With effortless charm and less than perfect English, Arnold Schwarzenegger explains how he undermines his opponents in the 1975 Mr Olympia contest: “Franco is pretty smart, but Franco’s a child. He comes to me for advices. So it’s not hard for me to give him the wrong advices.”

Pumping Iron follows several bodybuilders in the run-up to the non-professional ‘Mr Universe’ and professional ‘Mr Olympia’ competitions. These were judged in Zoolander-esque ‘pose-offs;’ perfect physical symmetry and muscle definition being the goal. However, far from a montage of sweaty gym and Herculean weightlifting scenes (though there are many), the documentary provides an in-depth account of the personal backgrounds of and the psychological one-upmanship between the competitors. Schwarzenegger’s charisma and political savvy outshone his rivals as brightly as his superior physique, and thereafter shot him to worldwide fame.

To up the emotional ante, clear villains and heroes are cast in each competition, and classic American ‘characters’ identified. Women fawn over Arnie: the American dream. Heartbreaking stories of Michael Katz’s childhood bullying and devotion to his own children render his crushing defeat by ‘baddie’ Ken Waller infinitely more affecting.

In the most powerful scene of the film, Schwarzenegger describes how he informed his mother over the phone that he would not attend his father’s funeral so that he might continue to exercise unencumbered by mourning. Though elsewhere it clearly exaggerates for dramatic effect, Pumping Iron remains a documentary masterpiece.

Considering that the Top 50 is nominally a list of people who have made a significant contribution, it is especially cogent that students wanted to nominate Nightline. If asked I couldn’t recall the name of one member- it does not cultivate celebrity. They are not ‘campus legends’. I confess to some relief that the voting body had the sense to distinguish between supplying free sexual health provisions and an unbiased listening service over that of being tagged in the most debauched photos on facebook.

The doctor didn’t believe she had a problem, despite the conspicious scars

I’ve heard mixed reviews of Nightline. However its merit is thrown into favourable perspective when compared to professional services. As an insomniac patron of the University Health Centre, I have frequently found myself attempting to condense the reasons why I find it difficult to sleep to fit the thirty seconds of patient-doctor time. Should I mention stress, rather than take a glance at my file (veritably bursting with causes), I am asked with an air of scepticism why I ‘think’ I am stressed, thus forced to gallop business-style through highly personal and painful events under the bored gaze of the doctor in question. I am offered no advice, and in a bid to salvage some degree of benefit from the experience I sometimes ask for a note to be sent to my department. A friend who has suffered from severe depression and self harm for years asked for a prescription for antidepressants, in the past the treatment which had been most effective. The doctor didn’t believe she had a problem, despite the conspicuous scars across her arms which screamed of issues to be addressed and mine of evidence on her file. Compare this to a non-judgemental ear and unlimited listening time, and Nightline wins easily. Obviously members can’t give prescriptions or make referrals (though neither apparently can the Health Centre unless it is dragged out of them), but it is clear why students felt that Nightline deserved recognition. Students need support, and they’re finding it most amongst themselves.

If your taste in films tends towards the subtle, look away now. With the obvious exception of Sex and the City, Prince of Persia may be the least original film to grace our screens this year. If you have seen Aladdin and/or Pirates of the Caribbean, which we can safely assume 99.9% of the University population has, then you have seen Prince of Persia. The film opens with a dusty desertscape, and in a dated font we are informed that ‘some are born great’ (or something like that). Cut to a bustling ancient city. As my companion immediately piped: “It’s Agrabah”. There’s even a chase scene instigated by apple theft- you can picture the boardroom: “F*** it, it worked the first time.”

Though the plot is standard Disney (peasant becomes prince, prince gets framed for murder, prince teams up with beautiful princess to save the world from the apocalyptic ambitions of the actual murderer, plus some time travel), there is much fun to be had with PoP. Gyllenhaal, his appalling mockney accent notwithstanding, makes a decent hero, and Arteton a feisty and at times hilarious love interest. There are moments of joy to be had in the sheer stupidity of it, for example the moment when Prince Dastan (Gyllenhaal) discovers the magical dagger which turns back time: “You mean this dagger has the power to turn back time?” “Yes.” “So what you’re saying is that using this dagger I can actually travel backwards to a few minutes ago?” “Yes.” “So this dagger…” etc.

Taken with a pinch of salt, PoP is a swashbuckling riot of a movie. There is no pretense that it is really intended for anyone over the age of fourteen. Every time a ‘mystical’ object appears on screen it is accompanied by suitably ‘mystical’ music. The desire to stay true to the original video game is evinced by Prince Dastan’s partiality for jumping on/off things at every conceivable opportunity- roughly fifty percent of Gyllenhaal’s screen time is spent in mid-air. Yet the carefree abandon with which the (thankfully talented) cast tackle their maladroit roles is to be admired. There are some gems of actual wit in the script, and the shamelessly misogynist undertone comes off funny rather than crude “Do you really need another wife?”. For those wound tight by the stress of finals, or simply in need of a little escapism, Prince of Persia is the perfect antidote.

Self-harm is a secretive condition, smothered under long sleeves and trousers which hide the telltale signs. For something that most people probably find impossible to understand, it is not uncommon. According to the Royal Institute of Psychiatry (RCP), about one in ten young people will self harm at some point. That’s equivalent to two or three people in every secondary school classroom in the country, and it’s four times more likely to affect girls than boys. The RCP also says that gay or bisexual people appear to be more prone to self harm. People who self harm are not mentally ill; however they still desperately need help.

I spoke separately to Lily (above) and Amy, both successful undergraduate students about this addiction which has plagued them since they were young girls. Amy, a first year, has kept her habit secret from her parents since she started to cut herself aged 12.

“I’ve been doing it for eight years and my family has no idea. I wouldn’t have the heart to tell them. I first started self-harming when I was in secondary school, mainly because I was being bullied and had a very negative self image. I thought anything I did to myself, no matter how much it hurt, could only be an improvement.”

There is not always a clear trigger or reason that someone begins to self- harm. Unlike Amy, Lily cannot pinpoint a cause, or even remember the first time she cut herself, just the surge of emotion which lay behind it: “I don’t think it was ever a conscious decision of, I’m going to sit down and cut myself, it was more feelings of so much pent up anger inside of me and that I just had to let it out. I don’t remember the exact time or the exact moment, but I used to use my nails and it was just a form of release when I was just so frustrated and so angry with myself that all I could do was just attack myself, there was no other option”.

The methods self harmers use to attack themselves are varied and inventive, and all deeply personal to each individual. They range from hair pulling, to burning, bone breaking and interference with wound healing (like picking out the stitches from previous cuts). The most common form is cutting. Like a drug, what ‘works’ at first can soon cease to achieve the desired effect. Lily started self harming using the most basic instrument she had, her own nails, before she “progressed onto knives and razor blades” after a month or so. The ‘ritual’ becomes commonplace, and what would once have been taboo broken. She explains:

“When it becomes more of an established thing – when you realise that you need this to keep yourself going, to keep yourself feeling human – then you start thinking more inventively, more creatively… yeah you just think, I could use this, I could use this. It’s quite a morbid process really”

The secrecy which Lily managed to maintain for a period helped her to justify her actions; if no-one knew, no-one but her was suffering, so no damage was done. The damage she did herself doesn’t appear to have factored in her reasoning at the time. Her own pain didn’t matter, as long as those around her were shielded from it.

“I didn’t want to stop for a very long time, because I felt like I deserved it, like it was a way in which I could keep on going because I’d punished myself, therefore I was more worthy. I was allowed to keep going because I’d already cut myself or scratched myself. And because no one knew about it it wasn’t affecting anyone except myself, it didn’t matter. So it wasn’t really anything I thought of stopping”
It seems that self harmers, by their very nature, suffer from low self esteem. Another recurring emotion is anger, anger which cannot apparently be released in any other form than that of physical pain, and isolation, meaning there doesn’t appear to be anywhere else to turn. Self harm is almost a literal manifestation of self hatred; the self that they believe is worthless must suffer as punishment for its shortcomings. Self harmers typically have difficulty controlling their immediate impulses, and don’t see themselves as ‘empowered’ enough to do so anyway. This makes resistance when the urge to harm takes over far more difficult than a person who has never experienced it might imagine.

Ironically those who suffer are frequently high achievers – clever, popular, and talented, those whom others would least suspect of having problems, or indeed deserve any form of ‘punishment’, physical or otherwise. By way of illustration, Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Colin Farrell, Christina Ricci and Courtney Love have all spoken openly about their own experiences of self harm, and countless other celebrities (such as the late Princess Diana) are known to have self harmed at one time or another. For some self-harmers the desire to maintain their high standards can make anything less than the absolute best appear inadequate and thus a failure. It is this failure for which they do penitence in the form of their abuse. Lily explains the difficulty in letting go of these feelings:

“It’s been a lot better in the last year, but there are still situations where I feel bad about myself. If I’ve done something wrong, if I’ve had an argument with someone, if I’d upset someone, if haven’t achieved academically how I wanted I get the same feelings of intense anger and hatred. It all comes back again and it’s just this absolutely overwhelming sense loathing and you can’t get rid of it any other way unless you cut yourself, nothing else will do.”

Although harmers gain some temporary ‘relief’ from their habit, the practise itself can perpetuate the very feelings of inadequacy which led them to self harm in the first place. Amy described this conflict: “There is usually a feeling of immense relief while doing the cut. There is something stimulating about taking control of your pain and your feelings. It’s also a very personal thing, something no-one ever has to see. Afterwards the guilt and shame generally take over. Usually the pain doesn’t bother me, but sometimes it can be unbearable, making you feel stupid on top of everything else.”

The stigma which surrounds self harm makes it still harder for anyone suffering to come forward and seek help, the fear of shattering the carefully cultivated image of coping the cost of admitting you’re not, seem too great. Lily is in her third year, and has also been self harming since she was 12. Her family have known about her habit almost from the beginning.

“My Mum knew I was depressed and I was having therapy at the time. The therapists asked me quite straight up, did I self-harm, and I said yes. They obviously told my Mum and she was aware about it, but I hid it. As the problem got worse she began to realise that I was getting worse and she started checking me every night before I went to bed. My main focus points were my wrists and my shoulders, and she used to check these every night to see whether I’d done it or not.”

Looking back, Lily is appalled by the thought of what her mother must have gone through. “Watching her daughter deliberately physically abuse herself over and over is just absolutely horrific to contemplate. At first she never let it show that it upset her, she was very functional about it. She’d do the checks and if she found something, she’d just ask me for the razor and take it away. Then as it went on she used to get more and more upset by it.”

Amy has never told her family, however her boyfriend is aware of her habit, and this has caused a great deal of tension within their relationship: “My boyfriend knows because he’s seen most of the scars, but this makes it very hard because its just another reason to feel guilty. We often have arguments about it, which drives me to want to cut again, so its like a vicous circle. I wish I could make him understand but I don’t think he ever will. He sees it as almost an insult when I do it.”

It is amazing nevertheless how much can pass over people’s heads- and how easy it is to hide self harming. I spoke to a girlfriend of Amy’s and the question of self harm came up. Amy’s friend agreed that it was certainly a tragedy that it was so widespread, however blithely added “At least I no-one I know is suffering, that would be so awful”. Lily agrees that it is all too easy to hide the fact that you’re injuring yourself- particularly at university, so full of distractions that an unmentioned problem can go conveniently unnoticed: “I remember going into my room and just falling to pieces, and then I’d come out again and be happy and my housemates would never know.”

Even more worrying is when, as, in Amy’s case, even those closest to them cannot (or perhaps will not) see what is right in front of them. “Occasionally my mum has seen scars and I’ve made excuses, which she has always believed.”

It is incredibly difficult to ask for help as a self harmer. Understandably, there is a fear of being judged, that one might lose the respect of everyone who thought that you functioned so well. The feelings which surround self harm – of isolation, inadequacy, and hypersensitivity to rejection, are exactly the type to prevent the kind of trust and confidence necessary to open up. Amy says: “Of course there is a social stigma around it. Emo anyone? I listen to metal and wear black. This is one of the reasons to keep it hidden. There is a massive sense of shame and guilt that it is hard enough letting people you’re close to know or see, let alone people who will judge you.”

