Agony Lad: Week 8
By Agony Lad
A friend of mine has accepted a challenge to eat formal hall in as many colleges as possible before he leaves. Any ideas for other goals to achieve before my bod card is incinerated?
Speaking ex cathedra from my seat of lad wisdom, unless it’s a Christ Church guest dinner or Worcester’s huge burger and chips staple, formal hall is overpriced, undersized and overrated. You can find proper meat-heavy lad meals at such eateries as The Magdalen Arms, GBK and Burger King (on an increasing scale of recommended inebriation). A much better challenge would be to drink dry as many college bars as possible, identifying weak, scrawny freshers to beast at the quiz machine, foosball, darts or any drinking game of your choice. Weirdly for a library card, most things you won’t be able to do after exchanging your bod card for a gentleman’s 2:1 are library-related! For a start, you might want to check out The Bod. It’s this place (somewhere in the centre?) full of books. All the books. If you’re a lad with a taste for film, you’ll feel pretty much like Professor Indiana Jones before he takes a break from lecturing to annoy lots of Nazis. You can also demand that the library minions find the books you need (“stack ordering” — definitely named by a lad). Casually perusing the original shooting script of The Shawshank Redemption is definitely on Agony Lad’s Oxford bucket list. If you’re super-keen on imitating Harrison ‘Top Lad’ Ford, you can infiltrate All Souls library, a cross between an eccentric inventor’s personal book collection and The Ministry of Magic. Rumours that the librarian will exchange your normal bod card for a Pokemon-style “shiny” remain unconfirmed.
Thanks to the OxStu, OUCA have finally been disowned by the University for fiddling their accounts — good or bad news?
This is clearly terrifying news. The only veneer of civility covering the ultra-laddish, apish booze-guzzlers of the Oxford Conservative Ass-and-titties-ociation has been removed. The last barrier to alcoholic apocalypse has been brushed aside. The flood gates have swung from their hinges, releasing a tidal wave of Port-drenched, porky rascals shoehorned into black tie still smelling of the late night self-vomit which prevented said rascals from closing the deal with various pseudo-attractive but aristocratically well-to-do females. The streets are not safe. In the face of the Leveson Inquiry, it is only fair to point out that The Cherwell broke news about OUCA’s finances, not this newspaper. And that’s because last week I stormed into OxStu towers and, in the style of Henry V, carefully opined (by shouting loudly) that this town needed a taste of raw Ladmageddon — what better way to close the term than by releasing OUCA from the suffocating grip of the University authorities? Naturally, the editorial team took one look at Agony Lad, remembered how even-tempered and inoffensive I usually am, and decided it was a bad idea. So, thank you, The Cherwell.
What did you make of Richard Dawkins and the Archbishop of Canterbury debating at the Sheldonian?
Well that was disappointing. Both Richard ‘anti-Christ’ Dawkins and Archbish Banterbury seemed completely hungover at the Origins of Lad debate. Rumour has it they went big at the BRIT awards and didn’t recover in time. Dork-ins finally took a leap of faith and tried his first Jaegerbomb, only to be hoisted up onto Ed Sheeran’s shoulders (Faith lift? Sheeran on the mount?) by a miraculously trolleyed ABC complaining of a wet beard. Both were seen leaving the Sheldonian, holding hands and murmuring something about “…and lead us not into Park End, but deliver us from Camera…”. Bless them.
As a proponent of the phrase “ladladlad”, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that “ladlad” is in fact a Filipino lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender political party. How do you feel about this?
Totally fine. In conversation I’ll just make sure to get the third ‘lad’ in there no matter what. The lad lifestyle is by no means incompatible with the LGBTQ struggle. I’m just upset no college will fly the Lad flag every Wednesday night. I realise there were objections to the initial design of eight pints of Stella arranged in a swastika, but that misrepresentation has been sorted out. Design number two includes four shot glasses in the gaps. Wouldn’t want anyone to think we only drink beer.
