Diary – 26 July 2003

I am invited to the Oxford Union to speak in the last debate of the term. I had originally been invited to speak on the death of feminism earlier in the year, but as I couldn’t go they kindly invited me back. The motion is less onerous – ‘Life is too short to drink cheap wine’ – and I am speaking for, along with Peter Stringfellow, among others. I have been preparing for weeks, soliciting everyone I meet for jokes and anecdotes, and obsessively honing my speech. Two days before I’m due to speak I make the mistake of running the final draft past three of my friends at dinner. They think it’s so bad that they tell me they’re going to send a hearse down to Oxford to pick me up afterwards. In the event, the evening goes well, and we win the motion, although the highlight for me is seeing the president of the union drink seven tumblers of extremely cheap wine in the space of 20 minutes, and then witnessing a slightly wayward priest trying to wrestle a mobile-phone number out of Peter Stringfellow.