Published articles

Lecturer uses student’s work under own name

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The University of Cambridge fi nds itself under pressure to clarify fur-ther its guidelines on plagiarism after a senior lecturer in the Department of Land Economy was found to have published without permission mate-rial from a student’s dissertation.

Varsity has discovered that Dr Nicola Morrison included unattrib-uted material from the work of a fi nal year Land Economy undergradu-ate in an article published under her name in the Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association in April.

The University’s recently tight-ened rules on plagiarism are now under fresh scrutiny amid strenuous denials that Dr Morrison’s actions had constituted any breach.

A University spokesman said: “A University Lecturer made a mis-take in submitting an opinion piece to a trade journal, on a very short deadline, without properly attrib-uting some of the source material. This was swiftly rectifi ed, the Lec-turer has apologised to the student concerned, who does not wish to take the matter further, and the matter is closed.”

The University’s rules on plagia-rism defi ne it as: “submitting as one’s own work that which derives in part

or in its entirety from the work of others without due acknowledge-ment.” The guidelines also state that plagiarism is “both poor scholarship and a breach of academic integrity.”

The same University spokesman confi rmed that some material and ideas from the student’s disserta-tion were quoted verbatim without attribution by Dr Morrison. The Uni-versity’s statement on plagiarism says that examples of plagiarism include “quoting verbatim another person’s work without due acknowl-edgement of the source” as well as “using ideas taken from someone else without reference to the originator”. However, the spokesman denied that plagiarism had taken place.

CUSU Education Officer Sam Wakeford urged the University to learn lessons from the Morrison case: “This obviously looks bad, but it draws attention to the fact that mistakes can be made by academics as well as students; plagiarism is a very complex issue,” said Wakeford. “Work that has been produced in a collaborative environment – such as between a student and their supervi-sor – can be a particularly grey area.

“Intentional or otherwise, how-ever, it is extremely serious, and the University must take the teaching of proper proper referencing tech-niques seriously,” he continued.

CONTINUES PAGE 3

Land Economy lecturer fa!ls to cred!t student !n "ournal art!cle

St Cathar!ne’s May Ball, Tr!n!ty Hall June Event and K!ng’s

A" a!r rev!ewed !ns!de

Emma Must!ch on why Sarah Pal!n !s no match for

Thatcher

Interviewp11 Commentp6Wednesday’s Ballsp5Paul Sm!th talks to The Nat!onal about leav!ng New York

MATTHEW SYMINGTON

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NE!SPAPER SINCE 1947 THURSDAY JUNE 17TH 2010 ISSUE NO 722 | VARSITY.CO.UK

Oh+ What a swell party that wasMay Week was in full swing all over Cambridge yesterday as students saw out the week of

post-exam celebrations. These party-goers from Churchill embraced the theme of last night’s King’s Affair, ‘British Youth Culture in the Last Fifty Years,’ disguised as a monopoly board. Elsewhere, Balls were held at Sidney Sussex and St Catharine’s, while Trinity Hall held its June Event. Sidney Sussex students could for one night experience life as a college on the river, thanks to a canal which fi lled an entire court. Trinity Hall’s June Event was more like a May Ball, with its tasteful decorations and fun-fi lled entertainment. During the day, students spent time relaxing and recovering from the festivities out in the sunshine on the backs and punting along the river.

p11Paul Sm!th talks to The Nat!onal

Emma Must!ch on Comment

! ! THURSDAY

Thursday June 17th 2010www!vars"ty!co!uk

News Ed!tors" Charlo#e Runc!e & Natasha Pesarannews@vars"ty!co!uk NE$SS3

52 Trumpington StreetCambridge CB2 1RG

FREE CHELSEA BUNWith every purchase over £2.00 in the shop

ORFREE MORNING

COFFEE/TEA(9am-12pm)

With any cake or pastry in the restaurant

on presentation of this voucherand proof of student status

A live act was thrown off stage at Trinity May Ball as organisers took action against excessive sound levels.

German electro-pop band, Dancing Pigeons, were asked to leave the stage three songs into their perfor-mance, with committee members saying that maximum decibel levels were exceeded.

Officers first expressed concerns about the sound level, which was fifteen decibels over the acceptable limit, ten minutes into the band’s performance, when they discovered they were unable to reduce sound levels through the speakers.

After a call from the City Council, who had received complaints from residents about noise levels, commit-tee members asked the drummer to play more quietly.

The drummer announced to the crowd that they were being told to stop playing. Amid chants of “Let them play! Let them play!” from the crowd, the band attempted to resume their set. Security was then called onto the stage to remove the performers.

The band had arrived in Cambridge on the afternoon of the ball to attend a sound check, but the late arrival of another band meant that the sched-uled run-through never occurred.

Trinity May Ball Technical and Security Officer, Ben Sehovic, told Varsity, “We tried to reach a compro-mise with the act to play more quietly as we couldn’t turn them down on the speakers. They refused to oblige and

escalated the situation by continu-ing to play, at which point we had no choice but to remove them from the stage.

“Frankly, it is in the commit-tee’s interest to ensure that the Ball continues. We had to draw the line somewhere. We had received complaints from the City Council which we had to take seriously.”

