2004 - 2006: René Lavanchy
The Cheese Grater was conceived at Ifor Evans Hall in the winter of 2003-4, somewhere between the bar and the first-floor pigeon holes. Old Pi pages in Phineas hinted at a past of fervent and maybe even useful student journalism at UCL. But the only media outlets were Rare FM and Pi, and Pi looked dismal – badly designed and with no idea how to do serious journalism properly. I’d met students who read and enjoyed Private Eye, and in my teenage arrogance I thought I could give them an upstart publication that mixed humour and investigation.
Early challenges were learning how to use a photocopier properly (hence the first issue’s poor print quality), gathering enough members (we only narrowly escaped disaffiliation for this after our first Freshers’ Fayre) and finding an assistant editor (the first one dropped out after failing to convince me that the best way to critique the union was to ignore it completely).
The first article that really struck the keynote of The Cheese Grater’s investigations was ‘UCL Union Lines Up To Kick David Renton’. The author, who asked to write anonymously, said that Renton, a sabbatical officer, was frequently absent from his post and was generally incompetent. Inspection of union meeting minutes proved him right. I was delighted and drew a cartoon of Renton for the cover, sitting back with his feet on his desk. He wasn’t pleased, and wrote us a letter saying he had felt “deflation and angst” on reading it.
We (okay, I) came unstuck in an article about a student who had been found dead in his room at Campbell House. The first draft of the article brought a threat of legal action from the Dean of Students who felt it defamed him; the published version still angered him as it said the body had been half eaten by rats (it hadn’t). I’ve never felt so close to being expelled.
The fabulous Mr Chatterbox first appeared in the magazine in my time, with a series of brilliant, waspish articles attacking UCL’s new corporate management with a combination rare in student journalism: wit, understanding and inside knowledge. I’m sure his work helped us win that Best Small Budget Publication Award off the Guardian. I bowed out by publishing a special report attacking Social Colours as self-serving rubbish: I still believe that and have rejected both the colours the Union tried to pin on me.
2006 - 2007: Mark Ravinet
Looking over old issues of CG I thought, “Why did I put my name to this rag? Who the fuck is Claude McNab?” I jest. We covered cock-ups, failures and general incompetence - and won a Guardian Student Media Award.
Computing was in a poor state at UCL. The year began with the shift from paper- based course enrolment to the Portico system. It was a catastrophe: students unable to register for courses, huge headaches for administrative staff. We revealed it was possible to download usernames and passwords of thousands of UCL network users; a situation Information Services had been warned about twice previously but didn’t do anything about until CG got involved. UCLU also paid £80000 for a website which left data available to hackers!
The Education and Welfare Officer who resigned for personal reasons actually quit because he had committed electoral fraud. The remaining Sabbs backed the ill-fated Governance Review by lying to the executive, Facebook fights and ‘forgetting’ opposing motions. The Finance and Administration Officer fancied himself as a young Michael Parkinson, using Film Society cash to buy a camera and attempting to buy suits so he could run an interview show. Appropriately his campaign posters depicted him as Scarface, the notorious thug, crook and general bastard.
2007 saw students airing their disgust at the shares UCL had in the arms sector and the CG ran a series of articles on the university’s lack of scruples over investment. We learned the Finance department had let students overpay their fees and hadn’t rushed to hand the cash back. Male athletes of UCL disgraced themselves when a Sports Society Slave Auction became a stand-off between Men’s Rugby and Men’s Football with forced oral sex, pints of piss and shots of saliva. The security staff hardly rushed to stop it – they were busy laughing and taking photos.
2008 - 2009: Jenni Hulse
Due to the passage of time and psychological repression of traumatic events, my time as editor is a little hazy now. However, I do have a vague idea that I enjoyed the year – despite censorship, repeated threats and teetering on the brink of hysteria.
Most memorably, an article about a former Chief Executive of UCL Union and his dodgy (mis)management style was censored by a Sabb bearing an uncanny resemblance to a potato. Apparently it was libellous. London Student didn’t think so – they ran it anyway. The name of the magazine was briefly changed to The Potato Grater.
As the old saying goes: behind every great woman there is a man, undermining her authority and destroying her reputation. As Humour Editor, Gareth Spencer exceeded the magazine’s previous heights of offensiveness and cultural insensitivity, leading to non-specific threats from three members of the Islamic Society and an unpleasant incident in Senate House after calling the Stop the War Coalition Treasurer a Nazi.