Student life can make coping with an existing problem still harder; starting at university putting further pressure on someone already bowed under the weight of old stresses. Familiar support systems are gone; everyone is a stranger, and taking care of yourself on top of a degree workload can make maintaining standards still harder.

“I didn’t have the protective environment of my school any more. My first term was great and I had a really good time, but then in second term things got way more difficult. You get over that initial excitement of being a Fresher and going out all the time and you have to settle down, do work, make real friends. For the first time in a long time I started doing it again.”

She is adamant however, that if students suspect that a housemate or friend is self-harming, then they should not ignore their instincts. “People do it because they want help. Self-harm isn’t suicide, it’s a way of staying alive and it’s a coping mechanism. But there’s obviously something fundamentally wrong that makes a person do this to themselves. So if someone was to actively go up and say to them, ‘Is everything alright?’, then that can be the trigger for them to admit that no, everything isn’t right. I need help”.

It is naturally the people emotionally closest who can be of most help to self harmers in the initial stages of seeking further aid; however the responsibility is not with them to offer a ‘cure’ or become a counsellor. Lily stresses: “There are a lot of welfare systems in place, but students can be so anonymous. They also require the student to actively seek support, and if the student doesn’t do that and people have noticed that things are wrong, they need to be the ones who go to alert the welfare systems and then someone who is trained in welfare can go and speak to them and explain that they just want to know that they’re alright. But it’s making that first point of contact, and it’s then that friends can be so important. If people have gone to so much effort to hide it from their own families, they’re not going to open up to a doctor, it will be someone they can actually relate to.

Amy has never sought medical help. “But there have been times when I should have. I now have a scar across my stomach which is about 5mm wide and looks hideous. If I had sought help it might have healed a lot quicker, and not be as bad as it is now.”

Definitely done a good job getting back on the horse. I hate to sound immodest, but I really am the fucking master. Literally one facebook chat, one meet up, and it’s pants off, wham bam and you know the rest. I hope she tells her friends. I have a feeling she knows Alicia. She’ll hear all about what she’s missing out on, not that I give a shite obviously, that’s ancient history. Still, be good. I’ll just check and see if they’re facebook friends, then if I write on Sarah’s wall Alicia will see. Perfect. Shit, what can I say without it implying that I want to meet up with her again? Not that it wasn’t good but I am a free agent now, got oats to sow, can’t be depriving the many, many other women out there a piece of the master. I’ll drop her a text in a coupla days, let her down easy. Don’t envy her, she’s had a taste of magic now, probably absolutely gagging for more. Weird she hasn’t texted me by now- probably playing it cool bless her. She was a bit odd in the morning now I think about it, didn’t seem especially keen to hang about long. Probably still reeling from the magnificence of what she had just experienced.

I will admit, it does still rather irk me that Alicia got there first. Not that it really makes a difference, if I’d dumped her the result would obviously have been the same, but being given the boot is hardly ideal in term of one’s public image. Course I told everyone that I was being kind and allowing her to maintain a sense of dignity by letting her do the deed- which is entirely true, of course. She may be fit (though I reckon she’s gotten a bit hefty over the summer, and the tan definitely doesn’t suit her). I actually think monogamy’s unnatural at this stage of my life, I’m twenty one, and I’m not wasting the last precious years of youth on one person.

Was getting a bit bored waiting to be honest. Had to display some emotion obvs, act the part n all, but it was all part of the plan. And there’s nothing like a good sympathy fuck.

Initiation rituals or ‘hazings’ have been around as long as universities themselves. Upon entry into a society, new members undergo a series of tasks or challenges designed to foster group camaraderie. These are often unpleasant and occasionally degrading in the extreme. Common themes include alcohol, nudity, vandalism and subsequent arrest. Students usually take part in order to demonstrate their allegiance to a particular society or sport’s team- their willingness to accept degradation and embarrassment serving as proof of their fervour. As a rule, the more exclusive the society or club, the more extreme the hazing. The secrecy surrounding these rituals creates fertile ground for hearsay; stories with which older students can shock, excite and intimidate the new and innocent in equal measure.

Practices range from the relatively tame to the downright dangerous. In 2006 18 year-old University of Exeter student Gavin Britton died from alcohol poisoning having consumed four vodkas, three pints of cider, a glass of wine and numerous sambucas before downing a pint of spirits as part of his initiation into the University golf club. Even this lamentable incident has not halted the widespread custom of putting new members (predominantly freshers) through their paces with demeaning rites of passage. To be granted membership of The University of Cambridge University men’s drinking society ‘The Wyverns’, candidates must consume a 15 course dinner including a pig’s snout covered in wasabi, and a pint of water with a live goldfish swimming in it. If the goldfish is regurgitated and still alive, prospective members may skip the following two courses.

Tragedies like that of Gavin Britton have led to a clamping down on University initiations in recent years. Gloucestershire University launched a formal investigation in 2008 following the release of video footage showing students being marched through the streets by a man in a Nazi uniform and lined up against a wall before several vomited. Another segment of the video, which was filmed by Natalie Sutton, a broadcast journalism student at the university, showed a group being forced to exercise furiously under the observation of men wearing black t-shirts. Hannah, a first year, tells me: “My friend at Newcastle didn’t join the rugby team, because new rugby players have to drink out of used bins and shoes. Also people are sometimes dared to dive into shallow rivers – he just didn’t want to take the chance.”

Reassuringly, it doesn’t appear to be the case that sports hopefuls at York must undergo tortuous initiations in order to be accepted onto the teams. Tom Weir, York Rugby Club Press and Publicity officer commented: “We can’t use the phrases ‘initiation’ or ‘hazing now, they’ve really clamped down. It’s more fear of a word than anything, but we don’t really do anything too hardcore now anyway. It’s really more a case of lots of drinking…it’s not compulsory, but it does foster team spirit!”

Tom explains: “There are people on the team who don’t drink, but that doesn’t mean they’re not good rugby players, just that they’re not good drinkers! We obviously know the difference and I think that goes across the board for the sports teams, you pick the team at training, not at the bar. The way I think about it is, if I didn’t want to do something, then I’m not going to turn around and tell someone else to do it”

This is not the case everywhere. I spoke to Flo, a third year studying at the University of Lincoln. Having decided to try out for the Hockey team, and being accepted, Flo and her new team mates were instructed to meet on the pitch after the first practice “wearing school uniform”.

“After the expected drinking games involving a disgusting two pence piece and much singing, the existing members of the boys and girls teams took out permanent markers and starting drawing on the potential new members. The men’s team basically claimed my boobs, and scrawled horrific things all over them (they pulled my top up for ‘ease of access’).” Here one can understand the emphasis placed on heavy drinking by the senior members: “The rude words and slogans scrawled across my arms and face might have shattered my confidence if vodka hadn’t made up such a large percentage of my bloodstream. I felt completely used and degraded, I couldn’t look any of them in the eye for weeks afterwards”, Flo added. By the end of this disgusting event, newbies were “vomiting all over each other”.

This is disturbing enough; however it appears that when such events are taken beyond the relative safety of a University campus things become further out of hand. I speak to Sam, who signed up for the Hockey Club when he started Sussex University: “It started at the club. There was this awful obstacle course, where we were made to do a series of exercises – running laps, star jumps, push ups and for every set we completed they had to down another drink. A different kind every time too – pints of beer, shots… you name it.”

One would assume that this would be enough to prove the new member’s mettle. There was however, a further stage to the proceedings. Sam continued:

“Completely intoxicated, nauseous, or post-nauseous, we were bundled into the team’s mini van. Then they stripped us, took literally everything we had on us.” As if this wasn’t humiliating enough, there was one final challenge. “We were driven to an ‘unknown location’ – though to be honest, we were all new to the Uni, so the local area was pretty unfamiliar territory. Then we were all dumped there, and before the van drove off we were given the challenge of returning to base camp at the uni campus.”

The unknown location turned out to be West Street, one of the busiest streets in Brighton centre. It was after dark when they were dropped right outside Wetherspoons – pushed out of the van to make their way back to campus. “Six and a half miles without money, phones… or clothes, or risk losing the respect of the club. You felt like you had to do it, but I wish in retrospect that someone had refused, because I don’t think anyone remotely enjoyed it. It could have gone so wrong, imagine being arrested before you’d even finished your first term.”

It appears that at York also, hockey is the most infamous sport’s club in terms of initiation-type drinking games and ‘hazing’, though by no means in so extreme a form as Sam’s experience at Sussex. First year Graham was present during the hockey president’s weekend at the end of last term, when the club celebrated the end of the season. He described: “They did an obstacle course style thing – a different one each for boys and girls. It was pretty grim. Boys had to down pints of Guinness with olive oil, eat raw onion, dog food, and some other pretty foul looking drinks. It was a pretty embarrassing sight all round.”

There does nevertheless appear to be a general desire on campus to moderate this behaviour, so unfavourable would be a comparison with nationally publicised incidences such as the Nazi Gloucester. Rugby Press Officer Tom Weir agrees: “I think there’s been a clampdown since then. And I think there was a bit of a witch hunt making sure York wasn’t going to get dragged in and compared with those horrible people down in Gloucester.”

He continues, “I think there’s a difference between someone drinking and then being sick and making someone drink with the specific purpose of making them sick. If you have a few drinks, have a bit of a dodgy stomach then it is a possibility, but that’s not like forcing someone to keep drinking until they throw up. You occasionally get someone who’s had too much them self and then says something out of turn, but not the club as a whole.”

What, one might enquire, is the point? If these rituals are nothing but a humiliating means of torturing freshers, how is it that they have endured so long? I put this to Flo: “I think that there may be an element of, well, I had to go through it to ‘get in’ to the club, so why should these new guys get in for free? Like if you really want to be part of the gang then you should be willing to put up with one gruesome night. And you do feel that in some twisted way you have shared an experience with the other new members that people who weren’t there wouldn’t be able to relate to. Unless their breasts had been ambushed by drunken hockey players with marker pens.”

I ask her how far she would be prepared to go to get into a society. “Well I do think that some of the more extreme things you hear about are absolutely disgusting. I have a friend at Southampton who had to drink a bottle of wine through fish guts to get into a sport’s club. To be honest, I wouldn’t want to be a member, if that was the kind of thing that was expected, it could never be worth the humiliation. But I think a lot of people don’t mind it if it’s just extreme drinking – it’s just another heavy night out to them.”

It is certainly shocking, what to some, might pass for a normal night’s drinking. One infamous drinking game ‘centurion’, is apparently a favourite for welcoming new students into their university careers. The game is simple: one shot of beer per minute until the player passes out. For an eight and a half stone girl, ten units of alcohol drunken consecutively could raise her blood alcohol percentage to 0.38. This would be enough to risk severe depression, unconsciousness, or even death.

Yet every student I questioned agreed that whilst ten units one after the other did seem very excessive, it would by no means be out of the question to consume that amount over the course of a night. Furthermore, although most did not feel under peer pressure to drink, there was definitely a sense that the ability to ‘hold one’s drink’ was something to be envied or even admired. James, a Vanbrugh fresher, eagerly relates “I have a friend who I’ve literally seen down three pints, one after the other. He’s a massive guy but it was still bloody impressive, I’d have chundered after one and a half”.

There are some less disturbing, more amusing stories. Clare, a third year medical student at Imperial College, recalls an initiation she witnessed: “Freshers had to bring a hat, kilt, two litre booze bottle and a fish ‘suitable for self-defence’. They then did an assault course outside (wearing only hat and kilt) where they had to chug a different drink each time, all mixed up and designed to make them throw up… I think one was Guinness followed by ginger ale followed by milk. They finished off by fighting each other with their chosen fish. To be honest, it seemed more a good laugh than disgusting though!”

Josh, a second year, tells me about a society initiation a friend of his at Edinburgh University apparently went through during his first year: “All the freshers turn up with their passports. They have a big game of five’s – similar to rock paper scissors in a way and the loser has to get on a plane to Amsterdam pretty much immediately. There was also a list of tasks they had to do before they were allowed to come home. It may be urban legend but I really hope it’s true….”