Third-year student, Korlin Bruhn, who had originally suggested to the May Ball committee that the Dancing Pigeons play at the Ball, is furious at the committee’s handling of the inter-national act.

She told Varsity, “After leaving Germany a day early to attend a sound check which never happened, the band was shut down for being too loud when it should have been up to the organisers to ensure they were fine to play.

“It seems unfair to pull the band’s performance straight away instead of trying to get the volume down to within the accepted levels.”

One committee member described the band as “uncooperative and aggressive.” There have also been reports that the band were intoxi-cated during their set and that they trashed their green room following their performance.

The committee was likely to have been concerned about possible reper-cussions of exceeding the sound limit, given the shutdown of live acts at Jesus May Ball last year and after celebrations at Hughes Hall attracted complaints from residents.

John Osbourn, environment

protection team leader for the City Council, has been positive about the actions taken by May Ball committees to deal with complaints and ensure noise levels remain within accept-able limits. He said, “We had just one complaint at 3am on Tuesday and that

matter was already being dealt with by the college concerned.

“Jesus, who had a problem last year and had to finish early, really stepped up to the mark. They brought forward their band start by an hour and there was no problem at all.”

Trinity pull band off stage in row over noise levels

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News in Brief

Giant containers on Parker’s Piece

Parker’s Piece is to play host to two large shipping contain-ers as part of a new Cambridge arts show.

In 3rd Ring Out, a drama that aims to “highlight the dangers of climate change and the impact of humanity on the environment,” the metal containers will serve as “mobile command centres.”“It will be a combination of drama, video and an interac-tive computer system,” said Jonathan Goodacre, a spokesman for Cambridge-based arts group Metis Arts. The performances will be set in 2033, in a world where Cambridge is confronted with several disasters. In each 20ft-long container, actors and audience will interact to tackle the crisis. The project has been in develop-ment for two years. Tickets are available from The Junction.

TK Maxx opens

The new TK Maxx store has opened in the old Borders store at 12-13 Market Street. Despite planning a full opening on June 19th, yesterday the shop was open for browsing.

According to Property Magazine International, TK Maxx has taken on a 15-year lease on the location, and expects to pay £650,000 per annum in rent. Borders UK went into administration last year, after losses of over £25 million.

Oxford top of tablesThe University of Oxford has topped the tables in three domes-tic University rankings. The tables, produced in The Times, The Guardian and The Indepen-dent, all place Oxford in the top spot. However, Cambridge maintained its dominance in the individual subject rankings, according to The Times.

Comm"#ee pan"c as ma"n stage act Danc"ng P"geons provoke compla"nts at May Ball

CONTINUED FROM FRONTDr Morrison dismissed the story’s reportage as “tittle-tattle”, stress-ing that she considered the matter to have been “dealt with officially and properly”. She claimed the issue had been fully resolved with the student concerned, who she said was “fine”. The student has declined to comment.

Once the matter was brought to the student’s attention, he reported the issue and it was swiftly agreed that he would be credited for his work. The article concerned has since been adjusted with acknowledgement of his contribution.

Entitled ‘A Landmark Case’, Morrison’s essay discussed recent Cambridge housing and building developments during the recession. It included material from the student’s unpublished dissertation.

The University repeatedly declined requests to disclose full details of the handling of the matter. However, Varsity understands that Morrison’s position within the University is not under threat.

Richard Partington, Senior Tutor of Churchill College, emphasised his own clear-cut conception of plagia-rism, saying: “I can’t comment on a specific case of which I am ignorant, but, in general, quoting someone else’s work without proper attribu-tion is plagiarism and it is not within the accepted norms of academic discourse. Plagiarism is plagiarism.

“Any academic who presents somebody else’s ideas as their own without proper attribution has crossed a line which they should not cross,” he continued.

The University issued new guide-lines after a Varsity investigation carried out in Michaelmas 2008 found that as many as half of all Cambridge students had been guilty of plagiarism as defined within the University’s then loose definitions.

Collaboration between students and supervisors is not uncom-mon. Richard, a third-year English student said, “After a really inter-esting Shakespeare supervision, my supervisor asked if he could use a point I had contributed to in a book he was writing, properly cited. I didn’t mind at all, it was nice to know that he respected my ideas and found them helpful.”

Many students have spoken positively of their experiences with Morrison. One said: “She’s a really good supervisor. I came away from her supervisions really feeling like I’d gotten something out of it. Her lectures were always interesting too, with connections to real examples and different authors and views tied in.”

Further reporting on this story was carried out by the Varsity Investigations Team

Guests make the(r way home from the world famous Tr(n(ty May Ball

DNA: Greatest discovery

In an online poll of 432 researchers, the discovery of the structure of DNA has been voted the most impor-tant contribution to science made by researchers at UK universities.

The discovery of the double-helix model of DNA was made by Cambridge University researchers James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953. A plaque outside the Eagle, a public house in Bene’t Street, commemorates the discoverers of the double helix: Crick and Watson often frequented the pub after work. The technology is crucial to modern

forensic science: DNA was first used to secure a murder conviction in 1988.

The existence of DNA was suggested by the Swiss scientist Friedrich Miescher in 1869, but the structure of the acid’s molecules was first deduced by Crick and Watson.

