Christopher Hampton’s stage version, created for the Royal Shakespeare Company two years earlier. Hampton’s treatment of the novel kept in many of the letter-writing motifs, specifically in the interpretation of the Cecile-Danceny subplot, but added scenes of explosive dramatic quality between Merteuil and Valmont, the adversaries and erstwhile lovers who manipulate the other characters. The film’s producers hired Hampton to adapt his own play for the screen, bringing the witty dialogue scenes and emotional pathos which had made his interpretation of the novel so successful. The element of casting also cannot be overlooked;
2 Crane Kick in The Karate Kid The infamous crane kick, delivered by Daniel-san – or Daniel Larusso (Ralph Macchio) – on Johnny in the final of the All-Valley karate tournament, is a knockout finale to this heart-warming and beloved film that teaches us that karate really isn’t about fighting at all. The wonderful Pat Morita as Mr Miyagi, an endless source of wisdom, teaches young Daniel-san the crane kick on the sunset-lit beach and nods approvingly before the KO crane kick is delivered. Despite Daniel-san having his leg broken by Johnny, he ends up having the last laugh and the bullied rises above the bully.
1 The Sitter in Mean Machine It might not be the greatest football film ever made, and, yes, it does have Danny Dyer in a significant role, but the moment Vinnie Jones’s conhero, Danny Meehan, passes the ball across the box to an inept, laughable, jelly-faced Danny Dyer to score the winning goal, is a moment to remember. Meehan, the chief, comes good after being tempted temporarily down a familiar alleyway of cowardice and deceit, and Dyer’s Billy the Limpet scores an absolute worldy from just outside the 6-yard box. The commentators are nutters and wickedly hilarious, and it’s just great entertain-
Films
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Books
t seems that directors can never just leave great books alone; they cannot resist attempting the next big film adaptation of some classic or best selling book. In fact it seems like every time you walk into a cinema there is a new poster advertising a book to film adaptation and 2014 is no different. Among the many literary to film adaptations lined up is yet another Vampire teen angst flick with Richelle Meade’s The Vampire Academy being set for the big-screen, along with what has been dubbed the ‘next Hunger Games’’, Divergent by Veronica Roth. But will they follow in the wake of previous flawed and failed literary adaptations? In book to film adaptations it is understandable that changes will need to be made, parts modified in order to better translate a possibly “slow” part of the book onto the screen. But it is all so easy to ruin a great book through bad casting and frankly bizarre decisions made by the director. The first rule of adaptation is don’t change the ending, but in My Sister’s Keeper (2009) director Nick Cassavetes decided to ignore this implicit rule, against the wishes of the books author, Jodi Picoult. In the book, Anna dies after a car accident and her kidney is used for her sister Kate, suffering from Leukaemia, who then goes into remission. However
in the internet age, casting announcements for beloved book characters can be met with outpourings of joy or outrage, and often both. In the case of Dangerous Liaisons, while the casting was not perfect (Why did anyone ever hire Keanu Reeves to play serious roles? Why?) it was very nearly so in its central love triangle. Despite lacking conventional good looks, John Malkovich exuded the libertine qualities that characterise Valmont’s actions; Michelle Pfeiffer brought to Tourvel innocence and goodness, traits which are so hard to portray convincingly, without resorting to stereotypes, whilst Glenn Close’s interpretation of Merteuil remains one of my favourite cinematic performances of all time (how she was beaten to an Oscar by Cher I shall never know). Sharon Maguire’s Bridget Jones’s Diary also partly owes its success as an adaptation to its casting. Renee Zellweger’s ungainly, clumsy Bridget held her own against Hugh Grant’s realistically slimy Daniel Cleaver and Colin Firth’s uptight but goodhearted Mark Darcy. Firth’s casting, in particular, was a stroke of luck for the film, given that he had portrayed the original Mr Darcy in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice television series. The original newspaper columns and the book by Helen Fielding which inspired the film were in fact loose modern adaptations of Pride and Prejudice.. By casting Colin Firth, and hiring screenwriter Andrew Davies (who had penned the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice), ), the film’s producers strengthened the story’s connections to one of the nation’s most beloved novels. This had the effect of both refining the plot of the characterdriven book, and adding recognisable elements for fans of both
“A cinematic adaptation can add new depths and fascinating elements to its source material”
the film completely changes this ending and after Anna’s legal battle to obtain medical emancipation, her sister Kate dies peacefully. The ending was completely tarnished and by meddling with the original ending, t h e
was a completely unnecessary addition to the plotline; the film was being forced to end too neatly and it seemed to contradict Neville’s character. But can you imagine if they’d gone with Spielberg for the first film and his idea to combine some of the books for an animated movie- I shudder to think about the train wreck that would have been. Moreover, the name change with the release of The Golden Compass (2007), an adaptation of Phillip Pullman’s masterpiece of
film incited fury in the book’s fan base. Another giant bugbear of film adaptations is when entirely new scenes and moments are added to the plot. Whilst overall Harry Potter was an extremely faithful and brilliant adaptation of the books, (likely because of the hefty input J. K Rowling had in the films), the last film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011) had quite a few WTF moments. Neville’s apparent crush and hidden love for Luna appears out of nowhere and was a shock for film-watchers and book-lovers alike. This
the novel and BBC series of Pride and Prejudice to pick up on. Therefore, whilst I enjoyed both Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Bridget Jones’s Diary as novels, they are both examples which prove that a cinematic adaptation can add new depths and fascinating elements to its source material. Lauren Hickin
“It is all so easy to ruin a great book through bad casting and frankly bizarre decisions made by the director.” Northern Lights was just one annoyance in a parade of drivel. New Line Cinema utterly destroyed this adaption, which seemed to totally ignore the darker undertones of the book and focused on making a PG friendly action film. But whilst changing the name of a book to film adaptation is aggravating, what is more frustrating is when a film adaptation uses a book title but somehow manages to lose all connections to the original book, making it seemingly unrecognisable to the books readership. I Am Legend (2007) essentially just takes the idea of the book, of a man-made virus that creates a global epidemic, and distorts the rest of the story line to suit its needs. I wouldn’t even call it adaptation; it is more just an appropriation of a title. But despite the spotted history of failed literary to film adaptations and WTF moments, it seems we readers cannot resist being hopeful, and consistently return to the cinema in the hopes that in time we will find the rare gem that is a film adaption that is better than the book. Rebecca Dooley
The Courier
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Tuesday 4 March 2014
thecourieronline.co.uk/film c2.film@ncl.ac.uk | @Courier_Film
“I never drink wine” Dracula (1931)
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Only Lovers Left Alive (15)
5
Vampires
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5
s a devoted fan of director Jim Jarmusch, The Only Lovers Left Alive gave me exactly what I wanted. This was a dead pan, stylish and languorous film, and ultimately a glorification of culture, brilliantly welded with the bleakness of Vampirism. It’s a complete reimagining of the Vampire movie; a million miles from Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula and, for a contemporary audience, probably baring more in common with a film like Drive. This film is deathly slow, which works perfectly to convey the monotony of the Vampire’s eternal lot. Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston) are 3000 years old, matured vampires who have grown out of the adolescent phase of gratuitous murder (epitomised by Mia Wasikowska as Ava, Eve’s sister) and now sustain themselves quite morally through hospital supply lines of Type-O blood. Most brilliant is John Hurt as the 16th Century playwright Christopher Marlowe reimagined as a Vampire who asserts his authorship of Shakespeare’s works (an illiterate whore whose image serves as an improvised dart board for Marlowe to try his knife-throwing accuracy at). Literary quips range from Ulysses to Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and the two lovers revel in a similarly acquired taste for music which ranges from Adam’s
own reverb-laden post-punk sounds to those of the sultry east. The lovers detest the famous, whilst cherishing the obscurity and anonymity of Adam’s own creative efforts. Swinton and Hiddleston have a brilliant, dreamy chemistry which renders their enduring love convincing, and also their contempt for the ‘zombies’ that are the unwitting and uncultured human race. The film is almost an in-joke; the contempt for societal tastes represented by the vampire characters perhaps reflecting the directors own cult of exclusiveness and shared tastes with his audience. The main characters are misfits, the plot is bare, and events unfold at a snail’s pace, the whole experience amounting to stagnation for anyone who isn’t
The Invisible Woman (12A)
A New York Winter’s Tale (12A)
30 Days of Night: Marlow
interested in the musical or literary dimension, or who denies the films stylistic claim to greatness. The films lifeblood is its culture-consciousness, and a style which is at once laconic and atmospheric and yet crammed with irony. Only Lovers Left Alive defies and reinvents genre successfully, and is a guaranteed pleasure for Jarmusch fans. Although boldly dissenting from universal tastes, this will likely quench the thirsts of many. More like this: Dead Man (1995)
Based on the three-issue miniseries, 30 Days of Night sees the fantastic Danny Huston immersing himself into the role of Marlow. Whilst keeping to the cliché of a cold, intelligent and sophisticated vampire, Huston successfully introduces the audience to a cruel, unrelenting killer.
4
Let the Right One In: Eli
Teddy McDonald
Endless Love (12A)
Lina Leandersson as Eli, an ominous young girl struggling with her inner demons as she lives a secret life, portrays a human aspect to a very dark character. We see her form an unlikely relationship with a young boy, protecting and caring for him.
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Interview with a Vampire: Louis de Pointe du Lac
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alph Fiennes directs and stars in The Invisible Woman, a relentlessly pretentious dramatisation of the affair Charles Dickens had with Ellen Ternan. It is the sort of film that your middle-class relatives have gathering dust on their shelves, still in its plastic as an ornament of their cultural refinement. The movie is the story of Charles Dickens’ (Fiennes) discovery of his muse from middle age to death, Ellen Ternan (Felicity Jones). Ellen, a young actress, obsessed to the point of deification with Dickens, arouses his interest in blatant view of his wife (Joanna Scanlan) while preparing for a performance of The Frozen Deep in Manchester and a scandalous affair is triggered. That is essentially all there is by way of plot synopsis. There is such a lack of energy in this film, fit to make it a cure for even the most violent insomnia. Fiennes and Jones have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever; any erotic contact between the two as awkward and painful to watch as an obese dog shamelessly trying to lick itself. I don’t blame Fiennes for this, it is the gormless Felicity Jones, sufferer of chronic bitch-face, who fails entirely to arouse any sort of sympathy for her plight as the woman on the side. It is a very dark day when the most erotic aspect of a film is seeing Joanna Scanlan’s naked arse. There is a saving grace to this film in the form of Kristin Scott Thomas as Ellen’s mother Frances. Of course, she’s always brilliant so there’s no surprises there. She and Scanlan may be the only characters to evoke any sort of emotional response from the audience. All in all, I’d say that this film was thoroughly pointless and I left the cinema no richer for my experience. More like this: The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) George Smith
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went to see A New York Winter’s Tale with high expectations, excited to see a lengthier version of a trailer which I had made me tear up in just 2 minutes and 35 seconds. Instead after 118 minutes rather than experiencing the desire to cry, I just felt confused. It’s set in New York (obviously), in winter, in 1916… and 2014. In 1916 Colin Farrell is Peter Lake, a common thief on the run from his former boss (Russell Crowe), who falls in love with a consumptive high society debutant Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay). However, one thing leads to another and Colin Farrell crawls out the Hudson River and roams around the modern day Big Apple, determined to save a young child battling cancer. It’s a story of miracles and destiny, angles and demons and the struggle between good and evil. But my first real issue with A Winter’s Tale is its release date. It’s a Christmas film released for a Valentine’s audience. At Christmas, all things are possible. By February 14, single and alone, things need to get a bit more real. Secondly, it’s always disappointing when a great cast come together to produce something that is far from great. While I was surprised to see Will Smith was a cast member (this was not in the trailer) I was even more surprised at just how unconvincing he was as Lucifer. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, yes, The Prince of Darkness, no. While Jessica Brown Findlay proved she had not made a grave mistake leaving Downton for Hollywood, she had to be the prettiest, most cheerful and therefore unrealistic dying girl in the world. While the individual performances from Farrell, Crowe and Jennifer Connelly were strong, it was hard for me to appreciate them, I was often just trying to figure out what was going on. More like this: The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009) Katie Smith
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ust about making back its $20,000,000 budget, Endless Love hasn’t exactly been blowing away the critics nor global audiences. With a protagonist couple that could quite easily be out of the Barbie and Ken ‘99 collection, and a storyline that deals in cliché, it is perhaps no wonder it hasn’t gone down a storm. Endless Love is a typical rom-com released on Valentine’s Day, written to either consummate the love of couples across the nation, or wreck the evening of the awkward singletons that went along to watch Alex Pettyfer (David) dramatically winning the heart of Gabriella Wilde (Jade). The film centres round a broken family member after the death of her older brother and her plight to win her father’s approval of a boy who has pined for her throughout high school. With almost every possible drama occurring within the plot directed by Shana Feste – from house fires to criminal records – the film offers an exciting and fast-moving narrative, whilst staying explicitly focused on the love story at its heart. A provocative and unreasonable father (Hugh, played by Don Murray) counterbalances the inspired and creative mother; whose passion for love is greater than what she sees in front of her: a suffocating and selfish man, grieving for his dead son and not paying attention to any family member other than Jade since. Hugh is cast as patronising and irrational, yet we still sense an attachment to him, especially as he scrambles to save his son’s things in the house fire. As in all rom-com’s, Hugh’s character gradually becomes realised, as witnessed at the climax of the film. A must see for PDA couples, otherwise I’d probably suggest you watch a horror, especially if you’re single on Valentine’s Day. More like this: Endless Love (1981) Jenny Coles
Vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac, portrayed by Brad Pitt, tells his story; a two hundred year old tale of love, inner struggles, guilt and blood. Staying true to Anne Rice’s 1976 novel, Brad Pitt’s performance of Louis managed to captivate audiences with the use of powerful dialogue and a strong story.
