スティーヴン・フライのインスタグラム(stephenfryactually) - 6月3日 13時19分

This is going to stretch your tolerance of me to breaking point. Two elements that the world now finds unacceptable. Oxbridge. An all male dining club. Eugh.

I went up to Queens’ College, Cambridge in 1978 (they projected me on their wall last week! Pic 2). The apostrophe does come after the “s” – it was founded by 2 queens. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Most amusing. The college had been a male institution since the 1440s. All that happily changed in my last year, by which time I was the president or “Senior Member” of the Cherubs dining-club (Pic 3). I don’t want you to think of some braying Hooray Henry, pig-sticking, glass-breaking Bullingdon Club horror. We weren’t Oxford, for heaven’s sake. We had standards. But there’s no denying it was what it was. A relict from an earlier time now, perhaps justly, held in deep contempt.

There was an initiation ceremony which was more a test of the lining of one’s stomach than anything else. When the wind changes I can still taste that wild mixture of alcohols in my gullet and I have to clutch at something solid to steady myself.

One of the features of the initiation was to tell the club what we would do to glorify the name of the Cherubs in later life. I said I would wear the tie on TV. I was very quickly as good as my word and wore it for appearances on University Challenge (Pics. 4 & 5). That was nothing though: a fellow initiate called Mike Foale promised he’d be a REAL cherub and fly to the heavens. We had no idea what he meant. But a few years later he joined NASA, served on Mir and the ISS, and still holds the record for the Briton longest in space (374 days). @queens_college colours are dark green, hence the Cherubs tie’s green stripe. Then there’s blue for the heavens and cherubic pink.

The tie comes, like most official university and college merchandise, from Ryder and Amies, whose @ryderandamies premises opposite King’s College have been a feature of Cambridge life for over 150 years.

I know. Deeply disgraceful. I was young, feckless, carefree and foolish. Now that I am old, feckful, careworn and foolish I know better. Or do I …. ?

Feckful? Why the feck not?

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