I have no idea why Princess Margaret loomed so large at Keele University, but throughout my time at Keele our titular Chancellor was the source of countless controversies in absentia…which is indeed the manner in which I chose to receive my degree in 1984.
Indeed, it was along with fellow fresher Simon Jacobs that I took my seat at my first Students’ Union UGM…the first of a great many as it turned out…on 20 October 1980.
I don’t remember all that much about that first UGM, other than the hoo-ha that was the Princess Margaret controversy.
There were no doubt student political machinations involved in the matter dating back to before our time. But in short, it seemed, the new union sabbaticals had invited Princess Margaret to the Union’s Christmas Ball without seeking approval for such a manoeuvre from the whole committee nor from a UGM which is (or at least was) the sovereign body of the union.
Trying to recall how I felt about it, looking back on the event almost exactly forty years later, I don’t think I saw the matter as especially newsworthy or even all that controversial on the night itself. It just felt like good debate with some political theatre thrown in…and we even got to vote. The argument that the student ball would be far more restricted if HRH attended and that anyway she probably didn’t really want to come to our student ball seemed the most convincing to us and indeed to the majority of those who bothered to turn up, listen and vote.
Extract from The Daily Mirror Diary Page, 22 October 1980. Click the picture link above to see the whole page, including a piece about Mick Jagger describing him as an ageing rock star…he was 37 back then.
The Daily Mirror saw it a little differently. We’d been at Keele for less than a fortnight and already we were “bolshie students” and “little devils”. Yay!!
A week or so later, the student newspaper, Concourse, covered the story in a far more balanced manner:
I was still on the National Executive of BBYO and spent my first weekend in Glasgow. Travelling to and from Glasgow from Keele for the weekend is not a brilliant idea but according to the diary I got back to Keele early enough on the Sunday evening to show up at the Union bar. Yes, really that is what the Sunday entry (below) says.
Monday 13 October – First lectures – OK. Went to Union in evening. Quiet day.
Tuesday 14 October – Lectures OK, Politics OK. Went to drama workshop in eve – good.
I was doing the Foundation Year (FY). In those days most Keele undergraduates did four year courses, starting with FY. It is was a wonderful course which helped me to learn how to learn and also enabled me to decide what to study for my degree. Politics was one of my two sessional courses (the other was History).
Simon Jacobs did a three year degree without FY. Simon and I threw ourselves into the drama workshop in our first term.
Simon Jacobs throwing himself into something, 1979
…or, if anything ever goes awry with the above Wirral Festival link, click here for a scrape thereof.
Several of us who had enjoyed doing drama at school wanted to do a bit of performance stuff without getting involved in the formalities of the drama society and full scale productions. This group proved to be just the ticket for us. We were very lucky to be led by someone of Brian Rawlins’s quality for such a group. That story ends with this piece of street theatre…
Wednesday 15 October 1980 – dull lectures today. (??) Pleasent [sic] afternoon. Went to J-Soc & Freshers Ball till very very late.
Didn’t take long for the novelty of foundation year lectures to wear off, did it?
Our Freshers Ball was supposed to be headlined by Gary Glitter, but apparently he fell ill, so Alvin Stardust was wheeled out at the last minute as a replacement. This event was long before Gary Glitter’s infamy as a child sex offender, of course. Indeed Glitter did show up at one of the balls I attended some time later in my Keele journey. Unlike Glitter, there was nothing edgy about Alvin Stardust, neither in performance nor, as far as we know, in real life.
There are two Concourse pieces about the Freshers Ball. The first one a damning news piece with no byline…
…the second a rather more upbeat music review by Dave Lee. Do you know who wrote the first piece, Dave? If so, do tell.
Dave Lee talks highly of Glass Torpedoes. I certainly recall enjoying the warm up act more than the Alvin gig. Embedded below is the Glass Torpedoes Peel Session from earlier that year:
Dave Lee also talks up the Tour de Force gig in Room 14 upstairs, which I also vaguely recall enjoying more than Alvin. I have managed to find some interesting material on the former, including a rare recording on the following embedded vid.
Thursday 16 October 1980 – V tired today. Law v good. Got some letters written, received some letters as well. Went to bar with Simon in evening.
Law was a four week topic with Michael Whincup. We needed to do several such topics during FY. So inspired by that law topic was I, that ended up switching to study law (along with economics) as my degree the following three years.
Going to the bar with Simon in those early weeks/months of Keele not only included beer drinking but invariably a few games of table football. I have no pictures of me playing table football with Simon, sadly, but more than a quarter of a century later, when visiting Jinka in the South Omo Region of Ethiopia, I learnt that I hadn’t mis-spent that aspect of my youth at all; I was able to call on the skills acquired in those all-too-frequent games in the Keele Students’ Union to great effect:
Friday 17 October 1980 – Not bad lectures today. Disco in eve, bad.
Saturday 18 October 1980 – Easy day. Went to disco in eve, good.