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Horror of Dracula: Dracula
An immensely powerful performance from Christopher Lee as Dracula helped shape the film into the classic that it is today. The perfect cocktail of frights, gore, and romance make for one of the best on-screen portrayals of Dracula to date.
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Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Dracula
Gary Oldman’s performance as Dracula was successful in terrifying audiences and keeping them engrossed in a fascinating tale, whilst challenging many of the earlier portrayals of Dracula. Gary Oldman truly revamped the image of Dracula, into a far deeper, darker and more interesting character. The fantastic acting, combined with a big budget makes Gary Oldman’s performance the best portrayal of Dracula to date. Jack Smith
26.tvhighlights
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
TV Editor: Beth Durant Deputy TV Editor: Helen Daly
TVintage
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hildren’s drama series have historically offered little to the average sports fan. In the year 2000, things looked particularly bleak: Theo Walcott’s opus T.J. and the Winning Goal was a decade away, the writer himself being 11 years old in Y2K. Just as it seemed that sports fans would be terminally disappointed in their search for something diverting and morally instructive which also featured loads of football, Hero to Zero came along.
My Mad Fat Diary hen you open a new season with a scene containing the line “I want him to go down on me for so long, he evolves gills!”, you know you’re in for a bloody good ride. Set in 1996, My Mad Fat Diary follows 17 year old, 231 pound girl, Rae (Sharon Rooney) as she makes her way through high school and college, all while struggling to find a place to reconnect and fit in after spending 4 months in a psychiatric hospital. She struggles with mental health and body image problems which she initially keeps secret from her best friend Chloe and her friends Izzy, Archie, Chop and Finn. Her down-to-earth attitude and humour keeps her grounded in their friendship group and she soon finds love in many different ways. Rae’s budding relationship with Finn (Nico Mirallegro, yes it’s incredibly hard to believe that he
Her belief that she doesn’t deserve his attention and affection due to her size and appearance has resonated with audiences around the globe, not just in the UK. US audiences in particular have been involved in creating a vibrant online following. The constant pressure on women to look a certain way and act a certain way, coupled with her mental health problems, leads to an intense few scenes where she finds it hard to cope in her new college surroundings. She begins to notice people staring and talking, proclaiming to Finn that “I’m a
4 and you’re an 11!” One of the main quirks of the show is the sublime soundtrack, a compilation of songs which weave their way through the late 90s, from Dr.Dre to Stone Roses. The time period lends itself well to the hectic teen years experienced by Rae, when the 90s were a time of change and evolution before the turn of the century. The music acts as an accompaniment to the tone and pace of the scenes, with ‘No Diggity’ by Blackstreet acting as a soundtrack to Rae’s first sexual experience with Finn, in which she describes Finn as a “sex wizard”. The brutal honesty of a TV show like My Mad Fat Diary is something which has been unduly absent from our screens for far too long. It discusses mental illness candidly, whether its through Rae’s internal dialogue or through her one-on-one sessions with her therapist Kester. It is not afraid to tackle issues such as self harm, depression, and body dysmorphia, without the fear of it coming across as patronising or preachy. I can only hope that they are awarded with another season or two. Beth Durant
Arrow
The Smoke
Moone Boy
E4, Monday 10pm
W Fetching up in the prime pre-Newsround slot, H2Z, as it was probably known at the time, was essentially Billy Elliott for millennials. However, in this instance little Billy didn’t want to dance; he wanted to make a mint playing professional football, was called Charlie, and had a curtain fringe so huge it would have been enough to get him beaten up even back then when that sort of thing was generally accepted. Also, Julie Walters was played by Michael Owen. The England striker would step out of a poster on Charlie’s wall when he was very upset about being shit at football and give him advice. This advice was mostly about being true to yourself and aiming for the stars rather than the particulars of springing the offside trap. Then there was Charlie’s dad, an ex-footballer who had his heart (and anterior cruciate ligaments) broken by injury and was left mourn over his playing days by smelling his solitary England cap out like it was an ex-wife’s dress. In my memory, he was played by ITV co-commentator Andy Townsend. Sadly, the records of who played the dad are now lost to the sands of time, but the bloke on the one YouTube clip of H2Z does look a lot like a man playing Andy Townsend in a straightto-DVD production of Ireland’s 1994 World Cup adventure, so let’s roll with it.
There’s a very different reading to be made of H2Z in which the series becomes a charter of the boy’s descent into madness spurred by his footballing shortcomings. In fact, there’s one scene which he starts talking to a collectible sticker of Michael Owen which is stuck inside the lid of his lunchbox because he’s forgotten his boots. Quite apart from the fact that he’s talking to a piece of plastic stuck to another piece of plastic upon which there is a picture of a man who could conceivably be moulded from plastic, it’s a bit rich for some kid to treat a Ballon d’Or winner as his personal Jeeves. It was awful in a lot of ways – the theme tune sounded like ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ recorded in a train toilet, for example – but H2Z was a valuable experiment in football-led TV drama from which we’ve learned a great deal. Like Laika the astro-dog’s capsule breaking up on re-entry, without it, Dream Team would’ve been sunk. Tom Nicholson
was that goth kid on Hollyoaks), the resident Ryan Gosling-esque perfect guy of college come season two, leaves her feeling inadequate and insecure in the face of new competition and judgement.
“The brutal honesty of a show like My Mad Fat Diary is something which has been unduly absent from our screens for far too long.”
Sky1, Thursday 8pm
Sky1, Tuesday 10pm
he first season of Arrow introduced the TV world to one of DC Comic’s most obscure characters, the billionaire Oliver Queen as the Green Arrow. While at first Queen appears to be a poor mans Batman, it soon becomes clear that the Arrow has more than enough charm and character to separate him from DC’s ever brooding caped crusader. Following a trend made popular by Nolan’s Batman films, Arrow goes for as grounded stories and setting as possible, with the more fantastical comic elements slowly shining through. Last season saw Oliver saving his home city ‘Starling City’ from the ruling elite and various criminal organisations, in particular the sinister ‘Undertaking’, a plan concocted by Oliver’s arch nemesis, Malcolm Merlyn, to destroy the most povertystricken areas of the city. How Oliver and his family deal with their pasts coming back to haunt them is a major theme throughout the second season. Oliver’s mother faces the death penalty for her part in the ‘Undertaking’, and Oliver himself has a far more dangerous ghost coming to haunt him. Fans of DC Comics and Arrow have a lot to look forward to this season, with more and more elements of the DC universe are slowly being incorporated, making Oliver’s world feel just that more lived in. The show itself continues to be one of the most solid and enjoyable on TV, providing increasingly better acting and stunt work. If you have yet to watch Arrow make sure to catch up for season two and follow Oliver on his quest to become the hero his city. John Cairns
ky’s new eight part drama The Smoke presents us with an inside look into the high octane, adrenaline inducing world of firefighting. Yet from the outset you know that this isn’t just a highly glamorised affair giving us that stereotypical, heroic firefighting persona. Instead we are treated to the visceral, unflinching side of this job, and the aftermath that comes when a rescue goes wrong. The claustrophobic, heart wrenching opening scenes see firefighting governor Kev Allison desperately try to save a child from a burning building, but after being attacked and with no support, the rescue goes terribly wrong. Nine months later Kev returns to work, but remains physically and psychology scarred. As the rest of his team try to navigate their own feelings about the situation whilst dealing with their personal problems, the drama is elevated by the whole questioning of who was to blame for Kev’s plight, with senior officers refusing to acknowledge the situation and police enquiries failing to find those responsible for the assault. Jamie Bamber is a strong lead, turning Kev into a highly heroic and sympathetic character trying to regain is masculinity and power, whilst the supporting cast act as a good backdrop that will hopefully develop well in the coming weeks. Sky have created a smart drama that tackles this concept in a more original way, and aside from the odd element of cliché, we are treated to a fast paced piece of television that has you invested from the start.
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Christopher Addison
Sky1, Monday 9pm
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he opening episode of the new series of Moone Boy, (a gentle family comedy about a young boy and his imaginary friend growing up in Boyle) starts in the summer of 1990 when, for the first time, the Republic of Ireland qualify for the World Cup. I desperately want to like Moone Boy. Chris O’Dowd as ever combines his great delivery of dry humour with the odd slapstick scene and all the characters are likeable, but a touch bland. The same can be said for the narrative, which seems to peter out and the writers (one of whom is O’Dowd himself) appear to be as absent minded as the parents they wrote. I think perhaps the biggest problem with this show is that it really has potential, but it seems to rely heavily on stereotypes within a family setting. There’s the career aspiring mother, the hard working father (who no matter how hard he tries he always winds up offending someone), the eldest daughter and her irritating boyfriend, the slightly gothy daughter and the youngest daughter who seems to serve very little purpose, and then there’s Martin, the child who will always be an outsider because he talks to his imaginary friend in public. Thankfully though, Martin has an irritating friend Piadraic, who serves as a comparative to normalise the Moone Family. Having said all this though, it is hard to not like the Moone family, as likeable-going-on-bland they are, and while this show won’t have you roaring with laughter, it will deliver smiles and the odd, pleasant giggle. Victoria Kaye
The Courier
featurestv.27
Tuesday 4 March 2014
Manic sweet creature
Female characters on television often fall unwillingly into categories. Lizzie Hampson is getting tired of a certain one in particular that we watch much too often on our screens
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ot so long ago, an aspiring female actress wanting to break into the big bad world of TV would have been faced with three choices. She could either play the big-breasted air-head, the shy, mousy lady who would probably transform into the big breasted woman at some point, or the stern, librarian, chastity belt-type. Stereotypes of any kind are difficult to beat, and psychologically they exist for a reason, to help us to make sense of the vast and complex world around us. But we’re not even in the 20th century anymore and gender stereotypes aren’t useful. Thankfully, as feminism grew, the stereotypes we viewed on our TV screens slowly began to shrink. We’re in an era now where in the vast majority of good quality TV these characterisations of women are pretty much extinct or are at least portrayed ironically. Yet, this doesn’t mean the end of the battle, new skewed portrayals of women have emerged and they’re dangerous, because they’re subtle. I’m talking about the vapid, sickeningly quirky and “not quite together” manic pixie dream girl (MPDG) character.
“She’s like a bag of sweets crammed full of E numbers.”