Other scientific discoveries in the running included quantum-well lasers, which are the technology behind CDs and DVDs. These were discovered by researchers at the University of Surrey, and placed fifth.

The contraceptive pill, which was discovered by a researcher at the University of Manchester in 1961, placed fourth in the survey.

#IC!A#D )OO#"

Friday October 9th 2009www.varsity.co.uk

Magazine Editor: Laurie [email protected] Vulture13

The relationship between human beings and the natural world wasn’t exactly

on the political agenda when Sir David Attenborough was an under-graduate biologist at Clare College in 1945. In Clement Attlee’s landslide victory manifesto of the same year, the word ‘environment’

– mentioned 44 times in Tony Blair’s fi rst election-winning tract – is entirely absent. That world, of course, is not our world. In 1945 the global population was just shy of 2.5 billion, compared with today’s 6.7 billion.

I wonder where Attenborough feels we fi rst lost our way in terms

of our place in nature. “Urbani-sation has taken us away from nature,” he begins, in his distinctive broadcasting voice, “if you were a farmer, if you were dependent on it for growing food, or looking after livestock, you had to know about the natural world.”

I interject that 2009 is said to

be the year when more people live in cities than out of them. “The United Nations’ fi gures show that the majority of the world now live in towns, yes. Until we became urbanised we were subjected to the same sort of pressures of population control and general existence that applied to the rest of the world – we

were part of it,” he stresses. “If the land didn’t produce, we’d starve, if wild animals overtook us, we were killed. But now we are living in a way that is more and more divorced from those hazards. So we have come to believe that human society is enough within itself.”

(continued. overleaf)

Grammy award winning Soweto Gospel Choir

discuss their miraculous rise

Featuresp20 Artsp15VultureArts, Features, ReviewsVulture

Your guide to the alternative versus the mainstream in Cambridge life

Life of a NaturalistJoel Massey talks to Sir David Attenborough about luck, legacies and underwater wonderlands

KARL J.KAUL/BBC

Laying the blame: “Everything you see that is wrong with human society today can be traced to high density in population: from the carbon e! ect and climatic change, to the pollution of the seas, to our social evils”

What, then, are we doing wrong? Is it all about carbon emissions and the greenhouse effect, or is it broader than that? “It’s much broader than that. And it isn’t, paradoxically, what we’re doing wrong, it’s what you might suppose we have done right, but to such a degree that it’s become wrong. All species of animals except human beings are vulnerable to things like predators, territory and food. We have dealt with these problems, and this is reflected in our population size. Almost everything you see that is wrong with human society today can be traced to high density of population: from the carbon effect and climatic change, to the pollution of the seas, to our social evils.”

He is, indeed, a patron of the Optimum Population Trust. “I’ve been involved with that for years, yes. To me it is amazing to think that since I started working in television [in the early fifties as a production assistant on a programme called Animal, Mineral or Vegetable?] which doesn’t seem to me all that long ago, the popula-tion of the world has almost tripled”. He suddenly becomes animated here, as though he’s just seen a blue whale – “tripled! Three times as many people as when I was making those programmes only a few years ago. And it’s set to quadruple and quintuple! Now the planet is only of finite size. Perfectly clearly, it can’t go on forever. You can argue about whether it can go on for 100 years, or 50 years, or 5 years, I won’t engage on the argument there because I don’t have the figures, but I know as sure as anything that it can’t go on forever.”

But why is it wrong? “If you’re asking me about the moral perspec-tive, then I will find myself on thin ice, so I won’t venture into that territory. I don’t regard myself as a moralist in that sense. But I

know that every great religion in the world includes in it a respect for nature. Whether it’s St Francis in the Christian ethic, the Buddhist attitude to life, the Hindu views, and many a tribal religion, all revere the natural world and believe that it has a right to exist.”

And his view? “I know profoundly in my bones that if you ask me what I believe in, I believe that we are part of the natural world, and we should have a respect for it. Because of our own cleverness we have suddenly found in our hands the Promethean power to decimate our environment, to totally destroy it. I believe that we have a responsibility

to care for the rest of the world, and the animals and plants we share it with.”

In the closing stages of the interview I wanted to talk to Sir David about his remarkable life and career. “I’ve just been extraordi-narily lucky,” he tells me. “To go to Easter Island, to go to the Himala-yas, to swim on coral reefs: you couldn’t write it as more paradisal than I’ve had.”

Could he pick a highlight, from such an extraordinary life? He seems taken aback, and I apologise for asking such a ridiculously diffi-cult question. “If you require me to pick one, I will pick my first swim on a barrier reef. That is one of the most mind-blowing, transporting

experiences you can imagine. Apart from what you see, the fact that you are free of gravity, that you can move in any direction in three dimensions – any direction – up, down, sideways, you’ve just got to do that.” He gestures excitedly, scuba diving, as it were, around his living room. “What you’re seeing is a world of total fantasy, of astonishment, beauty and wonder. Governed, admittedly, by the sort of principles that you know as a biologist. You know what they are, but that they should have produced this fantasy, this wonderland. The first time you see it is, just, life shattering.”