The paper is King. If there’s work to be done then there will be no showers, there will be no ‘going home’ (unless of course we’ve run out of computers, in which case skidazz, space and oxygen are at a premium, and we know how the senior members feel about any superfluous presence), Vanbrugh vending machines will keep body and soul together a bit longer and you can kiss that essay deadline goodbye. There’s Gallery if you’re good, but you’d better be prepared to come crawling back at 2am, sweaty and still slightly (or very) pissed to finish that lay-up in time for the higher powers to check it in the morning. Yes, they’ll change every last detail, but they know better, and you know they’ll remember that commitment come society elections in the autumn. You may think your degree’s important, but you’ll feel differently once you’ve seen your name in print at the top of a double-page spread.

It’s the experience that counts, pay your dues and it will pay dividends. Proofing may be a chore but infinitely preferable to that sinking feeling we all recognise when on Tuesday, flicking through someone spots a ‘there’ where there should have been ‘their’, a fault in the by-line which renders what would have been perfection irrevocably flawed. You may think you need to go home at 2am to be up for your 9.15, but on reflection (and the uninhibited consumption of Red Bull), you may conclude otherwise. Nothing but the best will do darlings, and though I love you all you know I love the paper just a bit more. We like a bit of drama about the place, nothing like some healthy competition, but you’d better toughen that skin if you want to make it up the ladder. Chat is fun but success is funner, so unless you can do both at the same time keep schtum, we have Spotify to provide the soundtrack. Enough, this is far too much energy inefficiently spent. I’ve got a newspaper to make, over and out.

On Thursday 7th June, two British National Party candidates were elected to the European Parliament. The results, upon their announcement the following Sunday night, were met with a massive national outcry, media coverage, and the egging of Nick Griffin, the BNP party leader during a press conference outside Parliament. The major parties were united in their condemnation. The national media, which days earlier had still been preaching the evils of British MPs, the money-grabbing good-for-nothing expenses cheats wasting the taxpayer’s hard earned cash on duck houses and chandeliers made out of platinum (probably), were equally dismayed with the outcome. However for all the horror understandably expressed that an essentially racist party should be allowed representation in Europe, the fact remains that in order for this to have come about, someone, somewhere must have voted for them. The pertinent question therefore, is why.

I spoke to Ken Booth, North-East regional organiser of the BNP, a BNP member currently in his second year at York University, and Labour MP Ann Cryer (above), in whose constituency Nick Griffin is the BNP candidate. She offered her diagnosis of the situation. “I think people stayed at home because they were disenchanted about MPs. The Telegraph led the charge, and the others followed suit, trying to criminalise every MP that there is. The reports [on expenses] never said ‘some MPs’, they said ‘MPs’, so people think all 648 of us were at it. I think that that was the main problem for the European elections”.

This disenchantment with the status quo is crucial for the BNP. A glance at the YouGov poll taken in concordance with the European elections offers some key insights as to who backed them, and why. Nationally, professional workers outnumber manual by 20 per cent to 18 per cent. Among BNP voters the proportion is 11 per cent professional to 36 per cent manual workers. 61 per cent of BNP voters are male. A third read the Sun or Daily Star, compared with just a fifth of the country at large, and only 6 per cent read the upmarket Guardian, Times, Telegraph etc. The average BNP voter’s wage is slightly below the national average. They are, essentially, what once formed the backbone of traditional Labour support.

BNP voters are dissatisfied. Only 19 per cent believe that “My family will have the opportunities to prosper in the years ahead”, as opposed to 59 per cent of Labour and 42 per cent of Conservative voters. 70 per cent believe that white people face unfair discrimination nowadays; the national figure is 40 per cent. In a statement rather uncannily similar to the BNP’s official statement as outlined on their website, Greg, a BNP member currently attending York University said: “Many voters, predominantly white, working class, are absolutely fed up with current career politicians and the failure of their policy, particularly on jobs and immigration. That’s why they’ve turned to us, people willing to listen to their grievances and act on their behalf”.

Disturbingly however BNP voters, although not always in agreement with the BNP’s more obviously sectarian and intolerant beliefs, appear to either be ignorant of them, or willing to overlook them. Less than half take the BNP view that non-white citizens are less British than white citizens, and only half believe that immigration is one of the most pressing issues facing themselves and their families. This suggests that it is the disillusionment with the major parties which has proved so pivotal to the BNP in recent years. As Ann Cryer pointed out to me “Their vote didn’t increase at the last European elections, it was just that a lot of our people stayed at home

The papers were saying we’re all greedy, we’re all criminals, we’re not worth a vote. That’s why the BNP got seats they should never have got.”

Cryer is impassioned in her reproach, “I mean Norman Tebitt? What the hell was he about, going on the radio a few days before the elections saying don’t vote for the major parties, vote for the minority parties. I mean he afterwards said he didn’t mean the BNP, but you could’ve fooled me!”

And the BNP are aware of this effect too. This is apparent as I talk to Ken Booth, North East regional organiser of the BNP and a candidate in the North East. He is sickeningly jubilant over the circumstances which have led to the BNP’s European presence: “Our playing field isn’t level, that’s enough for some people to vote. They want to vote for the underdog, even if they don’t necessarily agree with all the policies” It doesn’t seem to matter therefore whether or not the BNP actually reflect people’s interests, so long as the outcome is in line with the party’s aims. When I tell him that I’m a student he replies “How are the student population taking the election results then? Not well!” and laughs.

Incidences such as the egging of Nick Griffin can be equally helpful for the BNP. As Booth puts it “All those useless Communist indoctrination types, we find them very useful! We don’t need to campaign, thankfully the anti-fascists publicise us!” Ann Cryer offers a rather more coherent insight: “I avoid Griffin. I don’t think, like some groups, that you have to say stuff to them, to engage in battle with them, you’re simply playing into their hands by doing that. Throwing eggs at Griffin is just playing into their hands, you’ve got to be absolutely mad doing things like that. It gave him prime-time television; I mean that’s the last thing we want.”

The greatest danger when the BNP get this kind of coverage (free of charge) is that they can then play on popular ignorance. The example Ann Cryer gave me about free cars is one way; just “spreading lies, door to door”. However, Ken Booth claims that sometimes even this ‘canvassing’ is not necessary. “There was a local council election in Newcastle where the BNP candidate didn’t put any literature out at all. But a local anti-fascist group was campaigning, and our candidate beat the Tories with 340 votes. They don’t even know who the BNP candidate is, they just tick the box”

Booth dodges between various arguments, one minute crowing over the naivety which has apparently led to the ‘accidental’ success (relatively) of some candidates, to championing the democratic process. Of protesters, he says “They’ll have to keep the protest up for 5 years because that’s how long European seats last. They don’t acknowledge democracy, no-one held a gun to people’s heads and said ‘vote BNP’.” Then he oscillates back to the unfairness of the BNP’s situation: “This guy Tony Dowling said “We need to confront them.” That sounds like a physical threat to me”.

On the national media, he cannot seem to make up his mind. On the one hand he is keen to emphasise the obstacles which it has created for the BNP “Some media reports the BNP like any other party. Others, the Sun, the Mirror, say ridiculous things, that we’re Nazis, fascists. We’ve done it the hard way, not relying on national media”. On the other he boasts that this very censorship is good for the BNP because “They’re just alienating their readership, people will boycott them and subscribe to ‘Voice of Freedom [the BNP publication]. Perhaps he is unaware that his party are in fact more likely to be Sun readers than non-party members. I ask him whether readership of the Voice of Freedom has actually increased. It has not, but he says proudly “Our readership’s about 200,000, but we’re not in debt like the nationals”.

It is not true that the BNP “are not campaigning”. Their campaign methods are integral to the spread of their influence, as Greg argues: “The BNP campaign in a way that the two major political parties completely ignore. That is, knocking on people’s doors, listening to them and persuading them why you should vote for them. A simple and yet effective way to engage with people and convince them the BNP has the right policies for the future of Great Britain”.

“The status quo plays into the BNP’s hands. Nick Griffin doesn’t want change, integration. He wants polarisation apartheid”

Ann Cryer recognises the importance of this strategy. “His [Nick Griffin’s] strength is having people on the doorstep, spreading racist lies, because he can’t be criticised for that. The people on doorsteps aren’t going to challenge him, because they’re by and large apolitical. They’re not inclined to turn around and say ‘that’s absolute rubbish’” And appearances can be deceptive: “One or two nights I was in the same area and I thought they were Jehovah’s witnesses! They were terribly neat, very sort of respectable. It was only when I knocked on doors they’d knocked on or I saw their leaflets poking through the letterboxes that I realised it was them. They do put on a very good front “.

This “front” is not always successful. A third year politics student at York described her experience to me: “When I was at home I received a BNP leaflet through the post which had a Muslim woman who was wearing a burkah sticking two fingers up in the air, alongside a dirty hospital bed and it said something along the lines of “This is why we have MRSA in our hospitals”. It was a ridiculous accusation which made me furious. I actually ran down the road to give the leaflet back to them”.

It would obviously be overreaching surely to suppose that all BNP voters don’t know what they’re voting for, that they’ve been ‘fooled’ in some way. Some might even agree that legal immigrants should be encouraged to go “back to their land of ethnic origin”, as stated on the BNP website. However as the YouGov polls show, many may merely be disenchanted with current politics, and therefore choose to pay attention to the more savory of the BNP’s declared aims. Greg highlights: “The re-introduction of grammar schools, once a lifeline for children from poor households to break the stranglehold of an otherwise destined future for mediocrity”, as an example of BNP policy. Not everyone might agree, but this is certainly more digestible than another which Greg approves of: “The re-introduction of the death penalty.

This would be a real deterrent to the gun and knife crime enthusiasts who would think twice of their actions if they knew the outcome would be the noose and not a few years in a comfortable room surrounded by an array of drugs, Sky TV, X-Box and a free gym.”

The BNP occasionally manage to conceal the dark underbelly of their thinking with claims and policies which tap into points of public disenchantment, be they true or not. One is the belief purportedly held by 56 per cent of the public as a whole that local councils “normally allow immigrant families to jump the queue in allocating council homes”- 87 per cent of BNP voters think this. Less than a fifth of the British public believe that Labour cares about their concerns. And so when a party appears to be concerned for their welfare, a people are prepared to listen, and a few are willing go further. The Independent reported that the BNP website not only attracts more visitors to its website than “any of the other major parties”, but these visitors spend more time “checking the BNP’s ideas out”, 6.3 minutes as opposed to 2.7 minutes on the Conservative website.

This is naturally deeply worrying for the other parties. Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham, is particularly vocal on the problems faced by his party, declaring on his website that it “is time that we are honest about the state of the party. We are currently not fit for purpose. Membership has halved, organiser jobs have been cut, the activist base is in steep decline and the finances are in trouble.” He is open about the fact that “In my own borough voters have turned to the racist BNP not because they are racist but out of fear and a sense of vulnerability and insecurity. Many are simply protesting against mainstream politics”.

And Ann Cryer is at pains to emphasise that for all the BNP take advantage of the difficulties faced by the country, they do not offer solutions. One issue which she has been deeply involved in is that of forced marriages, formerly a pressing concern in her own constituency. She relentlessly championed the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act, which came into effect in September 2008, giving women the right to apply for an injunction in court and prevent a ceremony going ahead. Her campaigning was also a key element in the Government raising the minimum age for a marriage visa from 18 to 21. Her attitude is therefore totally at odds with that of the BNP:

“A BNP leaflet had a Muslim woman on it… It said something along the lines of ‘This is why we have MRSA in our hospitals’”

“The BNP don’t give a damn about forced marriages, they really don’t. I challenge Muslim fundamentalists about their behaviour towards women. The BNP don’t do that because they actually want the fundamentalists to continue to behave that way in the future. If fundamentalists continue to force girls into marriage and to say, wear the burkha, it’s playing into their hands, that’s what they want. So they don’t ever go into detail about how we can stop this behaviour, how we can defend women, they’re not interested in that. I am”.

There is an element of personal interest in this. “I have three grandchildren who are half Indian and another who is half African. If we get to polarisation between the white communities and the black or Asian communities, it’s long-term going to have an adverse effect on my grandchildren. That’s a very narrow point of view, but it goes much wider. So if I see problems occurring I try to address them. I try, systematically to address problems that I think are going to have an impact on the most disadvantaged and most vulnerable members of the community. No-one has been more vociferous in arguing against the BNP than I have because I have a greater interest in it than most, personally.”

