“The Cheese Grater is a diamond in a sea of shit”

Gordon Thomson

Former Editor of Time Out London

The Cheese Grater is UCL’s student paper for campus news, investigations, and satire and the Best Student Publication in the UK and Ireland (SPAs 2026).

We’ve been annoying people across campus since 2004, producing award-winning journalism, illuminating important issues at the university, and holding the establishment to account.

We print three times a year and whenever else we feel like it because we’re cool and easy-going like that. During term time, we run a fortnightly newsletter, The Digestive, packed with the biggest campus headlines, our biting humour pieces, and fresh new graphics. Every Saturday at noon, we’re on Rare FM for our weekly radio segment, Grater Insight. As “The Cheese Grater Magazine Society” at Students’ Union UCL, we also have a cool younger sister – our feminist zine Women’s Wrongs – and a problem child, our sketch group, the Graters.

The Cheese Grater has twice been named the Best Publication in London, most recently in 2025, when we were also named Best Digital and highly commended for Best Print Design. We’ve also won the title of UCL’s Best Publication 10 times since 2004, most recently in 2024.

We are proof that you can make it out of Ifor Evans Hall, where, in 2004, Classics student René Lavanchy established The Cheese Grater to offer an alternative to the Union mouthpiece, Pi Magazine. Today, we’re proud to be UCL’s largest publication by circulation and are far more relevant, successful, and funny than all our predecessors.

We are deeply committed to public-interest journalism, supporting student democracy, standing up for students’ interests without fear or favour, supporting marginalised communities at UCL, and also having a bit of laugh every now and then. If you like what you hear, join our crew!

We hold ourselves to the highest standards under the IPSO Editor’s Code of Practice.