What would he like his legacy to be? “Oh I’m not into legacies.” No? “No, because that implies that you are leaving something that belonged to you, something you created.” But, I suggest, he may have a legacy whether he wants one or not. “All right,” he says, deter-mined to quash my persistence with argument, “Let us accept that the programmes I’ve made have been popular. Let us even say they have been influential. If they have, and to that extent: it is because I have not got in the way between the camera and the animal too often, or too dominantly. I have been in a position to enable people to see things, but I’m not the thing, you know. My role is very much a minor one.”

Seeing, perhaps, that I’m uncon-vinced, he perseveres. “If you have anything to be thankful for, it’s that there were Reithian principles at the BBC,” he explains, alluding to John Reith, the BBC’s first Direc-tor-General who famously said that its role was to “inform, educate and entertain.” Sir David himself is a lifelong champion of public service broadcasting; as Controller of BBC Two in the 60s he pioneered colour television. “It has been my good

fortune,” he continues, “to work for this organisation. If I hadn’t done so, the BBC would have been doing natural history anyway. One can’t believe that there aren’t ten thousand people in a country of sixty million who couldn’t do the job as well, if not better, than me. So I don’t reckon much to a legacy.”

I tried to make the point that teaching us more than anyone else about the natural world, and engendering greater respect for it, must be enough for a legacy. But we agreed to disagree on that.

Friday October 9th 2009www.varsity.co.uk

Features editor: Zing [email protected]

Letter from Abroad

Madagascar

The first thing I learnt about Madagascar was that I was in the vast

majority in not knowing anything about it. Neverthe-less, I decided to go and spend my summer volunteering and travelling there with an organi-sation called The Dodwell Trust. I had very few expectations as to what Madagascar would be like. This turned out to be fortunate, as my expectations for my living quarters would probably have been much higher. As someone admittedly quite mothered, cleaning out the spider-ridden long-drop was a task many of my friends might have said I was completely incapable of. The first time I viewed the literal cess-pit that I was to utilise for the month, the future of my toilet trips looked very bleak indeed. However, if there is such a thing as an ideal period to overcome vanity and grow up, my five weeks in Madagascar was just that.

My volunteering, in the coastal town of Vatomandry, involved teaching English to as many overwhelmingly keen people as possible. I taught policemen, the military, the retired, students and toddlers and held a radio program. Many of my older students had already begun school or university courses in English, but had been forced to drop out early as they could not afford the fees – poverty was prevalent in almost everything I experienced in Madagascar. Money drives people in a way I had never seen so openly before. People even pay one another to be let out at a junction in the road. Such poverty, combined with continuous political problems and coups, plagues the Malagasy people. One stated,

“Every time we take a step towards improving our economic situation, political issues take us four steps back.”

Unfortunately, these problems overspill onto the spectacular landscape of Madagascar. I have never seen a more beautiful place, yet the rainforest is being systematically destroyed. To quote my guidebook, “My advice is to see Madagascar before the Malagasy finish with it.” My experience included the best – lemurs stealing my lunch – and the worst – contracting malaria. Go to Madagascar if you want a real adventure, and to learn a huge amount about a country deemed isolated and out of reach by so many. SOPHIE LLOYD

“I have been in a position to enable people to see things, but I'm not the thing, you know.”

My Life and Other Animals

1926 Born in London

1945 Studied geology and zoology at Clare College

1965 Controller of BBC Two

1969 BBC Television’s Director of Programmes

1979 'Life' series begins with Life

on Earth, which will run to 79 programmes

1985 Knighthood

2009 A type of Pitcher plant, Nepenthes attenboroughii, becomes the third species to be named in his honour.

At one with nature: "I know profoundly in my bones that if you ask me what I believe in, I believe that we are part of the natural world, and we should have a respect for it"

ALL PHOTOS BBC

Friday October 30th 2009www.varsity.co.uk

Magazine Editor: Laurie [email protected] Vulture13

“I have been trying to remember when I was last here,” begins Stephen Fry as he strolls on to the ADC stage.

“I think it was a Tudor, but it might have been a Plantagenet King.” This was the fi rst in a very long string of witticisms that kept the audience on their toes all afternoon. “I thought I’d come back,” he continues, “to talk to you about my time here at Cambridge. Particularly with respect to Drama: that fi ckle goddess who we all serve with such passion, commitment and sacrifi ce.”

Stephen’s career got off to a rocketing start back in 1981. He, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson were all in the Footlights tour show, The Cellar Tapes, which went on to win the fi rst ever Perrier Comedy Award and be televised by the BBC. I fi rst wonder whether having Hugh, Emma and him all up in Edinburgh felt like an extraordinary concentration of talent at the time.

“I don’t think so,” he replies, “for Hugh and I it never occurred to us that we could have a profession in… this business we call

‘show.’ I was content to stay here: growing tweed in the corner of some college with hair growing out of my nostrils by the age of 30. Hugh had a stranger ambition. He wanted to join the Hong Kong police force. He liked the ironed white shorts, and he’d read somewhere – this is very Hugh – that they were corrupt. He fancied himself going in and being the incorruptible shining light of the Hong Kong police force.” Lucky for us, then, that neither pursued these dreams; surely a parallel universe containing

hairy-nostrilled-Fry and Hong-Konger-police-cadet-Laurie would be a somewhat impoverished version of our own.