The best example I could give of this character is Jess from FOX’s comedy hit New Girl, played by Zooey Deschanel. Jess is a young, offbeat, bright and often clumsy teacher living in an apartment with a group of equally young and offbeat guys. At first glance you’d be forgiven for thinking, “great! A female TV character who hasn’t completely got her life together and is a bit weird sometimes, like me” Nope, wrong. A series later and you realise that Jess is like a bag of sweets crammed full of E numbers, colourful, palatable and refreshing at first but a few
thecourieronline.co.uk/tv c2.tv@ncl.ac.uk | @courier_tv
Whose one-liner is it anyway? BADverAlan tisement Partridge Each week we pick a quotable character that delivers us perfect one-liners. This week we take a look at Alan Patridge in The Day Today. “The atmosphere here hangs heavy, like a big smell. The smell of men together, the smell of cats’ musk.” “Are you going to wash away the stain of defeat?”
too many fistfuls and you suddenly feel like you’re going to puke. To clarify I am not dissing Zooey Deschanel, just the quietly exhausting character that was written for her. The character, to quote the shows own tagline is “adorkable” - excuse me while I vomit. No woman, or at least no woman that I have ever met, is constantly that kooky, or off the wall, at least not to the magnitude presented on TV. To be that way as consistently and to the same levels as Jess from New Girl would be exhausting and virtually impossible. In one episode to avoid a potentially awkward situation the character grabs a pillow and does “sexy things” with it…how cute and weird. In the past, girls were in danger of thinking they could either be smart or pretty. Now we sit and watch MPDG characters, chastising ourselves for
not being gawky yet still beautiful, endearingly ungraceful or socially awkward but super cute. As with old stereotypes, the way men view women is also potentially skewed, as the MPDG is a representation of somebody that doesn’t exist. It gives the message that bright, intelligent and sensitive young need this girl, this flawed yet brilliant girl, to whom the world is nothing but a place of childlike wonder, she is rarely angry and sad but when she is its sweet or she’ll say something quickwitted and brilliantly cynical which will make it all go away. Guys, I’m so sorry she doesn’t exist, but what does is exist is real women, sometimes mean, sometimes disgusting but overall brilliant. Perhaps one day we’ll see characters genuinely based on real women, but until then watch out for the MPDG, because she’s not as real as she seems.
Fuller corner light
“1500 metres…and not a lot happening, quite unremarkable really – oh good, someone’s fallen!” “Now, self-defence is not just about punching someone repeatedly in the face until they’re unconscious, is it?” “TWAT! That was liquid football!” “Just a quick look at the betting: Onion Terror 2-1 favourite, 7-4 Massive Bereavement, and 100-30 Trust Me I’m A Stomach, all the rest 3-1 bar.” “The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding in this case, is a football. Oof! Eat my goal! Goalie has got football pie all over his shirt!” “Seve Ballesteros. ‘The Bullfighter’, I call him, even though technically, he’s a professional golfer.”
Antonia Velikova takes a look through showrunner Brian Fuller’s impressive back catalogue of shows and asks why they all finished a few seasons too soon for our liking
“Ironic really to think that I had a Bob Sleigh in my class at school, a boy who had no interest in the sport whatsoever.”
he facts are these: Dead Like Me, Waterfalls, and Pushing Daisies ran a collective 3 years, 9 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 6 hours, 58 minutes, and 32 seconds. They were all cancelled too soon. However, for the joy of all of us Brian Fuller geeks, Hannibal is going strong, returning for another run on February 28, to satisfy all of us fans hungry for the next bite. It’s obvious now that a Brian Fuller article cannot progress without cheesy cannibal puns, so I shan’t try to escape them. The new season promises to be all kinds of tasty, with teasers and trailers basically taking over the internet. Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy face each other on different sides of the (dinner) table this time, and we’re definitely
a fanbase managed to develop so quickly that FOX had to get over themselves and release the thirteen filmed episodes on DVD. It would seem that the audiences’ appetite for the Fullerverse is endless.
“No cats here of course, the groundsmen are quite strict about not letting cats onto this course.”
“All of Fuller’s shows have a certain charm to them.”
“Well, whilst driving like she was may be big and clever on the rally track, it certainly isn’t on a housing estate.”
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looking forward to see what they have in store. It’s definitely worth exploring into Bryan Fuller’s earlier creative endeavours. Waterfalls and Dead Like Me weren’t particularly fortunate ones. Although his creative contribution to both has been received well by the critics, Fuller departed after the fifth episode of the first season of Dead Like Me, citing creative differences. Although the show kept running for two seasons, it still lost its spirit and endearing quirkiness when Fuller was no longer involved with it. Wonderfalls, although with more potential, was quickly dropped after only four episodes with FOX. Apparently they also talked Bryan Fuller’s ear off over the one lesbian kiss on the show. Despite that,
And then along came Pushing Daisies. Hitting the screens in 2007 on ABC, it seemed to be the show Fuller had always wanted to write but never really got around to doing it. The story of the charmingly awkward pie-maker and the equally quirky deadbut-not-quite girl became a phenomenon. And very rightly so – rarely has there been a story so simply and yet so vividly told, in an almost fairytale-esque manner. And naturally, after the ABC cancelled it just two seasons later due to Writer’s Guild strikes, the fans started rallying. The muchloved dramedy has a devoted fanbase still. And, apparently, they might be in for a treat. Fuller has hinted recently that plans for a Pushing Daisies revival might be on the go. Be it musical or movie, no one knows (or cares, I believe), yet Fuller believes that he’ll most likely get most of the original cast to return, featuring names like Lee Pace, Anna Friel, and Kristen Chenoweth. All of Fuller’s shows have a certain charm to them – you can tell them by a mile. Not to mention the tiny nods between the shows that serve to create what we know as the Fullerverse: see the Happy Time Temp Agency, the Muffin Buffalo, Lil’ Ivey’s, and other tiny details well familiar to us Fullergeeks. One thing’s for sure – Bryan Fuller has things going for him. We’re all waiting to see what he’ll serve us next.
“Hit him! Hit him!” “He boings down, up in the air, doubleback-twister, and comes down, BANGS his head on the board and in. Lovely, the judges surely will give him high marks for that.” “Novelty Bobble on the inside, Novelty Bobble followed by Immaculate Pasta, Christ’s Chin coming up on the inside, followed by Abba the Horse and Alf Ramsey’s Porn Dungeon.”
Check us out online at thecourieronline.co.uk/tv
28.music
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
Music Editors: Kate Bennett and Ian Mason
RAGE
Oxymoron Schoolboy Q
against the
ROUTINE
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Will Ibbott looks back in anger at the British infatuation with Oasis
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henever I have to undergo the misfortune of hearing another human being wax lyrical about Oasis, I seriously wonder what went wrong somewhere along the line in the annals of great British rock. Someone has yet to sit down and explain it all to me. Someone has yet to tell me what their actual redeeming features are. In my 15 years of general awareness of their existence, my estimation of them has amounted to little more than a band of riotous louts who turn out second-rate rock ‘n’ roll, with haircuts on the same sartorial plain as EastEnders’ Dot Cotton. I know I’m signing my own death warrant here, but someone, please, explain it all to me. Of course, I’ve constructed a few theories of my own to help me understand why Oasis continue to receive a reputation that is well beyond their capacities. One of them is that they’re appreciated by people who don’t really like music all that much, a cop out for those without the will to search for more arresting stuff. The other one is that there’s an Emperor’s New Clothes complex at work here – largely upheld by the music press. If the NME’s adulation of Liam Gallagher’s Beady Eye last summer was anything to go by, wherein his latest album was awarded a generous 7/10 (while the magazine viciously slammed newcomer Tom Odell with a biting zero), it’s not hard to understand why the band became so saturated in the first place.
“Riotous louts with haircuts on the same sartorial plain as Dot Cotton”
Finally, Oasis are an easy musical option in any given situation where a room full of many people are wildly frothing drunk. How many of you managed to make it through Freshers’ Week without having to listen to ‘Wonderwall’? I certainly didn’t. Speaks volumes, really. Because, when you strip down the media attention to the Gallagher brothers’ wayward, boorish antics, there’s not that much that marks Oasis out as leaders of the pack. People often talk about the Battle of Britpop between them and Blur and that it’s all predicated on where you come from in the country: bollocks to that one, I say. Blur are simply better. Alright, so people would expect me to say that, coming from the south, but that really doesn’t hold any sway in my opinion-forming. As for their hometown, the musical metropolis of Manchester, there are far more deserving bands to represent the place. What about The Smiths? Joy Division? New Order? The Stone Roses? I could go on. If you heartily disagree with me and would like to precisely explain to me what makes Oasis jolly smashing and why I’m totally misguided and wrong: please, get in touch. I’m all ears.
uck rap. My daddy a gangsta.” This is the opening line of Schoolboy Q’s Oxymoron, spoken by his young daughter, and it pretty much sets up the theme for the entire album. Q’s album is the second major studio album to be released by a member of Black Hippy, the hip-hop group containing Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock and Ab-Soul, as well as Q himself, and follows similar themes to Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city whilst still remaining original and unique. The title refers to the oxymoron within Q’s life, in which his history as a member of the Hoover Crips, selling prescription drugs, marijuana and crack cocaine, was an attempt at making the money needed to provide a better life for his daughter.
“An ambitious attempt at reconciling his gang history, family life and rap career” Q assembles a great selection of artists to accompany him on the album. Jay Rock, himself a former gang member, joins Q on the second track of the album ‘Los Awesome’, in which gratuitous gang-related lyrics almost mask the subtle commentary on the tragedy of life as a gang member in Los Angeles. Kendrick Lamar delivers a verse of the quality that has come to be expected of him on ‘Collard Greens’, one of the more upbeat songs on the album; Tyler, the Creator and Kurupt accompany Q on ‘The Purge’, which brings together the different eras of West Coast hip-hop over a beat that’s instantly recognisable as Tyler-produced, very reminiscent of Odd Future. Tyler’s hook sits perfectly on the eerie beat, whilst the topic of Q and Kurupt’s verses creates a song that is dark and
unnerving but perfect for the album. Oxymoron deals with multiple themes, from tracks like ‘Gangsta’ and ‘Los Awesome’ detailing Q’s gang history, to melancholic songs such as ‘Prescription-Oxymoron’, which covers his addiction to prescription drugs and the effect that it has had on him and his family: “My daughter calls, I press ignore”. Q’s daughter appears again on this song, attempting to wake her father who is comatose from prescription drugs. The contrast created between the bravado in some songs and the stark reality in others serves to accentuate the themes in both; the overall impression created in Q’s lyrics is his brutal honesty. The entire album is an ambitious attempt at reconciling the different aspects of his life, gang history, drug addiction, family life, and flourishing rap career. The final three songs on the album deal with the effects of his rap career. Closing track ‘Man of the Year’, like ‘Collard Greens’, is one of the more upbeat songs on the album and provides a great end to it. The lyrics show the extent to which Q has come: no longer a gang member, he aims to take the crown from Kendrick and be the eponymous ‘Man of the Year’. The success of Oxymoron is the diversity that Q puts into the album, whilst still keeping a consistent theme in which no song feels out of place. Q conveys a range of emotions across Oxymoron, contrasting crushing depression with unbridled joy. It is in this that Schoolboy Q creates a work of art which deserves the accolades it will surely receive. Recommended download: ‘Los Awesome’
Eagulls
Declan McCann
Kendrick Lamar good kid, M.A.A.D. city
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ellow Black Hippy member Kendrick Lamar’s autobiographical 2012 album, sees Lamar navigating his difficult surroundings, deftly spinning his experiences and acquaintances into one of the best hip-hop records of recent years.
We Are Scientists
Real Estate
Eagulls
If you like this, try ...
Atlas
TV En Français
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Recommended download: ‘Nerve Endings’
Recommended download: ‘The Bend’
Recommended download: ‘Make It Easy’
hile there’s definitely been a buzz about Leeds’ five-piece Eagulls since they formed in 2010, it’s been the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 that’s seen their audacious aural assault hit the big time. With Steve Lamacq naming them as his new favourite band of last year and an unforgettable live performance of ‘Possessed’ on The Late Show with David Letterman in front of the one and only Bill Murray, the year can only usher in more success with the release of their eponymous debut album. Those who prefer their guitar pop jangly and their band members resembling cute jumperwearing indie boys with nice haircuts à la Orlando Weeks may want to step away. All ten tracks on the album offer nothing but gnarly, grungy post-punk, with a smattering of brutal psychedelia rearing its head in the midst of a wall of feedback, bass, and anger. Eagulls is the perfect dish in the banquet of loud and heavy alternative rock I’m currently feasting on, preceded by Drenge, The Wytches, and Savages. Opener ‘Nerve Endings’ channels the disdain of Howard Devoto and Magazine, ‘Possessed’ comes out of the speakers at you like the bastard lovechild of Kevin Shields and Joe Strummer after a night of sordid punk passion, and closer ‘Soulless Youth’ shares the sneer of Public Image Ltd during their ‘Metal Box’ period. If you’re looking for an album to chill and study to, Moon Safari this ain’t. If you’re looking for an album to aggressively smash up your bedroom to whilst smearing your makeup all over your face and screaming “FUCK YOU SOCIETY”, this is perfect.