The BNP’s increased publicity in recent weeks has led to a threat of an injunction from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. On Tuesday 23rd July the Commission sent the BNP a letter highlighting three counts under which they appear to be in breach of the Race Relations act. These relate to the BNP’s constitution and membership criteria, recruitment and employment policies, and the provision of services by elected officers to their constituents. This marks the beginning of possible legal action following the European Elections, however many are astonished that it has taken this long. Comments under the letter where it has been posted on the BNP Chronicle, a non-official party website, include “Let’s call them! Let them know our feelings”, and “We are all equal as long as we are not white”.

Unfortunately on a local level there are limits to what can be done by one MP. “The status quo plays into the BNP’s hands. Nick Griffin doesn’t want change, he doesn’t want integration. He wants polarisation apartheid, and in some parts of Keighley, that’s what we have. The white community and the Asian community are playing into the hands of the BNP by having this polarised position where never the twain shall meet. I’m afraid there’s very little communication between the two communities and I can’t change that. I mean I can do my best, and I have done my best for Asian women and successfully, but to change the hearts and minds so that you get the two communities coming together, that’s a tall order.”

Naturally, a product that enhances productivity, massively reduces the need for sleep (a couple of hours per night is apparently more than sufficient) and improves working memory is prime fodder for the black market. And so modafinil spread, amongst office workers, those in high powered jobs for whom eight hours spent asleep are eight hours wasted, and found its way across the Atlantic, before long falling into the hands of those most diligent and pressurised workers, Oxbridge students. From Oxford and Cambridge, it found its way north, to the University of York campus.

We spoke to three York students, Charles, Nick and David, who spent just under a week taking modafinil, noting its effects and seeing whether it did in fact live up to its reputation as a sleep-banishing wonder drug. A friend of theirs who has chosen to be referred to as ‘Tim’, had taken it before.

“I first took the drug towards the end of the Easter term. It’s the stress of being a Science student that made me want to try it. I’m a fresher, but my exams count towards my final grade this year. Keeping up a first year lifestyle and getting a first seemed pretty much impossible any other way”.

Although it sounds like an ‘extreme’ version of Proplus, or other more hardcore substances, modafinil is not thought to be an amphetamine-like stimulant. It is considered by researchers to be more a ‘wakefullness promoting agent’, and besides the more directly sleep-related uses it has medically, has also been applied successfully in the treatment of cocaine addiction, depression, Parkinson’s disease, and schizophrenia. Charles says: “Choosing to sleep was always an option. The drug didn’t make us feel like we were stuck in a constant state of wakefulness. It was more like we just chose not to sleep”.

As Tim describes it, the effects appear miraculous: “In a typical modafinil-fuelled night, I take the drug with dinner, go to the pub with my friends and maybe watch a film, before getting in at around 1am and working for another eight hours. It’s a productive way of living; it lets me be sociable and academic at the same time.”

For the others the experience was entirely new. Compared to other substances which might find their way into student hands during their time at university, modafinil appears at first glance relatively harmless. It does not increase your heart rate, or your risk of getting cancer, and there is no evidence that it affects the likelihood of developing degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. A closer look reveals a few short term problems however. Some users develop skin rashes or headaches, and the body (if not the mind) still exhibits signs of sleep deprivation, which can become serious for those who stay on the drug for too long. Modafinil apparently also dramatically reduces the effectiveness of oral contraceptives. All being male, and undeterred by the possibility of rashes and headaches, all three agreed to take it for the same five days, noting the effects on themselves and comparing these with the other’s experience.

“She stayed awake for sixty hours, sleeping for just four. She ended up fainting from exhaustion and woke up blind”

At first there was no obvious difference. Charles says “People talk about the modafinil buzz, but there’s no high in the traditional sense. I was able to concentrate more easily, like my memory was improved. I could stay awake all night and do nothing but work without getting bored. I wasn’t ‘high’ so much as ‘enhanced’”.

On the first evening, each took a 200mg tablet of modafinil. According to Charles, “After an hour, none of us felt any different. But then I started to feel markedly more alert. I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a placebo, but then Nick became uncannily good at computer games, beating his friends three times in a row at Pro Evo. It was no coincidence.” David by contrast maintains that at first he found it difficult to concentrate on anything, claiming he felt “too energetic”. Modafinil coincidentally, is a banned stimulant in competitive sports; various athletes who took in the 2004 Olympics were later stripped of their medals after testing positive for the drug.

It’s clear why modafinil has also proven so popular in the academic pressure cookers of Oxford and Cambridge. Varsity (the Cambridge student paper), reported that around one in ten students studying there have admitted taking prescription medication such as modafinil without a prescription. The obvious applications of modafinil academically range from using it in an exam situation to increase alertness and thought processes, or whilst writing essays or sitting open exams to maximise the potential number of working hours. A member of the Board of Examiners at Cambridge nevertheless reserved judgement as to whether taking modafinil could be considered cheating until it was catagorically proven that taking the drug would put students “at an unfair advantage”.

To judge from what David, Charles and Tim say, it almost certainly would. Charles remembers the first night ‘under the influence’: “Nick and I did our seminar reading in record time, then headed to a friend’s for drinks and a film. By 7am I was starting to wonder if the whole thing was just a placebo and in reality I’d just pulled an all nighter. I was keen to see how true this was, so I went to bed and didn’t set an alarm, to see how long I’d sleep naturally. I woke up at 8.30 and felt fully refreshed, as if I’d had a full eight hours. I got to my 9.15 seminar on time and found it easy to grasp even the most complicated issues that were discussed.” Nick furthermore reports that all of the work he did without sleep was done “as well, or better as it would have been if I’d been ‘clean’”.

According to a government study quoted in The Times, modafinil, whilst increasing wakefulness, concentration, planning and decision making skills, gives subjects “no obviously toxic effects”. It is nevertheless known to be a habit-forming drug. Academic and Welfare officer Charlie Leyland is vociferous in her condemnation of its use, saying, “I would be wary of any performance enhancement that claims to reduce people’s need to sleep, a clear meddling with a person’s normal biological clock, which is bound to come with either short- or long-term repercussions. I can’t stand the thought of students coming out the other end of the uni-machine with a less independent work ethic than on entering.”
On their second night both David and Charles continued to be “ridiculously productive”, Charles after a total of ninety minutes sleep, David still not having slept at all. Amongst other things David managed to “sort out my photography – took loads of photographs the night before, complete a blog entry, do some writing and all of my seminar work”. In the spirit of scientific exploration, Charles decided to check his reactions “using the highly scientific ‘one person drops a ruler and the other catches it between their fingers’ method. My reaction times were twice as good at 2am than they had been at 6pm. My heart rate was the same, and I felt good in myself”.

There is a catch, however, as a student in York found to her cost. A friend describes: “With a Friday psychology exam looming, she stayed awake nearly sixty hours, sleeping for just four. She aced the exam, it’s true, but later in the evening she fainted from exhaustion and woke up blind. It took the longest two minutes of all our lives for her eyesight to return fully, and she developed shakes like I’ve never seen, which we couldn’t stop. She was fine the next morning, but it’s still a powerful warning”.

For Nick too the experience had already turned sour, the “short term repercussions” becoming all-too evident. After twenty hours without sleep, as the first day drew to its close, he was mid conversation with David when “my nose started to bleed uncontrollably. Blood was gushing, I completely freaked out”.

“I was mid-conversation and my nose started to bleed uncontrollably, blood was gushing. I completely freaked out”

Despite this unsettling experience Nick returned to a computer room and worked until the morning, simply plugging his nose with tissues as it continued to bleed. The following morning at breakfast with David, after a “completely erratic line of conversation”, Nick says he felt “drunk and paranoid”. Although the others at that stage had displayed no similar signs of disturbance, Nick felt that it would be prudent not to take any more pills himself.

Modafinil remains a comparatively little-understood drug, and people can react to it in a variety of ways. After he’d slept, Nick says, “I can’t really remember precisely how I spent the night. My whole feeling of how time was passing completely changed, it was like everything was happening more quickly”. Other smaller individual differences included those in appetite. Modafinil can have an appetite-suppressing effect, but of the three I spoke to, this was only the case for Charles.

“I found my appetite seriously diminished by taking modafinil. I took to skipping breakfast in favour of a light lunch late in the afternoon.” David experienced the opposite effect. “I ate like an animal. I had all three meals during the day, then two more at night, and a cheese toastie break at 5am.”

It appears that as long as you sleep for a short time each day, whether you feel tired nor not, then the ‘rebound’ coming off modafinil is negligible. A major danger seems to be the fact that whilst users feel no need to sleep, that does not mean that the need is not there. Charles, who slept for about two hours per night over the course of the ‘experiment’, finished with no discernible ill effects. For David on the other hand, it was a different story. By day four, having cracked and taken an hour’s sleep the previous night, the modafinil lifestyle had begun to take its toll. “My mental reasoning was extremely poor. I struggled to focus on conversations and remember what I was talking about, and I missed the day’s seminars. My eyesight went weird and I started wearing glasses, which I hadn’t had to do for ten months.”

“Physically, he looked rough, says Charles. He was completely exhausted, his cheeks were pasty and grey, and his body was exhibiting clear signs of sleep deprivation.”

That evening, David’s body finally caved. Stumbling back to his room after meeting some friends he passed out, waking up on the floor 14 hours later with no memory of how he got there. Charles chose not to take modafinil for a fifth night in a row, since, inconveniently, it does not mix well with alcohol, and he wanted to go to the Willow. Naturally though as a drug with a largely student fan base, this does happen from time to time. Tim, as a more ‘regular’ user has tried this before, and when probed by Charles to describe the experience would go no further than to say (mysteriously) “It fucks you up man”. He did however warn Charles Nick and David not to try it themselves.

Though Nick stopped early, it is possible that further symptoms may have manifested had he been less prudent. It is all too tempting to take full advantage of the perceived ability to continue indefinitely without sleep, as David learned to his cost. Friends of theirs, having heard about their experiment, tried modafinil for themselves.
“One friend tried the drug just once, and was plagued by serious, mind numbing headaches. Another couldn’t sleep for two days, despite spending 8 hours in bed per night trying.

Everyone reacts differently. The most immediate illustration of this appeared on Facebook on Thursday night as the news spread like a wildfire over people’s statuses. Initially met with incredulous comments, “Haha, whatever, stop drinking!” as the story became more widespread, clearly catalysed by frenzied Google searches to confirm the news, cyberspace was littered with tributes. From the heartfelt “I love you Michael”, to the irreverent “I blame it on the boogie”, to some not appropriate for repetition, however people felt, their minds were on the same topic: the death of pop superstar, Michael Jackson.

Trivial though it may seem, this response formed a microcosm of sorts to the reaction which rebounded over the world. This was reflective of a life beset with controversy at every turn, controversy which at times threatened to destroy a career dazzling in its musical supremacy. At the height of his career Jackson was the biggest star in the world. Thriller won eight of his thirteen Grammys, the groundbreaking video playing every hour on MTV upon its release, launching both the singer and the channel to their present fame. His marriage to Lisa Marie Presley was dubbed the union between the King of Pop and the Princess of Rock ‘n’ Roll. From the ceremony, carried out in the inauspicious surroundings of a hotel room in the Dominican Republic, the pair were the subject of outrageous rumour. This was fuelled by bizarre incidences such Lisa Marie remaining seated during a fifteen minute standing ovation for a medley performed by her husband at the 1995 MTV Music Awards, and Lisa’s declaration on Oprah (in response to doubts expressed by the media) “Do we have sex? Yes, yes, yes!”.

The most controversial, most disturbing shadows which clouded Jackson’s career were the allegations of child molestation by thirteen year old Jordan Chandler and his father Evan in 1993. These plagued him for the rest of his life, and led to speculation over the nature of his relationship with other children, such as the child star Macaulay Calkin, who has always denied any abuse. The charges were eventually dropped as the authorities cited lack of evidence, however highly suggestive indicators for Jackson’s guilt irrevocably tainted his image in the eyes of many.