“So no,” he goes on, “at the time it just doesn’t occur to you that you’re anything special. Because many of you grew up with us on your screens, we don’t seem like ordinary people. But, believe me, we are. Except,” he pauses mischievously, “I never go to the lavatory.”

(continued overleaf)

Feast your fangs in this, Darcy: Austen gets bloody butchered.

Reviews p24 Arts p22VultureArts, Features, ReviewsVulture

Do you still remember? Let Bloc Party take you back to your teens.

Full English Fry UpStephen Fry is nothing short of a national treasure. Joel Massey chairs an audience with the star of fi lm, television and Twitter at the ADC. He hears about Hugh Laurie, cynicism and the ‘living salmon’ that is success

JOHNNY BOYLAN

“I was content to stay here: growing tweed in the corner of some college with hair growing out of my nostrils by the age of 30”: Stephen Fry on living the academic life

Making a movie on a 45 pound budget isn’t just difficult, it’s pretty much

impossible. Yet, as Marc Price, Welsh-born director of what is probably the cheapest film to ever premiere at Cannes, cheerfully admits: “We spent most of it on very cheap tea and biscuits. But only on Sundays, because most people were hung-over and needed

sugar.” Sainsbury’s Basics? This is Moviemaking Basics, and it’s helped Colin, one of the first ever zombie films told from a zombie’s perspec-tive, net an enormous amount of buzz.

Colin is an odd beast of a film: it follows its zombie protagonist as he shambles around Tooting, London, and records his interaction with his terrified victims and horrified,

still-human family who try their best to ‘rescue’ their erstwhile son. It combines scenes of slapstick humour (Colin confusedly trying to escape a kitchen), extremely surreal tenderness (his aghast family weeping over their undead son) and incredible violence (achieved with a lot of golden syrup, red food colouring and hot water, according to the director). Critics have called it ‘oddly touch-ing’. “We wanted Colin to have a lot of heart,” Price says. “We live in relatively enlightened times. Slapping a label on something as either bad or good doesn’t wash with audiences. We wanted to take a character that people would look at and say ‘bad’ and give him more emotional, complex layers.”

Price advertised for zombies on Facebook, looked for volun-teer make-up artists on industry websites, ground pasta shells to imitate the sound of bones snapping, and taught himself sound design, all in between working for a London courier company. For the past year and a half, Price had been answering phones on the night shift while editing together the movie on an old version of Adobe Premiere. In fact, the judicious use of shakycam (as used in The Blair Witch Project), was intended to not only hide the poor quality of his dad’s ten-year-old Panasonic camcorder (“it had a lower resolu-tion than a mobile phone”), but also to his friends’ “crappy acting”.

Hearing Price talk about Colin is not unlike hearing your best mate chat excitedly about a project conceived in the pub over too many beers.

Price, however, is reluctant to take credit for a movie he conceived and nursed to life: “the one thing I’m determined we shouldn’t have is ego. We’re making stuff to enter-tain”. The ‘we’ is Price’s production company, Nowhere Fast, made up of him and his friends, although there is no question that Colin is essentially Price’s unique creation. Price, however, demurs, saying he owes an enormous amount to the volunteers and friends kind enough to come along– although one suspects that getting to pretend to be a zombie and eat people’s brains was a very big factor in attracting people to turn up. Who doesn’t love a bit of brain food?

While Price had directed two short films before and has a design degree from Swansea Institute of Higher Education, he’s never come this close to the big time. Colin was first shown at Abbatoir, a Welsh horror film festival, which caught the eye of his current agent, Helen Grace. Grace admits that she cancelled the meeting she had the next day and instead stayed up all night watching it. It was also Grace who suggested going to the Cannes Film Festival this summer. Price himself spent the entire showing in a bar, drinking nervously: “I couldn’t stomach people walking

out.” A few months later distribu-tion companies like Pathé were fighting over the “cheap little camcorder movie” the director expected only his friends and “a few horror bloggers” to watch. As we speak, he’s actually editing together extras for the DVD release and preparing for another horror film festival.

“It should always be about the content, the characters, the story – not the technical quality.” Colin isn’t just a triumph of British budget filmmaking at its best. Its construction also has an undeni-able whiff of feel-good community spirit about it – who knew that zombies could bring so many people together, and for free?

What do he and Laurie lend each other in their famous collaborations? “Yes, well, Emma introduced us. She said you’ve got to go and meet this Old Etonian chap Hugh. So she took me to his rooms at Selwyn, and he was there with a guitar in his hand. He said,

‘I’m writing this song, but I’m a bit stuck.’ We did some lyrics together, finished the song and then right away he said, ‘Now let’s write a sketch.’ And this was before I’d had a cup of tea or anything!” You get the sense Fry is still a little put out at this appalling affront. “That was our first meeting,” he continues, “and from then I was absorbed into the Footlights. After Cambridge we did A Bit of Fry and Laurie.”

The 1987-95 BBC sketch show is, along with Jeeves and Wooster, perhaps one of Fry and Laurie’s most renowned collaborations. “We’d set ourselves a hard task, because we felt that every sketch should be a new one. We hadn’t realised the cunning Harry Enfield/Fast Show/Little Britain technique of doing the same seven sketches every half hour. But,” he says, with just ever so slightly feigned sincerity, “that’s no criticism on these magnificent comedy enterprises.”