How was I assessing the discos in those days? I doubt if I was doing the “disco aficionado” thing at that stage. Admittedly, I had experienced an Ian Levine special at Mecca in Blackpool by then…and a few good ones in London no doubt. But my guess is that “bad” and “good” would have been determined by the extent to which I had managed to perk up any interest among the female freshers who were still in the market by the Friday and Saturday of that week.
Not that I had really worked out what to do about it when I got a bit lucky. As much as anything else, I was committed to traipsing up and down the country for the rest of that term still. I do recall getting friendly that week with a pretty girl with a turned up nose from the North-East named Jo. Her father was a vicar and she was even more shy with that sort of stuff than I was. We didn’t get far. I think we went back to her place for a cup of coffee and had…coffee. But we remained smiling, nodding acquaintances for several years at Keele. Bless. That pleasing non-event might well have been after the “good” disco.
I saw Keele University for the very first time on 8 October 1980. I entered through the main gates, on the bus from Stoke, carrying a suitcase and a holdall; less stuff than I would take with me for a weekend these days.
[“These days” means almost exactly 40 years later at the time of writing].
I stayed at Keele for five years.
It was Simon Jacobs’s fault. (Simon, right, trying to look cool and uninterested).
It was Simon Jacobs’s fault that I was there. No ifs no buts no maybes.
It happened like this.
Both Simon and I had made a similar mess of our A levels. We’d both thrown ourselves into BBYO at a local level (Pinner in his case, Streatham mine) and at a national level as well; we were both on the National Executive and indeed that summer I had been running the office after the sole full-timer, Rebecca Lowi, had left.
Simon started to address the educational “oops, what happens next?” problem far quicker than I did. On one unsung occasion in mid-to-late August 1980 Simon popped in to see me at the office at Hillel House, after he had visited Keele.
It seems like a really nice University. It’s small and friendly, the campus has large and very attractive grounds…and…they’ve offered me a place, even with my crummy A levels. You should give it a try.
I phoned Keele the next morning. I explained my predicament. The official I spoke with sounded quite promising.
Sure – come and have a look in the next week or so and we’ll have a chat about what we might be able to offer you with your so-called crummy A levels.
I demurred.
That might be a bit difficult. I am running this office all by myself and we have our annual National leadership training course starting next week and a bit of a governance crisis going on at the same time. You come highly recommended to me by Simon, whom I trust, so if you have a place for me I’m sure it will work out well for me and for Keele.
The Keele official demurred…slightly.
Well, that is a rather unusual request, but I suppose you have described a rather unusual predicament…let’s see what we can do…
I recall being asked to provide character references from senior teachers at my school, Alleyn’s, which wasn’t too difficult for me to achieve. Thank you, Colin Page; house master, games master, nice guy and teacher whom, I believe, never actually taught me academically-speaking. Not quite sure what he organised for me, but it worked.
My diary on Wednesday 10 September notes:
…good day (possible good news from Keele)…
I think that might be the news that I had a place subject to references.
Then Monday 15 September:
Got back from Nottingham [BBYO that was, not University hunting] – phoned Keele – in.
So when I entered through the gates on that bus with my measly bags, all I knew about the place was Simon’s review from his interview/tour day and the correspondence the University sent me between accepting me and my arrival.
Still, by 8 October, Simon had been there for a few days, so he was an expert already. He recalls being taken up at the weekend by his parents. That must have been the Sunday, because my diary says that Simon (along with several others) spent Saturday at the Harris residence in Streatham, but Simon wasn’t among those who stayed over.
Wednesday 8 October. Left home early. Easy journey. Registered. Met Simon, easyish day. Disco in evening v good.
That first day of Keele reads a bit Adrian Mole.
Thursday 9 October. Tons to do. Sorting things out. Saw Supercharge in evening.
No comment on Supercharge there. I do recall buying, for a very modest sum, one of their albums, Local Lads Make Good, in Record & Tape Exchange later that academic year. I realised on listening to it that they worked better live than they did on album…and I recalled that they hadn’t worked all that well for me live. They were fun, it was Freshers’ Week and we were all up for pretty much any live music.
I have subsequently found the micro review of the Supercharge concert from Concourse, the student newspaper – see below. I don’t think Christine was impressed.
Friday 10 October. Lots to do today. Sorting things out. Evening down union & singing songs avec Simon.
Cripes. I’d been at University for fewer than 72 hours and already I was clipping phrases such as “down Union”…
…and where did the phrase “avec Simon” come from? Was it an in joke from the evening – perhaps we had sung a French song or parodied the French chanteur style.
I recall the singing taking place in the Walter Moberly Hall. Certainly on more than one occasion and I’m pretty sure that evening must have been the first. Simon was itching to play the piano, so after a drink or two (and almost certainly a game or three of table football) we went in search of a piano for Simon to play and discovered that the Walter Moberly Hall was left open in the evenings for the convenience of scallywags like ourselves.
Of course, Simon has subsequently gone on to have a glittering avocational musical career, with album launches…
…and more recently his latest album, from lockdown, which is previewed on the following track:
Coincidentally, Janie and I had arranged to visit Simon 10 October 2020 in blissful ignorance of the fact that it was 40 years since he and I had started Keele. It was only some chat on Facebook that alerted me to the “anniversary”.