Jamie Shepherd
t’s only after you place your thousand-strong song collection on your music player of choice and start shuffling through it that you notice the few artists with a truly unique sound. The artists whose songs continue to play in your head long after you’ve stopped listening. Real Estate are a perfect example of such an artist. The surf-rock act made an excellent debut with their eponymous album in 2009. Their track ‘Suburban Dogs’ is an essential favourite of mine, its soothing sound placing me in a Sunday morning nirvana every time I hear it. Atlas follows their 2011 sophomore release Days, its ten songs flowing seamlessly from one to another. The album kicks off with ‘Had to Hear’, a haunting song that takes us back to a care-free time and place with its sense of nostalgia. Eventually, we arrive at a trio of delights starting with the instrumental ‘April’s Song’; its perfect guitar-strumming seeming to take us on a journey through a story, despite the lack of words. This is followed by the beautiful track ‘The Bend’, its easy-listening nature extended into following song ‘Crime’. The real reason behind the joy of listening to Atlas is the clarity brought by singer Martin Courtney, whose voice is never locked into a competitive battle with the instruments as with many overachieving modern debutantes. The dreamy, poignant sounds of Real Estate continue to bring pleasure. Now, excuse me, while I sit back and relisten to this album - close my eyes and imagine once again drifting slowly on the calm waves near an American coastline.
Emad Ahmed
rom the creators of ‘00s hits ‘The Great Escape’ and ‘Nobody Moves, Nobody Gets Hurt’ comes new album TV En Français, which, unsurprisingly, is almost exactly the same as its predecessors. Three-piece bands are always at a bit of a disadvantage from the off, because there will always be a loss of sound without that great big rhythm guitar riff. Those who are lucky enough to overcome this problem and become huge, such as the likes of Green Day and Muse, have an equally huge sound behind them - Muse’s sci-fi rock makes them stand out. However, We Are Scientists seem to just be a bit too lightweight for their songs to challenge for the title of Best Threesome. There are enjoyable moments on Tv En Français, such as lead single ‘Make It Easy’, a ballad of love and loss which, when listened to acoustically, almost manages to bring a tear to the eye. However, the album version is much the same as the poprock-don’t-quite-know-what-genre-they’re-goingfor that we’ve seen on albums past. Fine, whatever works for them, but it’s not like they’ve been ripping up the charts recently is it? The surprise hit of the album could be ‘Dumb Luck’, which sounds a bit The Angry Mob-era Kaiser Chiefs vs The Coral’s ‘Dreaming Of You’. It also has quite a fun video, which is never a bad thing. All in all, TV En Français is another solid effort from a band that haven’t really been popular since 2005 and only have two songs that anyone knows. Keep trying, lads, I’m sure one your ship will come in. For now though, back to the nonexistent drawing board you go.
Josh Nicholson
The Courier
music.29
Tuesday 4 March 2014
thecourieronline.co.uk/music c2.music@ncl.ac.uk | @courier_music
LECTURAL HEALING
SceNE: Venues
Each week we take a closer look at a different spot in Newcastle’s music scene. This week: The Star & Shadow Cinema
Kate Bennett (3rd year English Literature) swapped albums with her creative writing tutor Alex Lockwood; here’s how they got on
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ake a little step outside of the student bubble that is Jesmond and the City Centre and you’ll find that Newcastle has a few tasty little surprises off the beaten track. Just one Metro stop away from Monument is Manors, which is the gateway to the realm of the Ouseburn Valley. Some may say this is Newcastle’s considerably more desolate equivalent of Camden, due to its high proportion of hipster-inhabited boozers such as The Tanners, The Tyne, and the Cluny, coffee roasters in Ouseburn Coffee, and galleries such as The Mushroom Works. While most of the boozers double as pretty dependable gig venues themselves, it is the Star and Shadow Cinema at the top of Stepney Bank that is the most versatile arts space the valley has to offer. Like the name suggests, a 66-seat cinema auditorium is the main attraction, which showcases the stuff that even the Tyneside Cinema would consider a bit leftfield - with screenings of almost anything from the best in under the radar international cinema (particularly Latin American cinema in collaboration with Newcastle University’s very own Americas Research Group), feminist, gay and lesbian film festivals, home-made and locally
Alex on Girls Names’ The New Life (2013) Had you heard the album before? No - never heard of the band. First impressions of the album: I’ve always liked music that uses the organ or synth to hold produced amateur shorts, and even the odd bit of classic cinema (Thursday 13th March, get your tickets fast for a chance to see and the start of a Woody Allen series). While it may be a cinema by name, it’s not all about the silver screen as the cinema also doubles up as not only a pop-up vegan café and an exhibition space but also a mighty fine club and gig venue.
“I don’t think there is anywhere in Newcastle that can match its sheer diversity of programming”
Poke, Newcastle’s alternative to the plastic Pink Triangle, has found its spiritual home here while acts such as the inimitable Horse Meat Disco have been known to fill the place with shirtless bears dancing energetically to forgotten disco rarities (and by bears I am NOT referring to the type you buy children to cuddle). Upcoming gigs here range from ‘80s post-punkers in the form of ex-Icicle
Works frontman Ian McNabb on the 15th March, to wholesome folky goodness in the form of Ceylan Hay on the 28th, to avant-garde electronica in the form of The Space Lady on 10th April - and, of course, the venue hosts the inevitably grungey and raucous annual Evolution Emerging showcase towards the end of May. Although the Star and Shadow is an entirely volunteer-led enterprise, I don’t think there is anywhere in Newcastle that can match its sheer diversity of programming. Directions: Walk: Follow New Bridge Street out of town towards Byker and you’ll find it just opposite The Tanners at the top of Stepney Bank. Buses: Take any of the buses numbered 12, 22, 39, 40, 62 & 63 and get off at the New Bridge Street stop or just say The Tanners - it’s literally just opposite the boozer. Metro: Get off at Manors, turn right out of the station and head towards Byker, you’ll come to The Tanners - like I said, opposite the boozer. Jamie Shepherd
They think it’s all Hova... it is now Ian Mason and Kate Bennett take a jog through music and sport’s cringiest crossovers World In Motion
John Barnes rapping, Peter Beardsley looking like he’d rather be at home watching Crystal Maze, Chris Waddle’s mullet flowing majestically in his slipstream like a fabric offcut from a brown velour three-piece suite, and po-faced synth-maestros New Order swaying about awkwardly in front of a council estate while Keith Allen gurns in the background for no apparent reason, other than he’s Keith Allen and it’s 1990. It’s basically a scene from the mind of Shaun Ryder on one of his weirder ecstasy jaunts, and this is why it’s the greatest sportand-music moment of all time. All together now: “ Yo u ’ v e got to hold and give, but do it at the right time...”
Take Me Out To The Ballgame
Ozzy Osbourne is well known for associating with small, winged furry rodents, but less evident is the Godfather of Heavy Metal’s enthusiasm for bats of the b as eb a l l var iety.
With Sharon by his side in the role of screeching hype-woman, Osbourne serenaded crowd and players alike at a Chicago Cubs game with what can only be described as the most inebriated, incoherent version of the baseball classic ever performed. It’s difficult to really tell whether he knew the words or not; making any of them out is practically impossible. Trust us, YouTube is your friend.
In West Philadelphia Born and Raised...
...At The 76ers is where he spends most of his days. That’s right, Big Willy and Jada Pinkett-Smith are part owners of their hometown ball team. Rappers don’t half love their basketball: Elastoplast enthusiast Nelly has a stake in the Chicago Bobcats, and Jay Z is currently ploughing Blue Ivy’s inheritance into the Brooklyn Nets. Then, of course, there’s Shaquille O’Neal’s mid-’90s rap career, which comprised tracks such as ‘Boom!’, ‘(I Know I Got) Skillz’ and ‘Psycho Rap (Interlude)’.
Kickin’ Supreme
The United States probably thought they were onto a winner when they got Diana Ross in for the opening ceremony of the 1994 World Cup; unfortunately the Queen Supreme literally missed a sitter. Bounding across the pitch in a bangin’ red power suit, belting ‘I’m Comin’ Out’ to an adoring audience of millions, Ross takes a run up from a couple of metres inside of the box and fails spectacularly to get it anywhere near the goal mouth. Comedy gold.
Pecs-y and He Knows It
Olympian diver, prime time television presenter, and moves that would make Mick Jagger blush. Tom teamed up with his Olympic pals to lip sync along to the LMFAO hit while twerking in the itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny swimming trunks he’s made his trademark. He isn’t shy, but with abs like his who can blame him?
It’s a Knock-Out
They may be bruisers in the ring, but boxing superstars Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao have each released albums of uber-drippy Enrique Iglesias-style Latino ballads, in a pop culture crossover that’s about as unexpected as Theo Walcott and Jack Wilshere announcing they’ve formed a black metal band called Arsenal Of Satan in their spare time. De La Hoya’s single ‘Run To Me’ is guaranteed to send you off to sleep, and just watching Pacquiao serenade a roomful of people with his Filipino cover of ‘Sometimes When We Touch’ makes all females present forget about his titles in eight separate weight divisions and want to pinch his chubby little cheeks.
Hoddle & Waddle
The 1980s are a source of embarrassment to football fans for many reasons: the mullets, the hooliganism, the porn-star moustaches. Much of the era’s shame, though, can be traced directly back to Chris Waddle and Glenn Hoddle’s 1987 single ‘Diamond Lights’. Waddle claims the track came about after a karaoke appearance the duo made at the annual Budget Car Rental Awards. (It was a different era, it really was.) However it happened, this moody synth-based power-ballad is simultaneously one of the greatest and worst things that has ever happened in pop music. Follow-up single ‘It’s Goodbye’ bombed and effectively put an end to Hoddle & Waddle’s pleasingly-named but ultimately misguided music career in a storm of turquoise nylon bomber jackets and excruciating lip-syncing.
long epic notes over the whole work, so I immediately warmed to The New Life. They reminded me of an updated version of Toronto’s Organ. The album made me think of a nightclub scene in a ‘90s film I can’t recall, slightly futuristic, dark, but just on the right side of despair (they get out alive!). The whole album leans on that echoic quality, drawing you into the experience - and it was good to listen to the album in a sitting, rather than individual songs. Not knowing the band I was expecting a female lead vocal, but was happily surprised by the quality and richness of Cathal Cully’s voice. The only criticism is that some of the songs sound a little too similar - I would have liked to have seen them really push the ‘story’ of the sound found in ‘Drawing Lines’ and ‘Olympia’ a little longer and further. Rating out of 5? 4
Kate on Violent Femmes’ eponymous album (1983) Had you heard the album before? I’d heard of the band, and I knew ‘Blister in the Sun’ (because I don’t live under a rock), but I wasn’t familiar with anything else by them.
First impressions: If I didn’t know this album had come out in 1983 I would have said it was from the early 90s. It has this slightly naïve feel about it that a lot of American bands from that period had, such as Pavement, Weezer and Pixies, and frontman Gordon Gano’s nasal, almost unhinged vocals must have informed Black Francis’ singing. In a nutshell I’d describe it as ‘Pixies go country’, except for closing track ‘Good Feeling’, which is pure Velvet Underground. I don’t massively go in for this kind of stripped-down folksy music, however lo-fi and noisy it might be, and a lot of the tracks just didn’t really stand out to me. I did enjoy ‘Prove My Love’, though, as well as the obvious ‘Blister in the Sun’. Marks out of 5: 3. I can see that it’s a very influential album and ahead of its time, but it’s not something I’d automatically reach for.
For gig reviews, interviews and more exclusive web features, visit us online at thecourieronline.co.uk/music
30.musicfeature
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
Award of Damocles
Following a particularly dodgy season for the BRITs and the Grammys, Culture Editor Sam Summers wonders why the film gongs always seem so much more on point than those in music
A
s the last tiny golden man changes hands and the last hirsute gambling addict mourns the 50 quid he put on Philomena, the awards season draws to a close. For another six or so months the world can relax and allow itself to passively consume works of art without fretting over whether or not Emma Thompson’s impersonation of a piles victim will warrant the allocation of a shiny disembodied face. Absurd as it is, I bloody love awards season. Once you get into it, it’s an endlessly enjoyable yearly chance to flaunt your critical faculties, get wrapped up in guessing games and, by and large, see some deserving artists recognised for t h e i r work.