Was his background with Footlights a burden when he was first starting out? “It sort of was. People always say, ‘Footlights are shit this year, have you heard?’ ‘Oh yeah,

I heard they’re shit too.’ It’s the same every year. When we had our show in Edinburgh we could overhear people saying that in the street.”

Check out The Cellar Tapes on YouTube, and you can see for yourself that Footlights were anything but shit in 1981. “You feel hated,” he explains, “you feel hated because you’re at Oxbridge for a start. The real advantage of going to Oxbridge is that you never have to deal with not having gone. Being one of those people who say, ‘Yeeeah I thought of Oxford,’ ‘I’m sooo glad I never got in to Cambridge.’ Of course it’s meaning-less: there are people here who are so stupid that you wonder, not just how they got in to Cambridge, but how they manage to sit the right way on the lavatory! So yes, there’s always a bit of that with Oxbridge and Footlights.”

At this point I invite the audience to jump in, and one of the members is immediately inquisitive: “You’ve said you have a need to please, but at Cambridge you did a huge number of shows: so how did you manage to please any of your supervisors?”

“Well,” Fry recounts, “fortunately doing English I didn’t have to go to any lectures. I was a master of going to the UL at the last minute and finding an essay on Middlemarch from some literary quarterly. My supervisor would say, ‘Such a profoundly good essay on Middlemarch,’ and there’d be a little voice inside me saying, ‘Ha ha, I haven’t read it!’ I didn’t do so well with dissertations, but I could swing through an exam like nobody’s business.”

Somebody then chirps up with: “Do you

ever want, instead of doing lots of things really well, to do one thing really brilliantly?” “That’s very tactful of you,” Stephen immedi-ately ripostes, putting his famed razor sharp wit to use. The audience member explained that he was a student playwright himself, and asked: “How do you move from doing stuff here at a very small level, to doing stuff on a much larger scale?”

“Don’t be cynical,” Fry replies, “don’t think it’s about the world and corporate structures. Put your effort in to your friendships. Find your sense of humour, your political anger, or whatever you want to do. In a strange way, success is like,” here, Fry pauses, “a living salmon; the harder you hold on, the further it flies from your grasp.” Aside from fish-based analogies, Fry feels luck to have attended the University. “I’ve been very fortunate: and this place, this place within this place, this very Theatre, has had a lot to do with it. The friendships I forged here have continued to this day. So do focus on your lives and your friendships, because that’s where the answers lie, in my opinion.”

In a place that can often feel so stiflingly obsessed with success in the negative sense (which teams do you play for? How many plays have you been in? What grade did you get?), it was refreshing to hear one of Cambridge’s most illustrious alumni rubbish-ing such cynicism.

Stephen Fry’s visit to the ADC last week was part of Upstaged, the ADC Theatre and Committee’s new programme of workshops and events. To find out more go to www.adctheatre.com/upstaged.

Friday October 30th 2009www.varsity.co.uk

Features Editor: Zing [email protected]

Fry Me to the Moon

1957 Born in Hampstead

1977 Studies English at Queens’ College

1986 First series of A Bit of Fry and Laurie

1993 His first novel, The Liar, published

2003 Begins presenting QI

2006 His first documentary, The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, wins an Emmy

2008 Travels across all 50 US states in

Stephen Fry in America

2010 Will be starring in Tim

Burton’s adapta-tion of Alice In

Wonderland

Colin star Alex Kirton as the titular flesh-eater.

“The real advantage of going to Oxbridge is that you never have to deal with not having gone”

MJ

KIM

45 Pounds LaterColin, the latest zombie hair-raiser was made on an all-time low budget. Zing Tsjeng finds out how from director Marc Price

Marc Price filming with the assorted undead, yesterday.

Wednesday June 16th 2010www!vars"ty!co!uk

News Ed!tor" Charlo#e Runc!e and Natasha Pesarannews@vars"ty!co!uk NE$S INTERVIE$ 7

“There was a knock on my door at midnight,” begins Moazzam Begg as he recounts his story to me to

me down a crackling phone line. “I answered it to find a group of people,” he continues, “un-uniformed and un-identified. A gun was put to my head. They put a hood over me and carried me off into the back of a vehicle.”

This happened in Pakistan on 31st January 2002. It was the beginning of an ordeal that lasted until 25th January 2005 when, as Begg later says, he was “released without charge, without a trial and without an explanation.”

Begg is a British citizen, brought up in an ordinary middle class family in Birmingham. He moved to Afghanistan in the summer of 2001 with his wife and three children. He was there to “continue a project we started in the UK, to build a school for girls in Kabul.”

Air raids after 9/11 led him to flee with his family to Pakistan. There he was arrested by Pakistani officials and taken to two US-run detention facilities in Afghanistan, first Kanda-har, then Bagram.

“That’s where the brutality began,” he recalls. “I was stripped naked; punched, kicked and dragged in the mud; dogs were brought so close I could feel their saliva dripping on my

back; my hair and beard shaved off so I couldn’t even recognise myself in the mirror.”