Not for all however. Since the news of his death broke, sales of Jackson’s catalogue have skyrocketed; by Friday his albums occupied fourteen of the top twenty spots on Amazon.co.uk’s sales chart. The outpouring of emotion on Jackson’s official website (from which the above quote is taken) is demonstrative of the deep affection still held by his most devoted fans. Dedications range from the weird to the wonderful to the rather endearing, “To the spammers, please have some respect and stop it now!”. Messages have appeared in chinese, arabic, french and a multitude of other languages I couldn’t possibly identify, at the time of writing fully two hundred and sixty-one thousand, eight hundred and nintey-four.

Some have gone so far as to post links to tribute videos on youtube, the most committed of fans having already penned their very own songs expressing their sorrow at Jackson’s passing. Not necessarrily the most artistically sound creations, the sentiment expressed is certainly genuine nevertheless. I click on one, and the song, though no lyrical masterpiece, is to the point. Kicking off, “Michael, you died yesterday,” and continuing to the chorus “Why, why did you die?”, it is hard to tell whether or not it’s tongue in cheek or the product of a grieving fan. Either way, the fact that someone took the trouble within forty eight hours of his death to write and film an original song marking the occasion is statement enough of Jackson’s stardom. Elsewhere, less musically inclined fans have expressed their grief through poetry. Some are oddly frank in their execution: “I wasn’t a huge fan right at the start, But something about you set you apart”. In others it’s his music which is most appreciated “You were the most brilliant star in my life, You were the soundtrack to my life”. The most extreme are practically evangelical, making Jackson sound almost godlike, “He came to us on earth a while, They had His time, His trust, His gift, The sick and ill he gave a lift, He came to us from high above….”

I spoke to a diehard MJ fan. “I remember when I was sleeping outside his hotel for the World Music Awards (safer because his security team make sure you’re ok), and it was really cold and we hadn’t had any proper food for a while, and at about 1am, there were only about 5 of us there, and he bought us a load of pizza!! He did that a lot for his fans! He was very generous! I spent a day or two completely inconsolable, but now I’m just focusing of celebrating his life and remembering him for his generosity and his musical genius”.

In terms of Michael Jackson’s legacy, the consensus amongst most appears to be that his music is to be celebrated and remembered. “I know there was a lot of stuff said – it might have been true – but I’d rather not dwell on that. I think that songs like ‘Thriller’ are too good not to be enjoyed”.

How could she do this to me? Everyone makes mistakes, and Christ knows I’ve made loads (I think maybe sleeping with Sha-naynay was the straw that broke the camel of our relationship’s back), but to forgive is to be divine (or something). When I think back over everything we’ve been through, the laughs, the memories we’ve shared, how HOW could she throw it all away so recklessly? I remember the first moment I saw her- the first week of summer term first year, dancing her heart out on Vanbrugh paradise in the middle of a 24 hour protest against the closing of the Goodricke bridge (she had an incredible social conscience). I knew I had to have her, and immediately embarked on a three week campaign of facebook stalking, texting, ‘accidentally on purpose’ bumping into her on nights out, finally culminating in a 2am rendition of ‘You are my sunshine’ under her window at block B new Vanbrugh. Under the relentless tide of my affection she eventually caved, and the blissful summer which folllowed abides in my memory as the most magical I have ever experienced.

True, there were difficult times, times when the hazy glow which engulfed our relationship was broken by the harsh light of bitter reality. Like when I discovered her smoking, and weepingly read out “Smokers harm themselves and those around them” until she collapsed into my arms and promised never to inhale the cancerous fumes of her Malbrough Lights ever again. Or the occasion that I forgot Dave and Lucy Fridays and she found me in the pub with Liam and Theo, getting acquainted with my fifth pint and the lovely Alice who works behind the bar. But those can be overcome, like bumps on the yellow brick road of our love.
Maybe it’s too soon to give up hope. It’s been seven hundred and fifty minutes since she left, I could win her back. Going my own way is not an option, I get my head in the game. It’s now or never, I will not let her break free. I must make some gesture, show that I want her right here, right now, and if she lets me in, this could be the start of something new.

But we need the Robins. The music and literature industries are brimming with names recognised the world over, the Rowlings, the Jacksons, the Timberlakes. They are giants in their fields, and justifiably so. Yet they are the tip of the iceberg, their fame the face of a world teeming with a largely unsung population of sidemen, of supporting acts, choreographers, and ghostwriters. These people are the glue, supplying much of the talent for which the rich and famous are lauded, and in many cases laying the foundations for their own future stardom in the process. But is it actually preferable to remain in the shadows? If you are doing what you love, perhaps it is better to do so almost anonymously, free of the scrutiny and accompanying pressures which are the main (only?) downside of a life in the spotlight. On the other hand, an ‘apprenticeship’ as the shadow to another’s celebrity can be a step on the ladder to success in one’s own right, one which serves to develop a creative artist. Prior to her own meteoric rise to fame, Lady Gaga wrote respectively for Britney and the Pussycat dolls. Now she dominates the charts independently, with the conviction of an artist who has served her time outside the limelight. Below are the voices of a lead guitarist and backing man, a ghost writer, and a choreographer. Their careers are exemplary of the advantages gained both behind the scenes and centre stage.

Andrew Gross wrote six books as a ghost writer for mega author James Patterson. Patterson ranks second in the world only to JK Rowling in terms of book sales and has sold about 150 million books, making him about $50m a year. Gross is now a bestselling author in America, Australia, the UK and Singapore in his own right.

“Why does anyone who’s a successful businessman end up a thriller writer? They get fired. That’s sort of what happened to me. I just came home one day without a job (Gross had previously worked in women’s sports clothing as the president of le coq sportif , a French company). I’d left a little too much blood on the field to go back to it, and I’d been harbouring the idea for a political thriller. So I came home and said to my wife ‘give me a year to execute this‘. The year turned into two- I had to go through the process of getting an agent and finishing a manuscript, and it basically got rejected by twenty people. I was sitting feeling sorry for myself when, like a bad melodramatic novel the phone rang, and the person on the other end said “Would you be willing to take a call from James Patterson?”. Out of the blue, that call literally changed my writing life. I went in at the deep end.

The reason Patterson found me, so to speak, is that this manuscript that I wrote which didn’t get published was passed on to him with a note attached to the cover that said ‘This guy does women well’. This has been my way into the business I guess. I seem to write with a sensitivity towards that side, and strong heroic women populate my books with Patterson. I don’t know that that [writing women] would be his strongest suit, but it’s something I do naturally. I guess it’s just part of your creative DNA, some people do spies well, I do women well. The man who I have as an ongoing character is probably an idealised version of who I would like myself to be……

It was difficult playing ‘second fiddle’ to Patterson. During my time with Jim there was no getting out at all. My face, my presence brought up questions that he didn’t really want to deal with- who’s writing etcetera…. And at the time I was the only person really doing that kind of thing- now people are much more open about their relationships and the process. Back then, people didn’t really want attention drawn to it. I feel, and think Jim would feel, that I did have a good hand in those books, to make them better books, and I’m sure that had a good effect on his career. It was frustrating not to be at the front of the market.

[That said] I was in love with the job. Having spent two years in the wilderness the urge wasn’t ego for me, it was feeding my family, and feeding it pretty damn well, doing something that I really liked. A couple of years before I couldn’t even get my book published, so for me it was a great opportunity, a great gig and I would have continued it indefinitely. And for Jim I know that it was incredibly convenient ‘being’ Patterson because who knows who’s doing what on his books. I would say that every book I wrote with Jim came from his idea, his central concept, and he certainly gave me a terrific launch in my own career. Everyone assumes that he’s taking someone’s book and stamping his own name on it, making millions of dollars at someone else’s expense, but it’s not like that at all.

He [Patterson] was a staunch believer in outlining books in advance, chapter by chapter. He would present me an outline, I would change a lot, and he was very flexible towards me. Certainly by the end of the seven years he was just vetting the things I was saying, and I would go to town and do most of the work. He had the final draft, but the majority of it was just speeding it up, making it tighter. That was his way of standardising the brand, so to speak. I would advise any writer to take this gig because it was extremely remunerative too, in some cases into seven figures. I think those days are gone though, even with Patterson, I had the advantage of being his first, maybe closest [ghostwriter]. And for the degree to which you can look at it as an apprenticeship I think it’s really worth doing- learning where to drop clues, build suspense.
[Going it alone] was just sort of an accident. I went to a dinner party. This couple had come in his n her Ferraris, talking about all this glamorous travel they were doing. Then a month later in the New York times I read that this very same person had been arrested for money laundering to the Columbians. Out of that came the outline for The Blue Zone. I found an agent within an hour that I wanted, and within a week four publishers were bidding for it. I got a three book deal from this outline. Of course by that time my resume included six number one bestsellers, and there was the curiosity out there as to what I would do.

[On whether Patterson is now his ‘ghost’] I do hear his voice, yes. In a default situation I do always revert back to what he would say- when I’m thinking whether or not I’m going to kill someone, put people into bed together…..and I do usually obey the voice! When I look in the mirror I see his face behind me a little bit.”

Phil Manzanera is the lead guitarist of Roxy Music, the seventies super group which along with Bowie represented the arty, fashion-conscious end of glam rock. He has since enjoyed a highly successful solo career, written for Pink Floyd, and with artists such as Brian Eno, Tim Finn, Robert Wyatt, and David Gilmour. He owns his own recording studio where artists such as Annie Lennox have worked.

“When I joined Roxy they’d already been going for a year.. In fact, I’d been in a band at school, at exactly the same time Bryan Ferry was forming the embryonic Roxy. The first time I auditioned I failed the audition, but I remained friends with them all. The person they originally got turned out to be not quite right after a few months, and so they asked me to join. I was four years younger than them, they’d all been through university and seemed quite grown up. Bryan Ferry and Eno were teaching in fact. I did feel slightly intimidated, but not in a bad way, I was in awe. They had friends who were very talented, and they were very talented. But after the first album my own creativity came into play.

In those days you joined the navy to see the world, and it was like that. I was twenty one, I wanted to travel, and I had no long term thoughts about my career. It was like Christmas every day. That period was very exciting because it was all so new. When we first appeared on Top of the Pops people couldn’t believe it- we were so different, no one had seen anything like us before. People thought we were from another planet. We we interested in fashion, the whole history of Rock and Roll is about image. Image without music is a waste of time, but when you get the two together you get Elvis with his fantastic quiff and gold suit, the Beatles with their Beatle haircuts and Beatle jackets. It’s the entire aesthetic.

I would say I had more of a creative connection with Brian Eno [than Bryan Ferry]. After he left the group I continued working with him for another four years, and then through all my musical career really. Before I joined Roxy I was going to avant garde music concerts on the south bank and stuff like that, and I’d bump into him.

Right from the beginning people started doing solo projects. Bryan did solo stuff, I started doing solo albums… but Roxy as a beast is quite ’different’ in the way we work as a band, we’re always doing a million things at once.

You learn how to work the system. If you play as Roxy music, you can probably seat ten thousand. If you’re Bryan Ferry, then you don’t book more than probably two or three thousand, if you’re me then not more than a couple of hundred…I‘m joking. All my live stuff has some connection with me personally though. Unlike the rest of Roxy I was brought up in South America, in Cuba during the Revolution, Venezuela, then sent to boarding school in England. Much of my music reflects that. Roxy had a very distinctive ’look’, you can hang a lot of visual imagery on a band, my stuff is much more personal.”

Clare Turton is a professional dancer and choreographer who has worked with acts such as Take That, Pink, Ricky Martin, Cher and the Spice Girls. In 2000 she auditioned for Tina Turner’s live show, and has been with her ever since. She is now Tina’s ‘dance captain’, and performs with her as her lead dancer.

“I’ve been with Tina since 2000, doing corporate gigs and shows. I was working as a dancer and Tina was promoting the single ‘When the Heartache is Over‘. I sent in my audition tape, she looked at all of the tapes and chose three of us. I’ve been with her [on and off] ever since.

I’ve never had the loyalty she shows from any other artist. When she brings you into the camp and allows you into the family, it’s such a beautiful thing. Other artists are wonderful too of course- I’d been devastated when Take That split, because I really wanted to dance with them growing up. So when they reformed and I danced with them it was surreal, they’re really sweet guys. Tina spoils you though, a lot of artists you work with are very insular onstage, they do their job but never interact with anyone else. You’re just the backing dancers. Tina’s very engaged, she’ll give you a cheeky smile, share a moment with you, and those moments are so precious.