You’ ll notice that none of this applies to the music awards. Unlike the BAFTAs and the Oscars, the BRITs and the Grammys refusing to conform to elect any winners that would betray the voters’ tastes or motives, let alone reflect the quality of the music. While it’s hard to argue with this year’s Best Album winners, the nominees were hit and miss to say the least. More than that, the list of past winners includes more flashes in more pans than an exhibition of night-time cookware photography, and even less worthwhile art. In just the last ten years the BRITs have handed Best Album to The Darkness, Keane, and walking Pointless answer Duffy. In 2008, the Grammy went to a Joni Mitchell tribute record, somehow beating out masterworks by Kanye West and Amy Winehouse. How does this keep happening? How do the music awards remain so out of sync with the critical consensus while their cinematic equivalents maintain a reputation for awarding great art? The discrepancy is baffling. By my count, in the last ten years the Best Picture winners at the Oscars and the BAFTAs have had a tight/a’ight/shite ratio of 6:3:1 and 5:4:1, respectively. Compare that to the winners of Best Album at the Grammys, with a ratio of 1:2:7, and Best British Album at the BRITs, with a ratio of 1:5:4. OK, granted, I made those statistics up, and yes, the quality of art is largely
subjective, but come on. In 2010, Taylor Swift took the Grammy, beating a group of nominees that included the Dave Matthews Band, that one terrible Beyoncé album, and The Black Eyed Goddamn Peas. That a record featuring ‘Imma Be’ was ever considered the best anything of any given period of time is proof if proof were needed that these awards are more than a bit removed from any actual person’s concept of quality or common decency.
“These awards are more than a bit removed from any actual person’s concept of quality”
That being said, I brought some actual stats along to try and quantify the quality of the art being awarded at these ceremonies. Metacritic, a site which collates critical opinions, publishes a cumulative list of albums featured on publications’ end of year top ten lists, giving us some idea of what people who are paid money for their opinions on this sort of thing think are the best films and albums of the year. Four of this year’s five BAFTA nominees for best film appeared in Metacritic’s top 20, and eight of the Oscars’ nine, the only exception on either list being the oft-overlooked Philomena. Comparatively, only two of the Grammy’s best album nominees made the critics’ top 20, and three of the BRITs’. Repeating the test for the last few years brought similar results; the Oscars and The BAFTAs rarely give nods to more than one film outside the Metacritic top 20, while the BRITs and the Grammys usually struggle to nominate more than two top rated albums. Critical opinion is far from a definitive gauge of quality, but it’s the closest thing we’ve got, and the gulf between the film and music awards when it comes to reflecting this consensus is so wide that we need sit down and ask ourselves what the bloody hell is going on. Part of the problem is down to the nomination processes themselves, with specific rules and regulations in place at the BRITs and the Grammys which prevent certain artists from being nominated, often deliberately so. You might, for example, have been wondering how songs like One Direction’s ‘One Way Or Another’ end up getting nods for British Single of the Year. ‘One Way Or Another’ wasn’t even the best One Direction single of the year, and that is far from a crowded field. Well, it turns out that the singles nominations are based entirely on sales and airplay, meaning that essentially the year’s ten most popular songs make up the category. Now, obviously popularity doesn’t preclude quality, but it doesn’t ensure it either. This system works for precisely nobody bar One Direction, as it blocks out not only incredible, just-under-the-radar singles like Chvrches’ ‘The Mother We Share’ and AlunaGeorge’s ‘Attracting Flies’, but also BRITs golden boys Arctic Monkeys, whose ‘Do I Wanna Know’ didn’t get a look in. When a ceremony that stopped just short of broadcasting the live crucifixion and resurrection of Alex Turner couldn’t even recognise a decent guitar riff if it wanted to, it might be time to scrap this rule and just nominate, you know, the best British singles. If the BAFTAs worked this way, Despicable Me 2 would have won Best Film and 12 Years A Slave would have been sitting on a big fat fuck all.
“Popularity doesn’t preclude quality, but it doesn’t ensure it either”
While the Grammys don’t outwardly subscribe to a system this stupidly exclusionary, they do have a couple of dodgy rules. The Nomination Review Board is a shady committee of unknown individuals — but let’s be honest, Macklemore is probably one of them — whose job it is to wait for the nominations to come in, then swap them around to ensure there’s enough big stars in the major categories to put on a decent TV show. Hopefully that instantly allays any doubts as to how the Black Eyed Peas got nominated, not to mention such luminaries as Katy Perry and Ne-Yo, but we can probably
also thank them for getting critically adored artists like Kendrick Lamar and Frank Ocean onto the list, since those guys somehow seem slightly out of the Academy’s field of vision. Despite being about as democratic as a season of Russia’s Got Talent featuring Vladimir Putin’s topless dressage revue, the Nominations Revue Board can be used for good as well as evil. No, the key factor at play here is likely the support offered to independent studios and visionary artists by the film industry. It’s well known that it takes deep pockets to run an awards campaign, and a certain level of visibility for a work to even be worth submitting. This is true of both cinematic and musical ceremonies, but the difference is that the artists and studios behind the films themselves rarely have to front that bill. Microbudget awards hopefuls like Philomena and Nebraska have as much chance of getting nominated as Gravity because they have the backing of big name distributors like the Weinsteins and Paramount Vantage, but there are few such bodies in place to elevate lesser-known musicians. Again, just because something’s obscure it doesn’t make it good, but there’s a massive body of music without the money or name recognition to compete, everybody from cult acts all the way to almost-stars like Janelle Monae and Haim are completely shut out. With so much music unable to bust the requisite amount of blocks, it makes sense that a huge chunk of the best albums are missing out. In the film world, major studios lend support to many of the best indie films, ensuring none of them are completely excluded. Indie bands, meanwhile, just have to sit back and hope that this is the year the academy decides to realise they exist.
“Indie bands just have to hope that the academy realises they exist” While the BRIT and Grammy bosses haven’t quite figured out exactly where they’re going wrong, they do know something’s up. While the film awards are respected barometers of excellence which send the world into a collective tizzy for months at a time, the Grammys have been a national joke in America at least since they gave an award to Homer Simpson, and probably for as long as they’ve existed. The BRITs, meanwhile, are largely known for their relentless annual balls-ups, from the KLF’s machine gun assault and Jarvis Cocker’s waggling arse to Adele’s truncated speech and James Corden’s delightful rape jokes. BRITs chairman and part-time scarecrow Christian Tattersfield recently told The Guardian that he aims to ‘stop the mayhem’ and turn the night into ‘an important event of gravitas, rather than just a shoddy knees up’. He seems to think the issue is that recent ceremonies ‘lacked superstars’, but the reason the event doesn’t have the weight of the BAFTAs has more to do with their complete apathy when it comes to who gets what. If you want your awards to be taken more seriously, you need to start giving them to people who fucking deserve it. One way, or another.
Charts of gold
Percentage of Best Picture/Album nominees appearing in the Metacritic Top 20
BRITs won by Robbie Williams:
17
Global Success BRITs won by One Direction
BAFTAs won by anybody:
Global Success BRITs won by anybody else
8
The Courier
featuremusic.31
Tuesday 4 March 2014
‘Straight’ outta Compton
After Russia and Uganda’s recent anti-gay legislation and February’s musicthemed LGBT History month, Jamie Shepherd discusses homophobia in hip-hop nyone who follows the news will be more reppin’ the fight for equality, surely his own sexual My Militia (Nas Gave Me A Perm)’, where she Frank Ocean than aware of the current anti-gay propapractices shouldn’t be brought into it? This declara- slithers along the ground and dances provocatively
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ganda legislation in Russia and the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in the Ugandan Parliament. While events such as this are hot topics in the political and media spheres, the political and the cultural often overlap: February is LGBT History Month, and this year’s theme was music. While a lot of time is devoted to tackling homophobia on football terraces and the lack of high-profile gay athletes, the music industry generally avoids this sort of scrutiny: in hip-hop, a hugely popular and lucrative genre of music, homophobia has been openly instigated for many years without widespread condemnation. Unfortunately it is only in recent years that this has become a noticeable topic for discussion.
“Hip-hop was shaped by gay subcultures”
The whole idea that hip-hop as a cultural form can be homophobic is problematic in that the very early stages of it were shaped by gay subcultures. Lots of classic early hip-hop releases utilised hooks lifted straight from disco tracks - and let’s face it, the association with disco and hedonistic, gay New York in the 1970s is pretty inescapable. The Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’ sampled Chic (whose frontman Nile Rodgers recently appeared on a Channel 4 documentary exploring the influence of gay culture on the music industry), and A Tribe Called Quest’s ‘Can I Kick It?’ samples Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wildside’ - a song that unashamedly celebrates gay prostitution and transvestitism. It was not until gangsta rap that the music took on an aggressively sexual tone. Huge artists like 2pac, 50 Cent, Kanye, Jay-Z and Eminem have all dropped the F-bomb (no, not fuck) at some point, expressing equating masculine weakness with homosexuality and therefore tainting homosexuality as undesirable.
The event that put this issue in the limelight was the revelation in 2012 that Frank Ocean’s first real love was a man (itself slightly ironic, as fellow Odd Future member Tyler, The Creator has made blatant homophobic comments). Many people were quick to hail him as the first gay musician in hiphop - but Frank Ocean has never said that he is in fact gay. In the past he has discussed his feelings for another man and the heartbreak upon discovering they were unrequited, but has been incredibly careful not to identify with a specific sexual identity. Not once are the words homosexual, gay, bisexual, or any other designation used to describe his attraction, and if he hadn’t actually listed the gender of the object of his affection, the post could have read as an ode to a failed romance by a person of any sexual orientation. This is be because being positioned as a gay role model in a homophobic industry can have pretty risky repercussions for a career, as shown in T-Pain’s interview on Vlad TV. T-Pain defends Ocean from his detractors and criticises the prevalence of homophobia in the hip-hop industry as a whole, but also makes the dismaying claim “I know n*ggas that will not do a song with Frank Ocean just because he [is] gay”. He claims that while radio and music channels are becoming more gayfriendly, this prejudice against Ocean proves that urban music is less than friendly for queer artists.
Patronising? In terms of radio-friendly, LGBT related music you have to take a look at Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ single ‘Same Love’ and the controversy surrounding it to understand how difficult the relationship between queer culture and hip-hop culture is. On the surface the song is a passionate rallying cry for equality, reflecting Macklemore’s own views that misogyny and homophobia seem to be “the two acceptable means of oppression in hip-hop”; however, I feel that he’s missed the mark a little. The song is undoubtedly euphoric and pro-gay marriage, but is problematic in its preaching. Macklemore feels that it’s prudent to assert his heterosexuality in the track, rather than leave his sexual orientation undefined - if he really was
tion of straightness can be construed as a product of the hip-hop’s homophobia - Macklemore defending himself from accusations that he himself is gay. His stance could also be seen as patronising, a white heterosexual intrusion into a predominantly black culture speaking for or even inadvertently silencing the voices of an increasingly growing LGBT collective of black musicians.
‘Queer rap’
As with everything related to gender and sexual identity, the media naturally had to come up with labels for this scene of music with terms like ‘ h o m o - h o p’ and ‘queer hip-hop’ becoming umbrella terms for sexual identitybased urban music. This creates even more difficulties in ascertaining a queer voice in the hip-hop industry, as the broad spectrum of musicians that fall into this category make an incredibly diverse range of music.
“Macklemore has missed the mark” Cakes Da Killa is a gay rapper who shares stereotypical traits of many gay men, but his music is pretty conventional and not particularly boundary pushing (although it is refreshing to know that a man can be just as sassy as Lil’ Kim if he wants to be). In comparison, Mykki Blanco is a transgendered artist who makes some of the weirdest and most terrifying music out there (I guarantee you’ll shit yourself at her video for ‘Join
with a dead squid). Le1f, another one of Macklemore’s critics, creates the type of alternative hip-hop you’d expect from the more chilled and alternative side of hip-hop, but also vogues in his videos like he’s at a Harlem Drag Ball. While Le1f is clearly influenced by the ‘vogue battles’ shown in Jennie Livingstone’s documentary Paris is Burning, Burning so is another rapper who has courted homophobia-related controversy. Azealia Banks claims that this is one of her favourite films and used quotes from it on the song ‘Fierce’, but at the same time has a penchant for the word “f*ggot”, aiming it at people and organisations such as A$AP Rocky, Perez Hilton, and GLAAD. Banks’ incorporation of gay culture into her art seems hypocritical and appropriative when considering her use of a homophobic slur.
“Frank Ocean has been careful not to identify as gay” This leads me onto the pivotal problem with homophobia in hip-hop: the hypocrisy of it. Artists seem to forget and marginalise the gay cultures that informed their work, but also the fact that hip-hop was itself the product of a marginalised subculture in New York. When Chuck D raps “Now that you’ve realized the pride’s arrived, we’ve got to pump the stuff to make us tough, from the heart, It’s a start, a work of art, to revolutionize” in ‘Fight the Power’, not only is his call applicable to the young and disenfranchised African-American youths of the 1980s, but also that of the marginalised LGBTs of 2014. Is it likely that a pioneering group such as Public Enemy would be proud of this current hostility?