In February 2003 he was moved to the now infamous Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba. Begg says that there he “remained in a cell measuring eight feet by six feet, isolated from any other human being, except guards and interrogators for 2 years.” Was he never allowed out of his cell? “Only for something they called ‘recreation’. This meant walking around in a fifteen square feet caged area outside.” Begg tells me he was only allowed to do this for fifteen minutes twice a week.

So, what was an ‘average’ day like in Guantan-amo Bay? “For me, as a Muslim, it would begin with dawn prayer, which was a welcome break from the monotony of the rest of the day. Then there was a very bland, very minimal meal served for breakfast, pushed through what they call a ‘bean hole’. And that’s it. For the rest of the day I would walk around in my cell: three steps forward and three steps back.” After a pause, he sums up life at Guantanamo by simply saying, “nothing happens.”

I wonder what his relationship was like with his captors, and am taken aback by the magnanimity of his reply. “Some of them were very decent people. Some of those people are still my friends to this day; we’re friends on facebook in fact. Two American soldiers have come to the UK and toured with me, talking about our opposite experiences.”

Moving away from his experiences in Guantanamo Bay, I felt I had to ask which of his actions might have alerted the suspicion of the US and Pakistani authorities in the first place. “Well,” he says, “the Americans had offered bounties of thousands of dollars on any foreign Muslims who happened to be in a certain region of southern Pakistan at the time.” But was he not once at a militant Islamic training camp? “I went in 1993, yes. But they didn’t know that at the time, it wasn’t one of the reasons for my arrest.” Yet why visit such a camp in the first place? “Well, tens of thousands of people were going to these camps. It was seen as quite normal. Remember they were funded by American and British money. Now we think these places are all about terrorism, but they weren’t seen like that then. It was completely different.”

In the later stages of the interview I want to hear Begg’s views on the broader politi-cal context surrounding Guantanamo Bay. Has the new US administration made any progress? “Obama began his presidency by saying that he’d close Guantanamo, close secret detention sites and stop torture. In reality, what’s happened is that there are still 180 people in Guantanamo Bay; still military detention sites dotted around the world and proxy detention is still taking place. That’s where countries known to be abusers of human rights are befriended by the United States in order to allow for the outsourcing of torture.

More disturbingly still,” he continues, “Obama has begun a policy of targeted assas-sinations: simply extra-judicial killings, sanctioned by the very highest authorities.”

Why does he think they have decided on such a course of action? “It’s almost as if it’s more expedient and efficient, rather than to detain people for years and earn public scrutiny as a result, to simply kill them. That’s what’s happening.”

Perhaps most interesting of all was Begg’s view that, not only have we not really moved forwards since the Bush years, but that in some ways Obama has taken us backwards. “Bush was an openly combative President. He didn’t explicitly endorse torture, but he talked about ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ and everyone knew what he meant. Obama is more dangerous in a sense because he says all the right words and speaks the right language.

He uses the language of reconciliation with the Muslim world, but in reality there hasn’t been much change at all.”

Finally, I ask when he thinks we might see the closure of Guantanamo Bay. “If you see Guantanamo now it’s like a small American town. So much financial investment has gone into it; tens of millions of dollars just in build-ing the state of the art prisons. You’ve got McDonald’s, KFC and everything else you’d find in a normal American town. All of this has been built on site at Guantanamo for use by the soldiers, guardsmen, interrogators and support staff. I don’t see it closing anytime in the future, whether it is ten years or more: Guantanamo is here to stay.”

“I was stripped naked; punched, kicked and dragged in the mud; dogs were brought so close I could feel their saliva dripping on my back; my hair and beard shaved off so I couldn’t even recognise myself in the mirror.”

Moazzam Begg: Obama is “more dangerous” than BushJoel Massey talks to former Guantanamo Bay deta!nee Moazzam Begg about Obama, McDonald’s and l!fe !ns!de the world’s most notor!ous detent!on fac!l!ty

Guantanamo Bay detent!on camp, Cuba

Parkinson on ParkinsonEARLIER THIS TERM, A BRAVE JOEL MASSEY AGREED TO INTERVIEW PROFESSIONAL QUESTIONER SIR MICHAEL PARKINSON LIVE AT THE UNION. PARKY OPENED UP ABOUT THE HEROES AND VILLAINS OF THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY

Sir Michael Parkinson has, by his own estimation, interviewed 2000 of the

world’s most famous people. So it was with some trepidation that I went to in-terview him in front of a packed Cham-ber at !e Union earlier this term.

I had last heard of Parky in the news back in April with regard to an article he had written on Jade Goody for !e Radio Times. “I said that she came to represent all that is wretched about Britain today,” Sir Michael explains. “I was making a statement about what I perceive television like Big Brother is doing to our society. But then, I would not pay to see the elephant man, I would not pay to see the lunatics at Bedlam, and I would not pay to see the bearded lady. Why should we sit and watch a gang of freaks? When they cast Big Brother they don’t cast the "rst people who come through the door, they cast people with psychological problems so they can put them in a room and laugh at them through a spy hole. I don’t "nd that edifying.... And if we can’t see the correlation between putting Jade Goody up as a role model and what happens on our streets on a Saturday night then we’re da#er than I thought we were. We, as people who work in television, should think about the consequences of what we’re doing.”