Lots of people are sceptical. They think the dancers do the hard work. But there’s never any inconsistency in Tina’s performance. Every single night she gives the same level of energy and professionalism. So when you’re working with someone like that and witnessing that, it pushes you a little bit harder. Even if you feel tired, and you’re muscles are sore, you think well she never takes it easy, so you don’t either. It’s so much fun. There’s so much camaraderie, and that comes from Tina as well. She’s a really cool boss. She’s a perfectionist and rightly so, and that filters right down the crew, so everyone is very particular about their role. She’s hands on with everything, from the set, to the choreography, to the music. Everything is reported to her because she knows that even the smallest thing is a vital element in the whole show.

It’s normal for artists to come in for rehearsals and go at half pace because they’re saving themselves for the show. But as soon as Tina comes in she’s singing and doing the dance routines full on, all the time. She has such a vitality for life and it’s so inspirational. Nothing gets under her skin, she’s so matter of fact about everything.

You get some women in the audience who are really supportive and love us straight away. Then you get women who are a bit tentative. You see them nudging their husbands, “What are you looking at?”. In the hot pants and bras we can’t hide, you’ve got to have tough skin to repel the death stares! But then they come round and everyone ends up having a brilliant time.

[Sometimes it’s when things don’t go to plan that you can tell a real star] One night, her shoe came off. These are the moments when I look at her and I think, you’re so amazing. Her shoe came off and no one really noticed, because she still stood there, talking to the audience. Then one of the guys onstage placed the shoe in front of her, like a Cinderella moment, and she slipped her foot back in and carried on with the show. Pink does that sort of thing all the time, forgetting the words, laughing, and starting again.

Tina’s so relaxed, I have no idea how she does it. I’m trying to work that one out. And when I find out I’m hoping to apply that to myself!”

Steve (ridiculous name for an actor) surely cannot summon the emotional depth required for the role. The bitter irony of a man beset by the woes of unrequited love, who in a cruel twist discovers that he is dying from heart cancer. I confess I had written it with myself in mind, if only because I know I can rely upon myself to commit 500% to the task. I fasted for fully 5 days before Hamlet opened- the “eerily convincing sense of delirium” I exuded was the product of true hunger-induced madness. Thank God I fainted during the interval, and had time to eat the 5 grapes needed to recover sufficiently for the climax of the piece. Helen, dear girl, was so touching (in more than one sense, saucy minx) about the desperation the audience felt on my behalf as I descended into insanity.

The worst of it is that it was I, on a foolish whim, who suggested that we hold open auditions. A mere formality, to appease the critics who do not wholly comprehend the workings of our society. I have always felt that the relationship we have is one of trust- there are certain people who can be relied upon to deliver the goods every time. And today this one was usurped by a fresher who probably only turned up because he’d lost a bet.

I shall never live this down. Images keep flashing before my eyes – Steve bowing before a standing ovation, Steve the new regular on the party circuit, Facebook photos overflowing with shot after shot of him amidst the bright and beautiful of the university. I can’t help but wonder whether it was Martin’s presence on the panel which sealed the verdict – his thinly veiled suggestion that there is something of the homoerotic in my demeanour hardly bodes well for my casting as the romantic lead. How utterly ludicrous – I’d have thought it was abundantly clear that there are few who appreciate the unique beauty of the female form, or pursue it with such voracity as I. Affairs may be short, but how else am I to encounter the full scope of experiences the fairer sex has to offer. Shit, I’ll never get laid as a fucking understudy.

What the hell do they think its doing on the shelf anyway, I would hardly spend good money on a beautiful product and not eat it would I? These are people who consider leftover Efe’s an acceptable use of fridge space for crying out loud (not that I would dream of refrigerating a cheese during maturation, obviously). They’re so bloody fragile, it barely smells at all when it’s properly wrapped up. Someone owes me sixteen quid, I’m not letting that slide.

Well now my supper’s screwed. Bloody depressing, especially having had to survive through the day on campus fare alone. Why the uni thinks it’s worthwhile to offer us pappy baguettes filled mainly with cheap mayo (not a drop of olive oil in sight), purely on the basis that it’s ‘affordable’ I don’t understand. I would much rather have a good, locally sourced, seasonal, organic meal, lovingly prepared and pay twice the price. Having to walk to Brown’s just to find a sandwich that’s remotely edible is a bloody nuisance.

So what to have… Think I’ll steer clear of the deep fried option after the tempura incident (not that that was remotely my fault, and she was fine, it was blatantly shock more than anything which made her make such a fuss). I could always use up the end of the chorizo, although the soft’s not especially good for grilling, and I can’t be arsed to make a casserole. Amy made such a fuss over those slow roasted tomatoes the other day as well- “unnecessary energy”, blah blah- as if an hour or so’s gas was remotely as bad as an utterly flavourless soup. On top of which I had to endure ridiculous shrieks from the veggie contingency that the fridge had become a ‘graveyard’, just because I’d kept back some bones for stock.

At least we don’t buy food communally anymore, what an absolute nightmare. I think I would go completely insane if I had to endure another shopping trip with Sean – “What’s a celeriac?”- O’Brien again. Their entire concept of a food budget is utterly skewed- exactly how much meat do they think sausages contain when they’re 16p per pack? I would much rather get up a bit (well, 5 hours) earlier and hit the market to get the freshest stuff possible. If I’m ‘monopolising’ the kitchen at least it’s to a fucking end. I swear to God, next year I’m living with people who appreciate the value of a decent meal.

Think I’ll grab a snack, paraphrasing a week’s worth of lectures is hungry work. I’ll try and make a dent in the old washing up while I’m in the neighbourhood too, seems to be piling up a bit. Been wondering whether to mention it to the guys. Actually screw it, it’ll only take a moment and I don’t want to get labelled the house nag. It’s kind of theraputic in a way too, nice and mindless when you’re head’s buzzing with work.

Now to eat. Darn, looks like some cheeky bugger took half my nutella, probably Liam as ever. Oh well, probably should lay off a bit, haven’t had much opportunity to hit the gym of late, especially with all the RAG stuff going on. Town yesterday was hilarious, trying to flog GAG mags to people in the driving snow. We just gave up after a while and had a snowball war instead, awesome fun. I’ll just buy the leftover ones and send them home, cheer up the olds a bit. I feel bad guilting strangers into buying something they might not have wanted otherwise. Got a bit chilly towards the end, but nothing a jog to the library afterwards couldn’t cure. Which reminds me, I need to head.
I feel sorry for the library staff. It can’t be good to be cooped up all day away from natural light, no-one but sleep deprived students to interact with. Just now I tried to hand in a photocopy card someone had left in the machine – the woman’s response was “really?”. As if someone deserves to lose their money just because they forgot to write their name on it. Maybe I could use it to photocopy the key reading for Jenny, she said she was feeling under the weather again this morning, stomach trouble or something.

Really looking forward to tonight. Should text the guys, see what the plan is. I’ll book the taxi now, in case they forget. Don’t really fancy driving again, I mean it’s cool once in a while, but I don’t think the seats’ll take another heavy one – can’t get rid of the smell from last time. Ooh, got a text. It’s Dave. Wow, he sounds upset.

Of all mental illnesses, anorexia is the most fatal. Five to ten percent of anorexics die within ten years of developing the disease. Around twenty percent die prematurely due to complications resulting from their illness, such as heart failure. Twenty percent of anorexics die within twenty years. Thirty percent of those who recover will relapse and battle the illness their whole lives. Only a third will recover fully. Roughly one in ten anorexics are male, though this number is growing. There is no certain cause, and no failsafe cure. This disease is malevolent, powerful, and it attacks both body and mind with terrifying force. And it is not just the lives of those who suffer from it that it destroys. As the disease takes its grip, family, friends, everyone who cares for the person suffering becomes inexorably involved, trying to fight the invisible enemy which has taken over their daughter, sister, brother, friend.

There are countless heartbreaking stories to be heard, if one cares to listen. I spoke to James*, twenty-eight, whose sister has suffered from anorexia from the age of ten. Most affecting about his account is the stark contrast of the flat, empty feeling experienced by his sister, who has throughout been deeply depressed, against the roar of conflicting emotion felt by everyone around her:

“I hate the anorexia so much it hurts, but at the same time I’m so aware of how much I love her; it’s absolutely terrifying to think that I could lose her. You feel angry, sad, frustrated, despair… and every time it looks like there may be some improvement you hope as well, but then it’s just more disappointing in the end.”

There is, however, no substitute for first-hand knowledge. I spoke to Felicity, now nineteen. She suffered from anorexia from the age of twelve, and at thirteen she entered Rhodes Farm, the leading care facility in England for children with eating disorders. Her immediate physical recovery took five months, although some aspects took longer. She did not have a period until she was eighteen. Though having long had the disease under control, she still struggles with the mental burden at times. On the surface one would never suspect that the bright, healthy girl sitting opposite me could ever have had a traumatic past, particularly an illness which brought her near death. Neither remotely fat, nor ‘suspiciously’ thin, she looks every inch the confident young woman she has become. Over the course of half an evening, she offered me a rare window into the mind of anorexic, bravely sharing aspects of a past more comfortably forgotten:

“The utter powerlessness of your family to do anything to help you when you’re being so stubborn and you’re basically killing yourself must be the most horrendous thing to watch. It’s retrospect that gives you that horrible inlook on what you did, how you behaved.”

So what drives a popular, clever girl to this distorted way of thinking? What possible incentive could there be to starve a healthy body to the point when a heart attack could occur at any moment, when it hurts to sit down because there is nothing but skin to cushion the bone? Anorexics can sometimes identify a ‘trigger’; a point at which they believe they began to exhibit disordered thoughts and behaviour. But just as frequently there appears to be no specific point, no obvious event or thing which could have set the disorder in motion. This was the case for Felicity:

“No-one ever really found out the reason why I had it. I don’t know the reason I had it.”
Two major characteristics are universal throughout all cases; control and desperate fear. The control over their food and bodies is the most powerful device the anorexic feels they possess; the crippling fear is that of losing control. Felicity remembering a family holiday, says: “I gained 500g. I was like, fuck.”

The development of anorexia is usually fairly gradual. What begins as a slight reduction in food intake, such as not snacking between meals, escalates. Felicity describes the process, which took several months: “At the beginning it was very simple, I just only ate at meals, I ate much less… it was little stages. There isn’t a moment where I could say, there I was on a diet, there I had anorexia.”

And so three meals become only meals that the anorexic cannot avoid eating, be it out of social or parental pressure. Those meals become fat free, carb free, or free of whatever it is the anorexic believes to be most damaging, most dangerous to them. These occasions are fraught with anxiety, eating a series of calculations, hunger a factor in none of them: “My Mum sent me to school with a lunch, but of course I didn’t eat it. You learn to build up a wall between yourself and hunger. I can still go without food for a whole day if I need to.”

As the disease strengthens its grip, its influence over the lives of everyone surrounding that person correspondingly increases. Family meals become arguments, battles; the ‘wall’ separating the anorexic from their hunger also separates them from friends, family, even feelings and emotions; ties to the world where starving is bad and food a pleasure. Felicity remembers: “I came home in the evening, and I’d just cry, I’d kick up a massive fuss until my parents stopped trying to make me eat. They gave up on having family meals.”

Felicity’s parent reacted differently: “My Dad was never the kind of person to get emotionally involved… he came up with all sorts of schemes, like writing to my Grandmother to tell her how much I ate, like that would be the incentive to eat something. My Mother is a very controlling person, and the way that she shows her role as a mother is defined by feeding her children. So she found it very difficult because she wasn’t able to fulfil what she saw as her primary role as a mother.”
The evening meal became the focal point of this stress.

“My parents would sit down with me in the kitchen. Mum used to try to gently persuade me to have a bit, and I just used to cry and refuse. Eventually my Mum would just get angry and start threatening, saying you will be going to hospital, you will be doing this… I just used to cry and scream until at last they both got exhausted.”

At this point Felicity momentarily has difficulty continuing her story. This is a cruel lasting side product of anorexia. In the midst of their illness an anorexic, blinded and confused, is often unaware of the extent to which their actions are hurting to their loved ones, or too fearful to stop if they are. When recovered, and their thoughts are not twisted by the parasite occupying their minds, they can see more clearly the awful repercussions of what has passed, and the guilt this arouses remains a pressing reminder.