32.sciencefeature
Get stuffed Ever wondered what happens to artefacts while there’s no room for them on display? Deputy Editor Tom Nicholson met Great North Museum: Hancock’s Keeper of Biology Dan Gordon for a tour of the Natural History Society of Northumbria’s taxonomy collection
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
the rip toouch t a y c t Fan ? Get in at storesthe museum . s m with .twmuseu -us t w ww k/contac org.u
The New Zealand-native Huia bird became extinct in the early 20th century, mainly because its fabulous plumage was apparently much in demand in the hat industry at the time. Alas, the Huia never lived to see a time when hat-wearing became passé. The disparity between the beaks of the female (in the back) and the male is due to a phenomenon called sexual dimorphism, and is among the most pronounced examples of beak-based divergence in the animal kingdom. Below is a large prawn riding on a badly embroidered tortoiseshell which was seized at the Port of Tyne customs. Coming soon to a John Lewis near you.
Here we have a box of birds of prey looking like they’re milling around in the dole office. To the right is a someone’s pet dog, apparently stuffed to resemble itself at the point of death. Bit grim. But look up there! It’s a happy pig! Oh, happy pig. You remind us of Pumba from The Lion King, thereby making everything seem alright again. Then we notice the alarmed monkey in the background and wonder whether happy pig is just ignorant of the dangers of the wild, and if that’s the reason he ended up stuffed in the first place.
The Courier
Tuesday 4 March 2014
featurescience.33
The Moa has been extinct since the start of the 20th century, when it was hunted to extinction in its native New Zealand. It’s the only land-bound bird yet found which had no wings at all, just vestigial hooks and absurdly huge legs. To the right is a shark wearing a rather natty vest, and to the far right is an example of a terrifyingly badly stuffed lion, which seems to have been preserved to commemorate the exact point at which it died of a heart attack.
Proof, as if any more were needed, that it’s definitely possible to fit a swan in a suitcase if you fold it properly.
This fella looks like a hell of a guy - I mean, m-m-my my, like pelican fly. Certainly, it’s a lovely gesture to give the swan a wing to hide under, like a protective mother warning away some bullies who’ve nicked her kid’s football. Less heartwarmingly, the cone shell is phenomenally poisonous: collectors chuck them in their backpacks and the snail inside shoots out a dart which has been known to go through both backpack and clothing and into the skin, paralysing or even killing the shell collector. This model of a dodo is a bit off for a couple of reasons: firstly, it conforms to a Victorian idea of the stupid, overweight, adorably useless dodo, which has since been hotly contested; and secondly, because it looks like it’s just leaving a particularly harsh stretch in dodo jail with a grudge against society. Below is a pair of vestigial sperm whale legs, a hangover from the species’ days knocking about as amphibians.
This Great Auk is the only such example in the world of the bird, which has been extinct for over 150 years, in its juvenile stage. To the right is a rather fetching alligator satchel which was seized at the Port of Tyne customs office for being too fierce by half, and to the far right is a sperm whale’s skull. The hole which is being aggressively fisted is where the spinal cord enters the brain.
34.science&technology
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
Science Editor: Elizabeth Hampson Deputy Science Editors: Emad Ahmed and Peter Style
Half blood prints
With the number of organs available declining, James Simpson looks at tech options
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ith 3D printing becoming ever more popular since the printers have become more commercially available in the last 15 years it may not be long before we possess the ability to print new tissues for our body. Scientists have successfully managed to print a small 20 millimetre square structure consisting of 20 layers of artificial filaments and living cells which does not require a scaffold. This is revolutionary as tissues living material printed in the past have been based around a strong support which has then been dissolved. The structure has been produced by a process called bioprinting, which involves creating multiple layers which join together using filaments to form a stable structure.
The changing face of body image research
Penny Polson interviews Dr. Martin Tovee, Newcastle’s very own body image expert about current and future research in the field, its place in the media and how new thinking may change the way we view eating disorders such as anorexia
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cience Editor Lizzie and I caught up with Dr Martin Tovee, who helped us navigate recent Newcastle research into how body image might all be relative, how it differs around the world, and how to tackle the impossible goals set by a digital media. His recent work with Professor Melissa Bateson investigated applying the Ebbinghaus effect to groups of people. This effect is where one central circle surrounded multiple circles appears larger or smaller, depending on the size of the circles surrounding it. Perhaps disturbingly, this worked for people as well. Dr Tovee explains: “the bodies surrounded by large bodies were judged to be smaller than the bodies surrounded by thinner bodies, because you
“Your attractiveness is judged as a separate factor”
Despite it being so small, it opens up possibilities in the future to print whole tissues. This currently seems extremely difficult because of the complex nature of the processes carried out by the tissues as well as their structure. The researchers, based at University of Iowa have said that it may be possible to add another dimension to the design by building in blood vessels or organ specific tissues much like in a traditional assembly line. If tissues can be produced via bioprinting it could even produce organs, which are in such high demand around the world. In the UK, the NHS estimate that 10,000 people each day are in need of an organ transplant. Supply simply does not meet demand and so innovative new techniques like bioprinting are needed to develop the way we treat specific diseases to ensure that lives can be saved. Traditionally organ transplants have come from donors who have died and were on the organ donor register, but last year it was announced that a kidney had been cultured from stem cells under laboratory conditions. This again was exciting news because it is a massive step in the right direction. Printing or growing
“Whilst it may be a few years
before these new organs hit hospitals and start meeting the demand, it is definitely no longer science-fiction” organs solves the other major problem surrounding transplantation; rejection. When a foreign body enters the body an immune response is triggered which stimulates white blood cell production in order to attack the object. In a transplant patient the new organ is often seen as a foreign body despite every effort been made to match blood and tissue types. Immunosuppressant drugs are used but carry with them side effects and are not always guaranteed to work. If the required tissue could be manufactured from the patient’s own cells then rejection simply would not be an issue as the body would recognise the tissue as its own. Whilst it may be a few years before these new organs hit hospitals and start meeting the demand, it is no longer science-fiction; University of Texas have proven this by growing a human lung. By the time the millennials near 100 years old, the possibility of ordering a new body part over the internet is higher every minute.
are scaling relative to size”. But he cautions that it is not the only factor effecting attractiveness: “You seemed to be able to scale the (Ebbinghaus) effect away, and still come to think that your attractiveness judgement of the bodies would be the same.” In other words, even if you surround yourself by larger people, your attractiveness will still be judged as a separate factor. Body image research at Newcastle is also going global, by investigating how the relationship between size and attractiveness varies with different regions in the world. In the UK, Europe and USA, the peak BMI for attractiveness is around 21, and then it drops off afterwards. In the South African province of KwaZulu Natal, there is no drop after the initial peak, and larger women continue to have peak attractiveness. Dr Tovee describes how the environment that they live in is key, where “food is a limited resource, and there is high disease with HIV, and HIV wastage.” But even more interestingly, immigrants from KwaZulu Natal to the UK were found to change their views on attractiveness “towards the western
ideal”. This could be due to the ‘internal template’ changing – the template which people use to judge what is normal. Its baseline is what you are most familiar with, and deviations are what appears unusual to you. Research has found that the further you deviate from your internal template, the less accurate your judgement is. This is called ‘contraction bias’, and means that people who are on the slimmer end of the spectrum will tend to think that they are larger than they actually are, and alternatively, larger people will underestimate their size. This indicates that eating disorders such as anorexia are not separated to what everyone else encounters to an extent, but instead just extremes on a continuous scale of misperception.
“Models are getting thinner and you can see body image dissatisfaction rising” But how can we counteract the pressure of achieving a perfect unattainable body? Pressure on the fashion industry, and regulation is Dr Tovee’s answer. He also suggests slowly increasing the size of the model so that people don’t notice immediately. “If there’s a difference in the media, the models are getting thinner (relative to the increase in standard body weight), then you can see body image dissatisfaction rising”. When asked whether this research will have an impact on the wider media, to try to get people thinking about themselves more healthily, Dr Tovee responds “I’d like to think so, but unfortunately I don’t think the media thinks so.” We agree, and it’s definitely time to change that. It’s time to feel good about our bodies, rather than guilty about whether it conforms or not.
BMI: Biggest Mental Influence
Human attraction is traditionally more art than science but Amy Macauley measures up just how much body sizes and shapes are responsible for the attraction we have towards our partners
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here has been lots of research done at our very own Newcastle University recently, all about a topic many university students are interested in; the science behind attraction. Many of us who keep a keen eye on fashion trends for different body types could probably tell you that what we wear can sometimes trick the eye into thinking we’re slimmer, but one researcher at Newcastle has disproved this. Psychology lecturer Dr Martin Tovee claims that it’s not what we wear but who we’re with that affects others perceptions of our body type; which is the biggest indicator of attractiveness. Researchers Bateson and Healy argue that we can all increase our own attractiveness at minimal cost by positioning ourselves in a ‘flattering’ group of people, e.g. a group who all have a larger BMI (body mass index) than ourselves. Sneaky. Dr. Tovee’s research has found that BMI is the
Livingshodow
key sign of physical attractiveness for females capable of reproducing, and is cross culturally consistent. Attractiveness also declines as BMI increases; so facial features take a back seat to body type; and a healthy BMI is apparently better than a pretty face.
“We can sometimes trick the eye into thinking we are slimmer” However, there are slight variations in our preferences regarding BMI depending on where we are in the world. The West, for example, values a much lower BMI than the rest of the world. In order to prove his theory, Dr. Tovee carried out a study involving participants of high, medium and low BMI, blurred out their faces and asked volunteers to rate their subsequent attractiveness. The women with a medium BMI were flanked on either side by two women of lower BMI and then of higher. The researchers found that the medium BMI females in the middle of two higher BMI females were rated as more attractive than if they were surrounded by the thinner women, but that wasn’t all. They also found that the thinner, more tanned women were judged as smaller and as more attractive than the larger, paler ladies. Social context also had absolutely no significance in
the study, and there was also no difference in the judgements of attractiveness by male and female viewers. Reasons behind this preference for a partner with a healthy body are not just aesthetic, but also practical, as a healthy partner with no physical problems will be more fertile than one who is over or under weight. However, all is not lost if your BMI isn’t perfect. According to Dr. Tovee’s study facial symmetry and long legs in women, and a ‘triangle’ body shape in men are also signifiers of attractiveness. Interestingly, females also make slightly different choices in partners depending on what stage of their menstrual cycle they are at. If females are not fertile; they will tend to go for a friendly guy, whereas the more fertile they are, the more masculine they want their men. According to Dr. Tovee, people generally go for those around the same attractiveness as themselves, but in some cases, not mentioning any names (Wayne Rooney), other factors such as social standing and a high income can be used to compensate for a lack of looks. The bright side of this research is that if we are unhappy with our bodies, there is always something that can be done to change them. Dr. Tovee’s study underlines the importance of not comparing ourselves and our bodies to others. What is key to attractiveness is ensuring that our bodies are healthy for our own specific heights.
The Courier
science&technology.35
Tuesday 4 March 2014
thecourieronline.co.uk/science c2.science@ncl.ac.uk | @courier_science
Floody hell? Dam it
Jack Marley dives into the science behind the recent extreme weather battering the south in search of how we can rebuild our present and resist such damage in the future
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leak warnings of “the new normal” pitterpatter the front pages of our broadsheets with more news of damage from the flooding, but what is totally absent from the story of this winter’s storms is any sign of a reprieve, or hope for any way to abandon the gloomy outlook. What was biblical and occurred “oncein-a-lifetime” is now regular and very real. The battering series of storms grappling hundreds from their homes over the Christmas and New Year period was unsurprisingly the wettest and windiest winter period since UK records began. Exceptionally high winds coupled with the change in the position of the jet stream fuelling the relentless rainfall together formulated the concoction responsible the severe flooding. This change in the position of the jet steam arose as a result of enhanced rainfall in the tropics due in exceptionally high local ocean temperatures.
