24-28th May

The Highlight of this week was preparing to do a debate at the Oxford Student Union. I had to debate against the motion, “Englishmen are funnier than Americans”. This was clearly going to be a difficult debate to win as American bashing is a British past time closely followed by calling your best mate a “wanker”.

I spent a full day researching and writing about American religion, which was a complete waste of time because I just ended up crowbarring in my stand up material. I was also told by Matt Lacey (aka the guy from the Gap Yah video) to wear a tux. Out of 400 people in the room I was one of only two people in a tux whilst everyone else was in fancy dress. So not only did I lose a debate I did so whilst claiming I’d dressed as James Bond. I felt like a sartorial bellend.

The even more annoying thing was I got it specially dry-cleaned. There is a place in Chiswick run by an Albanian con artist: that is not derogatory; he is a con artist who happens to be Albanian. He cocked up a suit I wanted cleaned last year and this time I noticed by the time I was in Oxford, he’d left a massive stain on my shirt. All I could think was I’m going to murder him and I won’t get caught because I’m going to take my blooded garments to a different dry-cleaners where they know to clean stains properly.

The debate was quite fun and proceeded with a posh meal. I hate eating posh meals, especially whilst overdressed. For some reason my conversational skills deteriorate and I end up just repeating phrases like, “this chicken is really tender”. We got put up in a top of the range hotel, which was generally great but I have one gripe about the Hollandaise sauce on my Eggs Benedict at breakfast: strap in for most middle class complaint ever. It turns out if Hollandaise sauce is a thin liquid it tastes disgusting. It was like some sort of beige soup,; it made the food at the Diner look Michelin star quality. I still ate it all because someone else paid for it and I wanted to cash in: I’m convinced I’d eat a bag of nails if it was how I was being paid for something.

Lesson learnt: never wear a tux based on word of mouth.