“The difficult thing is it’s such a selfish illness. I had no idea what I was doing to my family. It wasn’t until two years later when my sister sat me down and just said ‘you cannot do this anymore, you’ve fucked up our family for almost two years.’ I was so wrapped up in myself and so depressed that I didn’t realise what I was doing. That is the thing that really still upsets me, that I messed up my family for a long time.”

Gradually, the ‘wall’, grows taller, stronger; reinforced by the rituals and habits the anorexic develops which make them feel ‘safe’. These can range from rigidly portioning and arranging the food on their plate, to stretching the simple act of eating an apple into a two-hour procedure; dividing the apple into scrupulously even pieces which must be eaten in precisely the right order. A common disorder which can develop alongside anorexia is OCD; as the anorexic’s world becomes consumed by a complex system of self-imposed rules, which for them are essential to everyday function:
“My things were light switches and checking – I had to make sure everything was switched off several times. I was obsessed with washing my hands.”

Anorexia is a completely illogical, unreasonable disease. What makes it so dangerous is the fact that anorexics nevertheless find ‘reasonable’ and ‘logical’ explanations for their behaviour. But their ‘logic’ is perverted by their illness; an anorexic’s perception of reality is a twisted reflection of the truth. This is how James, whose sister has anorexia, described the condition:

“It’s like there’s a demon in her head. The demon tells her she’s stupid when she’s clever, lazy when she’s hardworking, fat when she’s thin. When she’s beautiful it tells her that’s ugly, and as she becomes ugly, it tells her that’s beautiful. It tells her she’s full when she’s starving”.

Felicity describes this lack of a clear perspective:
“I don’t know why, but I had an inherent belief that my Mum wanted to make me fat. I didn’t believe there was anything wrong with me, I didn’t think I was anorexic, if anything I was overweight. I didn’t believe I was ill.”

Even sitting with a psychologist, confronted with the stark figures illustrating how far she had already pushed her body, Felicity couldn’t see the danger she was in:
“When you’re shown it on a chart, you can blatantly see you’re underweight… but that’s great. You don’t want to be there, you want to be here. You don’t want to be ‘normal’.”

But this distorted perception doesn’t seem to have been as simple as merely seeing fat where it didn’t exist; on some level it appears that Felicity had been more aware of her condition than this would suggest. Asked what she saw when she looked in the mirror, she ponders.
“I didn’t see the rolls of fat some people see. I knew I was slim, but I also knew I was ugly. But I was ugly because I was so thin. I think I just thought that if I kept losing weight, I’d look nice eventually”.

Describing a meeting with a dietician, Felicity says: “I wrote down what I ate in a day, and then she wrote what I should be eating. I told her honestly, it’s almost like a thrill. Like, yeah, I eat three hundred calories a day.”

By May 2003 Felicity was close to death, weighing thirty three kilos (five stone and two pounds) at nearly five foot four. It was then that her parents, having tried everything in their power to help their daughter themselves, finally took her to London, to be admitted to Rhodes Farm. “Those were horrible, horrible days. By then my mood was…I didn’t speak unless I had to speak, I felt so awful, all the time.”

Upon arrival at Rhodes Farm, Felicity was weighed and asked some general questions regarding past treatment. They asked about current behaviour.

“Whether you’re depressed, do you self harm, do you throw up… I just told them the absolute truth, I didn’t see any point in lying about it. I never threw up – I’d tried to, but the thing is with that is the more you do it, the easier it gets, and I never broke that barrier. It’s really painful and it just makes you feel disgusting.”

By identifying these behaviours the carers can prepare for what a new patient might do to disrupt their recovery. This is organised to the nth degree, each patient’s calorie requirement worked out individually, in order that they gain exactly a kilo per week. Rhodes Farm is so confident in their ability to achieve this, that they wave their (substantial) fee if they fail. The centre also provides individual, group, and family therapy, all compulsory. But the primary aim of the treatment is weight gain.

“Rhodes Farm works out the percentage of your healthy minimum weight for your height that you weigh when you arrive- you have to weight ninety five percent of that before you can leave. I was sixty two percent of my minimum weight when I got there. So I had to get to seven stone four pounds before I could leave.”

A crucial aspect of the ‘re-feeding’ program is peer pressure.
“We’d all eat together at a long table, and no one was allowed to leave until everyone had finished- to the point of wiping your plate clean with your finger. That’s what made you eat, because otherwise you’d be keeping everyone waiting”

It is also important that all ‘antisocial’ eating habits and rituals are eliminated. Children at Rhodes Farm are fed a varied diet, including foods such as pizza, burgers, chocolate and chips- the idea being that they wouldn’t leave too scared to sleepover with friends in case they ordered a takeaway. Patients are allowed three food ‘dislikes’, but these may not include chocolate, cheese or crisps. By taking away their patient’s choice, the treatment can help to eliminate patient’s feelings of guilt when they eat. And there are measures in place for those who still refuse to cooperate.

“You either have to drink a milkshake, full of cream, ice cream, peanut butter, to get the calories you’d have had from the food, or if you don’t do that they put a tube up your nose and down into your stomach. Once you’ve had the drip or the milkshake you see that eating’s just the best option, at least it’s not just drinking fat”.

Felicity’s description of her time in care sounds intense, even oppressive, the sense being of a massive task undertaken, a struggle, imbued as well with a deep sadness.

“They have something called twenty four hour supervision. You’re on that for the first two weeks after you arrive, if you’re a major suicide risk, or if you’re below seventy percent of your minimum weight. It’s also used as a punishment if you do something bad, like tanking, which is filling yourself up with water before weigh-ins so that you weigh more. All the twenty four hour supervision people just sit in the downstairs lounge, all day. You sleep in a dormitory – they called it ‘the flat’, and someone sits up all night. They are there when you shower, when you go to the toilet…”
Social behaviour is sidelined:

“No one came over to talk to me because everyone on supervision is morbidly depressed. I just remember sitting on the edge of the sofa, trying not to cry.”

There is a strange sense of competition as well; Felicity says that she felt “superior” to the other girls (and one boy) when she arrived, because as the newest, she was also the thinnest.
“But then another girl arrived about a week after I came in, who was at fifty six percent. She was lying on the sofa because she was too weak to sit up. I went over, and it must have shown on my face how shocked I was. It was just horrific, the bones, the hollow cheeks… I looked at myself and thought I was pathetic, that’s a real anorexic.”

At fifty six percent of a minimum weight for five foot six, the girl Felicity described would have weighed an appalling sixty-four pounds, just over four and a half stone.

It was not just the patients’ appearance which was horrifying. Bizarre behaviour, such as ‘skanking’- stuffing food into their pockets at mealtimes to avoid eating it -“I did it with tuna once” – pretending to lie in bed when they were in fact holding their whole bodies off the mattress to burn a few more calories, and perhaps oddest of all, stealing and hoarding food, was commonplace. All highlight the primacy of control in their minds, the need to maintain some sense of power.

There are other stories, each more gruesome than the last, yet morbidly fascinating in their extremes:
“There was a girl there called Lisa who’d been in and out since she was ten, and the last time she came in she was given twenty four hours to live. They had to put her on a drip, because if they’d given her food immediately her stomach would have exploded. Her first meal was a teaspoon of beans.”

Felicity can’t remember what happened to either of these girls eventually. Rhodes Farm is renowned for its astonishing success rate, so they may have had a shot. But the sad truth is that most anorexics battle their illness largely alone, well meaning parents or friends not qualified or experienced to give them the support they need. Restrictive and dictatorial though the regime at Rhodes Farm is, its privations are doubtless worth it in the end.

The limits placed on ones activities could also bear surprising fruit. At Rhodes Farm exercise is strictly monitored; only those strong enough who are gaining weight are allowed to participate, and for no longer than is deemed appropriate for each patient. So outside of school hours, there is much time to be filled.

“You become really creative, me and my friend would sit and make and sew things for hours just to keep our minds occupied. There are some really amazing people.”

The sheer force of will it takes in order to take possession of one-self again when recovering from anorexia can become a profound journey of self discovery. Once the barrier between ‘anorexic’ and eating has been broken, the mental (and physical) energy hitherto consumed by self-starvation can be applied to other things. As a generalisation, people susceptible to anorexia also tend to be clever, inventive, and possess terrific attention to detail. ‘Beating’ their illness means unlocking this vast potential; once one door has been opened, many follow. But the experience leaves a permanent mark:

“I don’t think I’d be the person I am if I hadn’t gone through what I went through then. It almost forced me into the real world. All of a sudden there was this jolt, and it forced me to grow up”.
Felicity is quick to emphasise the positive effects of this ‘jolt’:

“It made me creative in ways I’d never been before. It taught me to make friends and to talk to people… but also the importance of listening to people talk about themselves. You learn how wonderful it is to have friends and to sit down and just talk.”

Felicity was discharged from Rhodes Farm in September 2003. This was not the end of her treatment, ex-patients are monitored closely after they leave to ensure that they maintain a healthy weight. If they lose more than a kilo, they are given one week to regain the weight at home. Failing this, Rhodes Farm will readmit a patient free of charge over a weekend.

“But you don’t want to go back. I don’t think anyone ever goes back more than once or twice, they’d rather get on with their lives at home.”

Felicity started at a new school, made new friends, and put the past behind her. She never told anyone what had happened, that past is completely detached from her present. Her mother continued to weigh her until she was seventeen, but that was private.

“I didn’t want anyone to look at me differently. That is not a part of who I am anymore.”
Felicity no longer weighs herself at all, and relies on the fit of her clothes to judge any changes. Her body, like her mind, is healthy and strong, and she listens to what it says.

“If I’m tired, I don’t go running. If I’m hungry, I eat. I’ve accepted that my body isn’t meant to be thin, and I’m never going to be a size eight again.”

Felicity’s story, although tragic, ends happily. But this is not always the case. Anorexia can attack with devastating force, and without the support Felicity received, she may not have been here to talk to me. She evidently finds describing what happened acutely painful; the shadow of places and events grows visibly darker over her the longer that she speaks. But it is vital that she does, vital that people understand that ‘anorexic’ is not a vain girl trying to fit a size zero skirt, but someone hopelessly lonely and sad, to be ignored at their grave peril.

Victory is possible. There is no erasing those months, years, when one mind became two, and the world that mind inhabited was upturned. Wounds, though healed, leave a scar. But, slowly, the self that was lost can return. It is not the same self, but none the worse for that. Felicity’s bravery in reliving her experience is testimony to the incredible character built as bit by bit, brick by brick, the wall which had imprisoned her broke down, the strength it once possessed now hers to wield as she chooses. The effort of recollection must not be wasted; only by listening can we come closer to understanding this deadly illness, to recognise where it strikes and eliminate it when it does. For every Felicity, there is another thirteen year old girl, lonely and afraid, and her story can give them hope:

“It’s not just wanting to be thin. It’s something I hate talking about, but I feel like I should because I know how it feels when you’re in the middle of it, and I know you can get better.”

Alice is late again. I wonder that a 60 year old academic with a doctorate and countless publications under her belt should be content to be addressed by her Christian name. Perhaps the idea is to put us at our ease; I find it rather awkward. As if this were a mere ‘chat’ amongst peers which might, with luck, touch upon something related to the substance of the course, but out of pure serendipity, as opposed to premeditated design. However if I were to use her official title my colleagues would probably consider me pedantic. That said, some have in all likelihood already formed this opinion; I find myself having to explain the Roman origins of feudalism almost every week for the benefit of those unfamiliar with history predating 1939.

I try not to dominate the discussion too conspicuously, despite the other’s frankly laughable attempts. In all honestly, I don’t have the heart; why waste one’s energy on such trivial subject matter?

I recall one week attempting to explain the insensibility of focusing on popular culture at the expense of political development and philosophy; why on earth should we care about superstition and localised ritual traditions when it is ultimately the decisions made by those in power, and constitutional change which antecede the evolution of society? Of course such suggestions are met with blank stares; it is as if their mental faculties have rusted over for want of cerebral stimulation.