“What was biblical and occurred once in a lifetime is now regular and very real” Half of all people asked in one survey attributed the floods to climate change, and it isn’t hard to see why. This is what the global warming we’d been warned about in bad science fiction movies looked like: spires of old churches alone above the water; all trace of us lost to the currents of change. Our modern world feels safe; it feels like the successor to the rule of nature. But climate change is at its basest form, an equation; a product of the laws of physics that ultimately does not care about man’s supposed mastery of the elements. It doesn’t wait around for nuclear fusion to burst into life and it doesn’t heed the promises politicians make of reducing emissions. If we continue heating the atmosphere, it will be capable of holding more water and flooding will become more frequent and more severe. Push the system and there will be consequences – equal and opposite reactions. At the same time as the weather was burying us with Newtonian logic however, it was also expos-
ing something remarkable. Stripping away the sands of time the storms revealed last week the remains of a prehistoric forest on the beaches of Cardigan Bay. 4,500 years ago there rose here great oaks, pines, alder and birch that bound and enriched the soil, but today fog twists eerily between the stumps of what was once the best flood defence this region of Wales ever had. Before the storms arrived the secrets of this place remained buried, but they’ve surfaced at a time when we most need to learn how to correct our relationship with nature and to step back from the brink of the climate crisis. In Britain we love our rolling green countryside and its patchwork fields sewn together by neatly trimmed hedgerows. We see wilderness in what is servitude and call it paradise. These manufactured landscapes allow rain to wash down slopes into rivers that flood towns and villages, but if we allowed the ancient woodland to return, plant new trees could break up the soil with roots and create pathways for the water to soak in. But why stop there? A Downing Street spokesman expressed the ambition to spend £2.4bn on flood management and coastal erosion to reduce the impact of the very real possibility of future flooding. Use this investment to put in place more effective and sustainable drainage systems. As well as any new houses being build on flood basins, being engineered from within to be more resilient to the impact of flooding. Working with natures already existing dynamic and complex systems will also help reduce the impact of flooding. Planting more trees could coax the return of beavers, the ingenious dam engineers that halt the swelling of rivers and create niches in the environment that promote populations of fish, reptiles, ducks and amphibians. Richer river ecosystems could mean in the future that regeneration of flood-hit areas with
“Relentless rainfall formulated the concoction responsible for severe flooding” fishing and tourism will be possible, whilst the regenerated forests would invite songbirds and squirrels that spread seeds. The stripped-bare river banks would once more abound with plants that stabilise the soil and fix the rivers in their courses. We can simultaneously protect our future and free nature, but will we? These storms have crippled us and our conceptions of disaster management and prevention, but the floods of tomorrow await. Knowing that, we rebuild or we regret.
More and more infections are becoming increasingly difficult to treat, due to higher levels of resistance against antibiotics. James Simpson investigates the latest attempts to find new and effective drugs by researchers at Newcastle University, led by Prof. David Graham
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World of Goo
FTL: Faster Than Light Rmrfstar
like today in places less developed such as Papa New Guinea. Newcastle research has highlighted the possibility of ‘hotspots’ in the world which contain genes for multiple resistance in bacteria. The area researchers studied was the Upper River Ganges in India. They reported that the concentration of genes conferring resistance has increased up to 20 times in recent years. Researcher Professor David Graham explains that, “Through the overuse of antibiotics, contamination of drinking water and other factors, we [humans] have exponentially speeded-up the rate at which superbugs might develop”. It has elsewhere been reported that India produce a large number of cloned antibiotics, and the waste generated from production is dumped into the environment which introduces wild bacterial strains to the antibiotic, and allows a resistance to be developed. When tourists visit these places they become exposed to the resistant bacteria. The bacteria can then lay dormant in their guts until they reach their native countries where they can be unleashed on the local population. Developing resistance is a huge global problem and steps should be taken by global authorities to
There has been an explosion of indie games in recent years. Sophie Baines gives examples and shows why the genre has no end in sight
hat sells video games? It’s a question that the big guys such as Ubisoft and EA Games have been searching for an answer to since gaming became a viable industry. It’s a question that is not easy to answer, at least not in any finality, due not only to the large number of games available, but also to the varied audiences with each game. So why is it that recently developed independent “indie” games have continued to sell more and more? Here are two examples created by indie developers which have both sold over 500,000 copies, to see if I can find any uniting factors.
Rise of the superbug
wo thousand and five hundred people a year die from drug-resistant diseases. The most commonly heard of is Methicillinresistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) causing cellulitis and skin abrasions, and can lead to pneumonia and blood poisoning. MRSA has received constant media attention due to the outbreaks in NHS hospitals and the ease of transmission. MRSA is considered the archetypal superbug. They are infection-causing microorganisms which cannot be easily overcome by common antibiotics. Superbugs are a huge problem in the developed world because there are an alarming number of bacteria which are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics meaning treatments are becoming more limited and less successful. This means bacterial infections such as Cholera and Typhoid will not be as easily treated. One of the most successful antibiotics until recent years is Penicillin. It was discovered by Fleming in 1928 and first mass produced in 1945. It is considered to be the most important antibiotic and sparked the revolution of drug discovery, leading to the “golden age” of antibiotic research. A large number of antibiotics which have combatted bacterial infections have been discovered, which led to the decrease of diseases such as Tuberculosis caused by Mycobacterium. TB has been wiped out more or less in the developed world, whereas 50 years ago it was a big problem, much
Indie games are here to stay
ensure that antibiotic abuse does not compromise long term human health. If uncontrolled, the rate of resistance in bacteria continues, coupled with a low number of new drugs being developed, we can expect big problems in the future, and may live in a world where something as trivial as a chest infection would be enough to kill someone.
Illustration by Rachel Templeman
FTL, released in 2012 by Subset Games, is a real-time strategy game in which the player must control a spaceship and jump from point to point, in order to escape the oncoming rebel fleet and encounter problems like ion storms, pirates and solar flares. It was inspired, according to developers, by table-top board games and space related video games where you control the systems of the ship, rather than first person characters. FTL is addictive, fun and endlessly entertaining. Its main draws seem to be the customisation of character names and ships, along with the witty writing. The pleasantly soothing art and music may also be a factor.
Surgeon Simulator 2013 This game is something of an oddity, made for the 2013 Global Game Jam, it was created in 48 hours by four developers from Bossa Studios. They then spent 48 days refining the game for commercial release in January 2013. It is notoriously difficult to control, and exceedingly hard to complete. The aim of the game is to perform surgery on an unconscious body, with as little blood loss as possible. The fun of the game is in trying to control the clunky hand, and to make as many rude gestures as possible during the course of the game. Since its release, two more modes have been released and met with acclaim from customers. It is fun and odd, which seems to be half the game’s commercial success, probably assisted by the fact it only costs £7. The main factor that links these two games seems to be enduring playability. Indie games rely entirely on people enjoying the gameplay. Contracted games however, have the safety net of marketing schemes and near-rabid loyal fans. Indie games sell well because they are so compelling, either in gameplay, music, art or themes, and some utilise all these factors to make winning games that anyone and everyone can play.
Stacking
The Courier
puzzles.37
Tuesday 4 March 2014
Puzzles There’s no quizness like show quizness, there’s no quizness I know. Hand in your answers at The Courier office to have a chance of winning drinks at MensBar
Crossword 1
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Puzzles Editors: Tom Nicholson and Sam Summers
Win a MensBar voucher
Grandma’s Pictionary
I sat down with Grandma for a game of pictionary, but she’s just not very good, bless her. Can you help me figure out which sporting phrase she’s trying to draw?
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Sudoku
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Across
1 A fancy word for elephants, as if elephants could get more fancy (9) 7 An alien warlord who shows no mercy, and a clam who received none (4) 8 A single number or finger (5) 9 Standard tests for schoolkids that are on the road to extinction (4) 11 A big lovely animal with a very long nose and an even longer tongue (8) 13 A magical, yellow, squeaky bear (5) 15 Sharp objects used for slicing food and stabbing chumps (6) 16 Tina Turner’s ex-husband (3) 17 Definitely among the most popular schools of witchcraft and wizardry (8)
The first person to bring the completed puzzles to The Courier office in the Students’ Union will be awarded the prize and the respect of their peers, which let’s be honest is priceless
Down
2 The hero of To Kill A Mockingbird and everybody’s fantasy dad (7, 5) 3 The not-exactly-uncorrupt first president of the Russian Federation (7) 4 Tree-like creature responsible for one of the best, and most of the worst, scenes in Lord of the Rings (3) 5 Black and white birds and omens of sorrow, joy, and a whole bunch of other stuff (7) 6 Short lived 2010s britpop band sued into adding a word to their name (4, 7) 10 The sister of bants (5) 11 The brother of B.C. (2) 12 Super-fast rapper known for his Kanyefeaturing megahit ‘Slow Jamz’ (6) 14 Soul legend who guest starred on Watch The Throne despite being very, very dead (4)
Why did the man who designed Bilbao city centre put loads of fire escapes in everywhere?
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Oh, Smiggsy!
Because you shouldn’t put all your Basques in one exit!
38.sportfeatures
Tuesday 4 March 2014
The Courier
Away goal in danger? With Premiership teams falling victim to the controversial ‘away goal’ rule in recent seasons, The Courier’s Peter Georgiev and Liam Ramshaw debate whether the rule should be scrapped in the UEFA Champions League and Europa League
YES
PETER GEORGIEV
A symbol of an ancient era, the away goal rule is one of the oldest and most resilient regulations in football. It’s even older than the disallowance of goalkeeper pass-backs and definitely not in a propitious way. The guideline has long since become a routine part of the whole football discourse much like the chants we sing or the beers we drink during a match, except that unlike them it’s destructive and ridiculous. Well concealed in the heart of our beloved game, this tumour has been a growing organism since 1965 when it was initially intro duced by FIFA. Of course, in these years a trip to Germany, Russia or Turkey was as perilous as Magellan’s expeditions. So the organisation tried to stick to its slogan “For the Game, For the World” by giving the guest side a certain advantage and preventing the eventual bus parking. Moreover, a rational way to avoid the additional fees for a third-match decider must have been a gift on a silver platter for all the financial investors caring for the club budget.
they are also of great importance. Serving as an excellent example, two of the last five Champions League winners, Bayern Munich (12/13) and Barcelona (08/09), owe their success exactly to the “visitors’ guardian”. Both clubs have proceeded somewhere in their campaigns after prevailing on away goals and it’s needless to say that both Arsenal and Chelsea deserved at least an extra-time opportunity if not the win itself. Moreover, regardless of any bias, let’s not forget how a fan feels after being robbed of penalties, which, despite also not being the most ethical way of electing a victor, are certainly the more enthralling option. Lastly, but most importantly, the scar inflicted by the rule is evident in every single elimination match in terms of the home side’s behaviour on the pitch. Despite the fact that the regulation was initially invented to encourage a more aggressive and attacking play, for years it has resulted in a genuine fear of conceding a goal at home. While a tie couldn’t be won after the first leg, it could certainly be lost (e.g. Zenit’s tragedy against Borussia Dortmund). Therefore, what was once a goal-
The away goal rule is out-of-date, immoral and absurd. It’s about time Fifa wakes up from its 50 year-old dream. But gazing away from these blackwhite romantic times, it doesn’t take an erudite look at modern football to see how comical the continued existence of the former knight in shining armour is. In the age of oil sheikhs and Russian billionaires rising as hailed rulers of contemporary sport, it would be nothing less than preposterous to talk about visitor discomfort. Assuming that such an issue could arise either during the journey to the hosting venue or due to the conditions it offers seems ridiculous in the modern era. However, let’s take a look at both factors and their impact in the most crucial area – Europe. Concentrating specifically on European football, the away goal rule plays its most significant role in the Champions League and Europa League. Given the vast investments in the game in the last decade, team transportation has become an almost invisible part of the pre-match to-do-list, rarely causing any irritation in the minds of staff and players. As for the quality of stadiums, with the ongoing regulations UEFA imposes on each and every participant in these competitions, there is no doubt that all of the licensed grounds are more than reasonable venues for a first-rate football performance from both sides. Even the smallest one in this year’s Champions League race, Doosan Arena of FC Viktoria Plzeň, has an 11,700 capacity and is awarded with the highest fourth category of standard. Whilst the reasons for the survival of the rule remain unclear, its implications on the game are obvious. Although the cases of a game being directly decided by the away goal rule are infrequent,
scoring rule has long ago turned into a game spoiling phenomenon called “the clean sheet rule”. No one should be in favour of a rule sounding that ludicrous. To conclude: the away goal rule is outof-date, immoral and absurd. So, maybe it’s about time FIFA wakes up from what seems to be a nearly 50-year-old dream. For the Game. For the World.