I asked if, more generally, he felt that there was something pernicious about celebrity culture. “It’s just futile,” he replied in a saddened tone. “I mean, what is this sense in wanting to be recognised? You walk down the street and people say, ‘Ooh, look at him,’ but for what reason? Of course you become famous if you appear on stage, television or whatever, but that should never be your reason for being there. Anyone who does something just to be famous has got a screw loose. !at’s the problem with these poor devils in the Big Brother house. When they come out what are they other than famous? And where are they now?”

Living in Australia with Nasty Nick, I suggested. “!at reminds me,” he con-tinued, “I was in a restaurant in London when I saw a man sitting in the corner turned round and staring at the wall. I asked somebody, and it turned it out he was Nasty Nick from the "rst series of Big Brother, facing the wall because he didn’t want to be recognised. It hadn’t occurred to him that this would attract even more attention.”

Later I moved to discuss Sir Michael’s accomplished television career. In my research, I had found an interesting quotation in which he revealed that,

although he cannot choose a ‘favourite’ interviewee, he can say without hesita-

tion that the most remarkable person he has interviewed was Muhammad Ali.

“I was very lucky,” he explained to me in person, “because in 1971 when I "rst started doing the talk show Muhammad Ali was coming into his prime. I interviewed him four times in the next eleven years and chronicled not only the success of an extraordi-nary career and a great champion, but also his decline. In the last interview I did with him in 1982, though we didn’t know it at the time, he was at the very beginning of his decline into Parkinson’s. What was interesting was that I asked Ali if he was frightened of becoming one of those guys you see at every boxing event with dead eyes and cauli$ower ears. He got angry with me, but even then I could see in his eyes a change from the man I’d met eleven years ago. He fought twice more a#er that, the consequence of which is the man we see today.”

Moving on from the people he did interview, I asked if he had a one-that-got-away. “Frank Sinatra,” he responded quickly. “He was the greatest star of the twentieth century and the best singer of popular songs there has ever been, and I’ll "ght anyone who says otherwise. I got near him once at a cocktail party. A friend of mine, the songwriter Sammy Cahn, had taken me out to meet Frank Sinatra. Sammy said that if I met him and he knew who I was he might do a show next time he was in England. I was introduced to him, he said, ‘Mike, how are you?’, and I said, ‘Fine, Mr Sinatra, how are you?’ !en Sammy le# and as I didn’t know anybody at the party I thought I might as well go. Before I did I "gured I should say goodbye to my new best friend. I went over and said, ‘Mr Sinatra, I’m going now,’ and he said, ‘Good to meet you, David.’ From then on I had a feeling things wouldn’t work out.”

My "nal question was unimaginative, but I felt I had to ask Parky to single out one or two more of the people he had met in the course of his career. “Man-dela was always a great hero of mine,” he began, “especially as I was quite active as a journalist during apartheid. I was actually banned from South Africa for a while, but then I was allowed to go back when Mandela was out, and I met the great man. I’m not mystical at all, but there are people you meet who have a certain personality, a force or willpower within them. I don’t know what it is, but even when your back is turned, you know they’ve walked into the room. Ali had it, Billy Connolly has

it, Richard Burton had it and Mandela certainly has it.”

Unsurprisingly, however, not eve-ryone has the immediate charisma of a Muhammad Ali or a Billy Connolly. One interviewee with whom Parkinson failed to ‘connect’ was Meg Ryan. “She walked out on the show,” Parkinson says, “and I don’t know what it was. I mean, she just didn’t like me, and I didn’t like her. I don’t know what is wrong with her.” Parkinson pauses here to laugh, and the audience giggles appreciatively. “A wonderful interview when you say, ‘I don’t know what was wrong with her. It wasn’t my fault,” Parkinson reassures us. “It comes to a point when, because the consensual deal is gone, all you can do is wrap it up, basically, because you know you’re getting nowhere.”

But luckily, this only happens rela-tively rarely. !e interviews that truly

stand out for Parkinson are the ones in which the interviewees lived up to their impressive reputations. “!at was the

great joy of doing my job,” Parkinson concludes. “I got to meet my heroes – and they didn’t disappoint.”

“IF WE CAN’T SEE THE CORRELATION BETWEEN PUTTING JADE GOODY UP AS A ROLE MODEL AND WHAT HAPPENS ON OUR STREETS ON A SATURDAY NIGHT THEN WE’RE DAFTER THAN I THOUGHT WE WERE.”

1 Number of years since Parkinson was knighted

2 Number of O-Levels Parkinson achieved before leaving school (English and Art)

361 Number of editions of ‘Parkinson’ Sir Michael created

2,000 Approximate number of celebrities Parkinson has inter- viewed

12.5 million Number of viewers who watched the 1997 special ‘BBC’s Auntie’s All Time Greats’, hosted by Parkinson

Parky by Numbers

11FeaturesMay Week Editors: Joel Massey, Emma Mustich & Avantika [email protected]

A GUEST AT PETERHOUSE SAID: “!e food was abysmal, but at the same time the atmosphere was fantastic.” !At a Ball? Text ‘Varsity’ + your thoughts to 07797 800 300*

Monday June 15th 2009varsity.co.uk