It seems next week we are to divide into groups to ‘act out’ a scene of our own composition to illustrate a ‘theme’. I am hereby obliged to converge with my assigned battery of dolts, and probably have to ‘thought shower’ ideas with them, only to come up with something barely discernable from the other groups’ efforts. I bet they want to do ‘gender’. Heaven help me.

Jesus I love the Wii. It’s like the ultimate solution to boredom. And good for when you’re tired but can’t be arsed to go to bed. Not that bed doesn’t completely rule (especially in my world, if you catch my drift, I’m like a king between the sheets. That sounds quite weird though.) Actually, a bit of shut-eye might be a plan, after James the wanker woke me up at fucking 9 o’clock with his knob music again. Maybe bed then. Or could just sleep here. Zzzzzzz.

Safe. What now. A nice stretch perhaps. Quality. Right, having defeated the reigning champ for the 3rd time in 6 hours (personal best), this fighter needs fuel. Toast o’clock. I head for the kitchen. Shit, someone seriously needs to wash up, the place looks like a dump. Most of it’s probably mine though. Lame. Mind you, if I leave it for a few days longer someone’ll probably get pissed off enough to do it for me. And I can always use James’s plates.

Open the fridge door. Bollocks, forgot to go to Morrison’s again. I’ll just grab a bit of Jenny’s bread, she won’t mind. Lovely girl. Shame about the face. Ah, did Matt get nutella? Sweet.
Right, time to shower. Should probably give the chewers a bit of attention too. I bought this face scrub (just cos it was on offer and Jo said it’s all right. Doesn’t smell of fruit or anything). Might whack a bit of that on, give the crowdpleaser a bit of tlc. Most guys do use that kind of stuff these days. The ones who give a shit anyway.

Back in my room feeling fresh, I log on and give the old profile a glance. Spare a moment to admire my new pic- arms crossed, for maximum guns impact. You get the credit of a flex, but it’s more subtle, like. Scroll down, and score! Message action. Ha, knew she wouldn’t be able to resist for long. It was ‘nice to see’ me eh? Bet it was. Plenty more where that came from. Must remember to give her a clear view in tomorrow’s 10.15. I’ll set my alarm, get there early. Awesome.

Thin girl (striking a pose in front of the grimy mirror): “Oh my GOD I am SO wasted!”

Curvy girl: “I know, I was going to give it a break after Freshers’ Week, but then when I got your text I was like, this year doesn’t count anyway!”

Thin girl: “True that!” (Pauses to re-arrange her artfully messed-up ‘bedhead’ hair). She turns sideways, and places a hand against her pancake-flat stomach.

“Oh my God I have put on SO much weight this week, I am SO never going to Efes EVER again.”
Curvy girl (struggling with the strings of her top): “Oh my God shut up, I would kill to look like you. I was looking at myself earlier and I can actually grab CHUNKS of my stomach. It is so not funny.”
Thin girl: “Whatever hun, you are SO skinny at the moment. And I would KILL for boobs like yours.”
At this point I decide that maybe I’m not that desperate to pee, and I slide past the two girls, and back out into the anonymity of the scrum.

The following day, standing in line in Your:Shop, I overhear a similar exchange. A girl is holding a Mars bar, and bemoaning the devastating effect it will have upon her figure/complexion/life in general. As she and her friend pass the magazine section they pause and one stoops to pick up a copy of a popular weekly magazine. Emblazoned on the cover are the words ‘Posh’s weight plunges’ set between two pictures of Victoria Beckham demonstrating the shocking effect of some trauma or other.

“God”, she says, looking at Posh.
“I know, it’s awful,” says her friend. “How could someone do that to themselves?”

Looking slightly cheered, the girl holding the Mars bar joins the queue.

Society seems to have reached bizarre levels of contradiction. Never before have we been so wise to the magical properties of broccoli and omega 3s, so clued up on the perils of drinking, drugs, and deep-fried chocolate bars. We are bombarded with self-help books and agony aunt columns, telling us how to make ourselves more fulfilled, well rounded and balanced individuals. Obesity has reached unprecedented levels. ‘Happiness classes’ for children, intended to combat discipline problems and encourage positive interaction, are reportedly having the opposite effect, leaving youngsters depressed and insecure. Students, supposedly enjoying the first flush of independent adulthood, are the group most vulnerable to mental illness; one in four of us reportedly suffer from some psychological disorder.

Conversely, media coverage detailing our sorry state seems only to engender a morbid fascination from the general public. Imperfect though we doubtless are, we devour with glee tales of the inferior; we may be eating a ready meal, but the poor sod being interviewed by Jamie Oliver in Rotherham can’t even boil water! Imagine! Sure, a student may enjoy a drink (or several), and a bit of a bop (or deferred collapse) on the tiles, but compared to the most recent reports of Amy Winehouse’s sorry spiral, it all appears rather more acceptable. So how did we come to this?

Let’s start off with that perpetual source of angst, our bodies. A 2004 government report on obesity by the Select Committee on Health states that the number of obese men (those with a Body Mass Index over 30, a healthy range being between 20 and 25) nearly doubled between 1993 and 2002, from 13.2% to 22.1%. The number of obese women also rose significantly during that period, from 16.4% to 22.8%. Nevertheless, it is not only this extreme group which has seen such growth; the report also states that what we commonly regard as ‘normal’ is in fact overweight; only a third of the adult population is within the healthy range. Our society has adjusted accordingly. Clothes sizes have gradually crept up, and what would once have been a 14 is now a 10. Airlines warn that obese passengers must pay for the two seats necessary to carry their bulk, and hospitals now find they must purchase new equipment to cater for the specialist needs of obese patients. And unfortunately it’s pretty much a given that no one finishes their first year of university the svelte young creature they were when they arrived.

However things aren’t looking good at the other end of the spectrum either. Macabre pictures of jutting ribcages, hollow eyes and skin stretched over bones barely covered by flesh haunt the pages of newspapers and magazines. The headline ‘My Anorexia Hell’, or its equivalent, is practically a given on the cover of at least one weekly gossip mag, and horrifically this sickness is increasingly prevalent amongst young boys, despite its common association with girls and young women.

So why, given the gallons of ink spilled on these topics, does the situation only seem to get worse? And what satisfaction is it that we derive from gawping at these stories, what voyeuristic pleasure at revelling in the misery of others, these burger-guzzling 30-stoners and tragic stick insects? We tuck in to chips, yet eagerly lap up every new celeb diet fad. It makes no sense.

In search of an answer, I return to Your:Shop and lurking next to the magazine shelves, I pounce upon the next unfortunate soul I see clutching a copy of Closer magazine.

Katie, a first year English student, said: “Well, I suppose it’s always nice to think you could maybe look like that one day if you really made the effort…. although obviously no one does. And awful though it is, if you’re really feeling down about yourself then a photo of a really horribly skinny celebrity makes you think that even if you are a bit bigger than you’d like to be yourself, at least you don’t look that starved”
Could this be the key? Is this entire flaw-obsessed culture self-perpetuating? I grab some glossies of my own and head for the library to examine them. Settling myself in a corner, and hoping that no one notices my deviation from what might be considered more suitable study material, I unload my less weighty cargo. Not normally one to peruse such material (for cashflow reasons; I’m not that worthy), my findings are stark, to say the least.

One has a cover feature entitled “Stars getting older- winners and losers”. Turning to it, I find photos of various ‘aging’ celebrities, the photo of each accompanied either by an approving tick for having spent the necessary $20k per month to achieve the face/body of a 25 year old at 40, or an angry purple ‘X’, because the expression they were pulling at the time happened to give the impression of age lines. Ironically, the tag line begins: “Everyone knows it’s hard being a woman in Hollywood…” Is it any wonder, with paparazzi ready to pounce every time you squint and get ‘crow’s feet’ around your eyes?

I delve deeper. Particularly astonishing are the blatant contradictions that can be found even within the same publication. One contained an article entitled “Fern: Behind the smiles”. The piece claimed that although Fern Britton has lost an incredible 6st through gastric band surgery (she had previously been dangerously overweight), and is looking better than ever, “losing weight has also made her lose true confidence”. Barely 50 pages later was an article about a former bulimia sufferer, whose gastric band operation, which she had undergone despite not technically being heavy enough to qualify under normal circumstances, had been “the best thing” she’d ever done. Another magazine lamented the recent weight loss of Victoria Beckham then continued with articles on how to emulate the transformation of Big Brother ‘star’ Imogen Thomas, who lost a stone through a strict diet and rigorous exercise routine. An article on Jordan and Peter’s rumored separation included a small insert about Jordan’s lipo-induced cellulite- which was doubtless of crucial relevance to her marital difficulties.

But why? Why, having turned the page on Fern’s depression, do we scour articles on the ‘skinny gene’ diet to determine whether we are ‘the hunter’, ‘the gatherer’, ‘the nomad’ or ‘the teacher’? Why examine our fingertips for the whorl patterns that would indicate that our diet should be rich in black beans, brussell sprouts and turmeric, and that yoga or pilates are the ideal exercises for us? Suzy Cox, features editor of Grazia magazine, says: “ We want to look at pictures of celebrities because they’re aspirational- people want to see how the ‘other half’ live, look, and how they got there, so that maybe, in some way, they can too”

Perhaps Fern is our safety net. We probably won’t take up pilates, munch flaxseeds in between striking the ‘sun’ and ‘dog’ poses or swap pineapple smoothies for toast at breakfast. So hearing about Fern’s ‘misery’ and decreased confidence since her weight loss acts as a boost- ‘I may not be skinny, but maybe I’m happier for it’. Likewise, the one in a thousand of us who actually fulfill their ‘hunter’ destiny and emerge Angelina Jolie-lean may live with the satisfaction of never again being made to feel like a galumphing prole every time they see a maybelline ad.

It is not just our appearances which we compare so scrupulously with those plastered across Closer and Heat. The culture of social drinking, one most students can relate to is another case in point. Since 24-hour drinking was introduced, reports have claimed that alcohol related hospital admission have risen as much as 300%. Again, newspapers and magazines delight in reporting every gruesome detail; the death of a student from Exeter University in February was hailed as a tragic consequence of the casual approach this generation takes towards consuming potentially lethal quantities of drink. Exeter University banned drinking games (the student died after an organized bar crawl), but if the headlines reporting hospital admissions and drunken violence are anything to go by, the state we’re in has remained unaltered. And once again, our famous friends match us shot for shot.

Take Kerry Katona’s recent ‘drunken’ exhibition on GMTV. Whilst the majority may live out their less coherent moments amidst the company of friends, her slurred words sounded all the more shameful for being broadcast on national television… and in the pre-noon hours, obviously. How much less guilty we might feel about our two-for-one cocktail extravaganza the previous night, when hungover, and observed by none other than perhaps housemates (probably in a similar state), we flick on the telly to be greeted by this sorry sight. Not that our antics are exactly wholesome; University security staff have been heard to remark that this was the “worst Freshers’ Week” they could remember, describing ambulance callouts, merrymakers throwing up anywhere but in the toilet, and generally giving the impression that students don’t know when to stop.

Do we really feel that as long as our behavior is ‘worsted’, as long as we are not quite hitting the very lowest rung of the social ladder, we can get away with it ?

“I don’t think it’s quite that clear-cut” says Emily, a third year philosophy student. “I mean, I would probably still go out, whether I was reading about Amy Winehouse, or whoever. But I suppose it does make you think that whatever I get up to, it’s probably not that dire. And at least it’s private.”
Suzy Cox, features editor of Grazia magazine, says: “ I don’t think that anyone could look at the pictures of Britney at her darkest moments, and feel better about themselves. It’s one thing to see a picture of one of Girls Aloud leaving a club a little the worse for wear, or Madonna with a hair out of place, and to think, ‘at least they’re human after all’. But when a star has more serious problems, as it seems Britney did, that’s when a journalist has to be especially responsible about the way they report on that person”.

Clearly then, our sensibilities have not forsaken us entirely. We recognise that, amusing though the antics of the notorious few are, there comes a point when enough really is enough; when waking up with your miniskirt around your neck, makeup everywhere but your face, might be a sign that your approach to life could use a bit of a rethink. Tempting though a diet of goji berries and avocado smoothies might sound, hopefully our willpower will crack before our lives are overtaken entirely by calorie charts. And finally we should count our blessings that should we have an off day, the paparazzi aren’t about to immortalise the moment for all to see.