NO
LIAM RAMSHAW
The away goals rule is a constant theme of controversy throughout the footballing world. This season has witnessed managers such as Arsene Wenger vocally criticizing the rule’s existence. On balance, perhaps Mr Wenger had motivations for his outburst. Arsenal have been one of the main victims of the rule in recent years, including last year’s Champions League exit to Bayern Munich. While it is understandable why managers like Wenger want the away goals rule scrapped after suffering a heartbreaking defeat, taking such measures would be a detriment to European football. Much like replays in the F.A Cup, away goals is a long standing tradition in Europe and by scrapping it; the governing bodies would be removing an institution of the game. The away goals rule in the majority of cases enhances the entertainment on European nights. Away teams are not afraid to attack their opponents, meaning we see a more open and attractive game. The rule has enabled attractive sides such as Barcelona and Bayern Munich to flourish in the 21st century. Sides are encouraged to attack their opponents away from home, while expecting a defensive onslaught by their opponents at the Camp Nou or the Allianz Arena. Away goals have led to some of the greatest matches in the history of European Football. The 2003-04 Champions League has went down as perhaps the most unpredictable campaign in the competition’s history. While Jose Mourinho led unfancied F.C Porto to victory in the final, arguably the biggest story of the campaign was the form of their opponents, Monaco. During the competition Monaco were
involved in some dramatic ties but the most memorable is arguably their quarter final against the mighty Real Madrid. Monaco went into the tie as major underdogs as they had scraped through the previous round against Lokomotiv Moscow on away goals. This was hardly seen as great preparation for facing a side including Ronaldo, Zidane and Beckham. However, while many may have expected Monaco to sit back and ‘park the bus’ against the awesome powers of Madrid, Monaco elected to do the opposite and their free-flowing moves troubled the Spanish all night. The sides produced a fantastic end-to-end contest with Madrid winning 4-2, but Monaco claiming two away goals which would prove to be crucial as they overturned the deficit in the second leg, winning 3-1. The first leg at the Bernabeu encapsulated everything that is special about European football. Without the away goals rule it is plausible that Monaco would have sat back and tried to keep the deficit to a minimum. However, the rule gives the away team an opportunity to thrive in the first leg as they know the system gives them an insurance bonus for the second leg. The idea of away goals enhances the drama of a football match. In last season’s Champions League, going into the last few minutes of their match with Borussia Dortmund, Malaga were
Arsene Wenger has openly criticised the use of away goal rule in European competitions. Photography: Getty
seemingly cruising into the Semi Finals, leading 2-1 away in Germany on aggregate. Even when Dortmund equalized in stoppage time, there still seemed no hope for the German side. Without the away goals rule both sides would have likely settled for extra time
The away goals rule has enabled attractive sides such as Barcelona and Bayern Munich to flourish in the 21st century The dramatic climax to the game between Malaga and Borussia Dortmund’s in last season’s Champions League quarters would not have occurred but for the continued use of the away goal rule Photography: Getty Images
and been reluctant to attack. However, away goals still meant that Dortmund would be eliminated so would be forced to go for another goal. The rule enabled fans to witness one of the most dramatic moments in the competition’s history with Dortmund’s Felipe Santana netting in the third minute of added time. Even when the football has been primarily defensive, such as Chelsea’s performance against Barcelona in the 2008/9 campaign, the action has been equally compelling. After a goalless first leg at the Camp Nou, Chelsea netted early through Michael Essien, and produced an admirable defensive display in trying to prevent the Catalans from netting the away goal which would take them to the final in Rome. After over 90 minutes of frustration for Barcelona, the away goals rule again produced late drama, with Andres Iniesta smashing the ball into the top corner leading to hysteria for the away side and unbelievable despair for the English side. These ties represent why the away goals rule should remain a focal point of European nights. It is not a lottery like a penalty shoot-out and attracts an attacking brand of football for the away team, which possibly would not be encouraged if the rule was scrapped.
The Courier
bucssport.39
Tuesday 4 March 2014
Newcastle Angels get their wings Cheerleading
By Kirsty Arbuckle in Bath The Newcastle University cheerleaders have returned with numerous shiny trophies after attending the Future Cheer competition in Bath last weekend. A highlight of every cheerleader’s diary, the event saw the talented group of sixty girls compete against hundreds of other University teams from across the UK, entering into categories such as hip hop, jazz, group stunt and University cheer. Now, before we get ahead of ourselves let me first clarify what competitive cheerleading is. Contrary to popular belief we do not spend all our time shaking pom poms and chanting for football and rugby teams wearing barely anything (our outfits actually have long sleeves… shock horror!). In actual fact modern cheerleading is a mix of breathtaking gymnastics, energetic dancing, soaring jumps and impressive stunting… They don’t call it the most dangerous women’s sport for nothing. So how does it work? Well, each team has only two minutes thirty seconds to get on the mat and perform their routine in front of the judges, spectators and of course, every other university in the UK. The atmosphere at these competitions is always electric and if you haven’t experienced hundreds of students (both female AND male!) walking around in tight colourful uniforms, enormous bows and dressed head to toe in cheer related stash you really haven’t lived. There is nothing quite like it; the team spirit and support from the other University’s is incredible, with none of this stereotypical ‘bitchy’ attitude (that cheerleaders traditionally have a reputation for) in sight. Every individual at these competitions respects the other competitors as hardworking, dedicated athletes with a fiery passion for this extraordinary sport. So, onto the interesting bit… the results! The University’s level two all-girl squad came an impressive 6th out of thirteen teams, beating outstanding routines from the University of Hull Sharkettes, RH Tomcats and Glasgow University. Many of these students had never cheered before this year and had
The Angels undertake their routine in the BUCS competition Photography: NUCS
no idea what to expect from a national competition. To say we were impressed with their performance would be a massive understatement. Their enthusiasm, commitment and execution of the routine was astounding, proving that cheerleading does not always require years of experi-
ence, just good old fashioned hard work and dedication! In the level three all girl division Newcastle came an astounding 6th out of fifteen teams, outdoing their rivals the Durham Divas, and placing higher than the York Hornets, Bath Jets and Nottingham Knights, all of whom per-
formed excellent routines. These are two of the most competitive divisions at the event and we could not be happier with the results! Cheerleading is an incredibly rewarding sport that tests an individual’s flexibility, strength and team spirit. This is by no means an easy activity and it is
not only for girls! Aside from the allgirl divisions there were over 29 coed teams, which means they consisted of boys AND girls. So if you’re a boy and you think cheerleading is only for girls, think again. In the words of a cheerleader: ‘wimps lift weights, cheerleaders lift people’.
all the more impressive as many of their competitors were well rested. Arriving at the venue the team set up base just next to the trampolines and squeezed in some last minute bouncing; they quickly discovered the trampoline beds were tight and uncomfortable and two of the trampolines were old and certainly out of date. Nevertheless Newcastle were resolute that they would attack the competition with the same passion and gusto that they did in their training sessions. The sports hall was cold and there was not a very friendly atmosphere, as teams were not mixing to the same extent as in other competitions. What’s worse, a girl from a University that shall not be named was warming up in only her bra, which was in the words of Frankie McKever “not ok”. Another girl from LJMU was screaming
during every somersault that went even just a tiny bit wrong, which was of great annoyance.
the Elite category of trampoline this year, and Kate’s win was further proof of Newcastle’s strength at this high level of
the competition for this writer because this was the first time Newcastle have competed at this level, which is of great pride for the club. Day two of competition was less successful. Synchronised trampoline partners George Bullock and Yana Demyanenko as well as Ali Hardy and Georgina Smith suffered falls on their penultimate front somersaults and so didn’t medal. However, Greg Lymar and Kate Gregory stole the silver with an impressive and dynamic performance in the synchronised competition. Overall whilst Leeds was not as fun as some previous competitions, it was certainly as successful. Newcastle proved they are serious medal contenders across all categories and continued to dominate the Elite category.
Bouncing to brilliance in BUCS Trampolining
By George Filipovic-Bullock in Leeds Newcastle University Trampoline club returned from the 2014 Leeds trampoline open (gold rush) with 2 Golds, 2 Silvers and a Bronze, making them arguably more successful than the British team sent to the Winter Olympics. Newcastle went to the Leeds trampoline open with a depleted and very much worn out team, having had to wake up at 5:00 that morning for the drive down and then compete on less that perfect trampolines. The exhaustion reached the point that some members of the team brought sleeping bags and pillows. It is this that makes their multiple victories at Leeds
Greg Lymer and Kate Gregory stole a silver medal in the synchronised competition with a dynamic performance Anyway, Newcastle’s success came early on with Frankie McKever winning silver and missing out on the gold by the tiniest of fractions in the women’s Intervanced competition. Ali Hardy did well in his Advanced category to come third and finally Kate Gregory and George Bullock took home the gold in the Elite and Intermediate categories respectfully. Newcastle has dominated
competition. However the highlight of Newcastle’s performances came with President Greg Lymar’s debut routine in the Uber category, the category at which world class trampoline gymnasts compete. Greg performed a strong routine with two double somersaults to come 5th overall. Greg’s routine was the highlight of
Sport
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Newcastle’s Stan Calvert supremacy smashed Northumbria win by commanding 20-point margin to end six-year losing streak By Freddie Caldwell Sports Editor
After six years of Newcastle victories, Northumbria finally turned the tables on their varsity rivals with a 80.25-60.75 win in this year’s Stan Calvert competition. They were able to dominate a wide variety of sports and secured clean sweeps in basketball and football, as well as a narrow win in the Blue Riband event, the men’s 1sts rugby union. Northumbria had the better of the preliminary events and went into Sunday with a 30-24 lead. The contest was in the balance for much of the day with Newcastle managing to draw level early in the afternoon. However, the momentum never really swung far away from Northumbria and they built a lead that became unassailable by the late afternoon. Newcastle went into the competition as underdogs due to their current BUCS ranking of 13th, contrasting with Northumbria’s 8th position. Northumbria have outspent Newcastle in sports funding for many years but they have struggled to usurp them in the BUCS rankings until this season. Given that Stan Calvert is now based on exclusively BUCS sports, Newcastle knew they had
results, such as in rowing and hockey where they took clean sheets. However, by the evening it became apparent that the only way to salvage something from the competition would be to win the men’s 1sts rugby. However, Northumbria were able to wear their opposition down, just as they had done in other sports, and take victory to deny any consolation for Newcastle. The result was a hard one to take for Newcastle’s performance sport manager Fraser Kennedy: “yesterday was bitterly disappointing for all concerned but we will go away and look at what went wrong and what teams never delivered. We will come back stronger after this defeat and ultimately all good things must come to an end eventually. It will just make the competition even more exciting next year”. The total Stan Calvert tally is still in Newcastle’s favour as they have won 13 to Northumbria’s 6 victories. However, we could now about to be entering a period of Northumbria dominance; their superior facilities and greater funding for BUCS sports mean that it will be difficult for Newcastle to compete in the next few years. Stomsoy acknowledged that “the challenge now to all of us at Northumbria is to keep it longer than
“The challenge now to all of us at Northumbria is to keep it longer than Newcastle”
to pull off a substantial upset if they were to take a seventh consecutive win. The Northumbria camp admitted to nerves before the competition due to the weight of expectation, but once the events were underway there were few signs of doubt in their performances. Not only did they dominate certain sports but they also pulled off some impressive upsets such as the men’s lacrosse and the men’s rugby seconds. Northumbria’s head of sport Colin Stromsoy noted that “when a team dominates a competition in the way Newcastle University have done in the Stan Calvert for so many years it makes it so much harder to win. I have so much respect for Newcastle in achieving what they have done since 2007.” He acknowledged how the changes they have made over the last few years lead to yesterday’s victory: “we knew that to win we had to do things better and very differently and over two years ago we implemented a new plan that has helped us get into the national top 10 in BUCS and finally win Stan Calvert. Our student athletes and staff have all been immense.” Newcastle did have some impressive
Newcastle have done over recent years and I can promise you we won’t be complacent”. It is unfortunate that some sports clubs were left out of this year’s competition because of the focus on BUCS sports. Northumbria has taken a tough stance on this over the last few years but it is possible that they may relent now that they have a victory in the bag. This year’s competition also saw a greater variety of venues being used than in previous years. Whilst there were few complaints about venue quality, there will be some who lament the move of so many fixtures away from Gateshead International Stadium. A reasonable number still made it down to the rugby union but overall it seems this year’s competition brought fewer spectators than usual. Overall though, Stan Calvert 2014 has to go down as a success with many fixtures going right to the wire and providing great entertainment in the process. Northumbria will no doubt see this as a historic result and it could well be a narrative that continues for several years to come.
Northumbria’s Polly the Parrot celebrates Northumbria’s Stan Calvert victorty at Gateshead Photography: Cat Schroeter
FULL RESULTS AND ANALYSIS: 8-PAGE STAN CALVERT PULL-OUT INSIDE