Meanwhile, Alex Ashman proved himself a highly capable sleuth as Investigative Editor, exposing UCL’s ‘ethical’ investment policy and the exploitation of Postgraduate Teaching Assistants – plus ça change! Alex McKenna was Treasurer. He stole all the funds, fled to South America and was never heard of again.
We won the UCLU Arts Awards for Best Publication. Obvs.
2009 - 2010: Alex McKenna
Mindful of my new-found place as a member of the adult community, please note that much of the following list is fictitious. Names, events and places have been changed.
ALEX McKENNA’S LIST OF FIVE (MOSTLY BAD) THINGS THAT HAPPENED WHILE HE WAS EDITOR
1. A fresher died on Alex McKenna’s first day in the job. A member of UCL staff - who for argument’s sake, we’ll call Dr Suth Ridall - wouldn’t let him print an investigation into the matter and the whole sad event was swiftly forgotten.
2. Someone kept threatening to sue CG.
3. Alex McKenna appeared on University Challenge, the first and only Editor of CG to do so (Rene got on the UCL team, but the producers didn’t regard him as telegenic enough to actually appear on the show).
4. In the wake of the UCL Pantsbomber Alex McKenna shared pick and mix and shortbread at an Islamic Society event with a fundamentalist preacher. He was very nice. Not so sure about his views on Sharia law though.
5. Alex McKenna failed to win a UCLU Arts Award.
P.S. There were some bad cuts by management, the sabbs were useless - but quite friendly, Pi was shit as usual, even fewer women than usual joined CG that year.
2010 - 2011: Thom Rhoades
‘One member of the maths department recently had her handbag stolen’. So began the year for The Cheese Grater’s investigative side with George Potts’ explosive exposé ‘Gordon’s Café Robbery’. It looked as though yet another generation of Graters would continue the magazine’s rich history of journalistic integrity, daring to publish stories that no other Uni rag could, nay would, ever print. ‘A handbag? In London?’ readers seemed collectively to gasp.
By now the world was watching, the next issue had to hit the mark - and boy, did it? Yes. It did.
What a boon the UCL Occupation turned out to be for our slathering hacks. Page after page after page after page of intrigue and fury, a heady cocktail of intense imbroglio shaken and stirred by my chief bar people, Potts and Hannah Sketchley. Each day I, the editor, would be sent fresh tales of demands, ultimata, even proposals. At times it was hard to keep pace with my burrowing barmen (continuing the metaphor), but I did – because I had to. They wouldn’t let me quit and I wanted it for my CV.
It was news of sexual deviancy with the JBR occupation that initially aroused (wink) the interest (wink wink) of our roving reporters*. Like hounds with a scent, in they went. By the time they came out, nothing was the same. But about two weeks after that everything was essentially the same again.
As the year went on my team and I got ourselves further and further up the Sabbatical Officers’ noses, where somehow we knew we belonged. News of infighting within the Sabb office led to our now infamous ‘Valentine’s Special’ cover (February) featuring the faces of Mandy Smith and Michael Chessum. There was a UCLU Referendum too, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was about. They either wanted more control or less control. Anyway ‘Vote Yes’ won because they had iPads, which we heavily criticised.
I would like to thank my team of generals: John Bell, George Potts, Olivia Pyper, Max Titmuss, and Tim Smith. I regret that there is only one woman on that list, but to be fair I was following on from McKenna.
*The lack of available contraception within the mob led subsequently to the birth of several ‘occupation babies’, now the subject of Channel 4 documentary Children of the Revolution - which charts the early lives of those growing up in a ‘post UCL-occupation world’.
2011 - 2012: John Bell
The Welcome Members’ meeting of November 2011 was one for the ages. It went very badly, and Union Chair Zubair Idris stated that the Union would “do a bit of soul-searching” to find out what went wrong. My tenure also saw the arrival of the hotly anticipated, and now much missed, “Society Frump”.
But perhaps the biggest story of the year went unpublished. On 4th March 2012, Humour Editor Sam Gaus arrived 45 minutes early put-together, breathless, and covered in blood.
“John, you have to help me.” He had been going door-to-door in Ramsay Hall with an iPad (so students could log in and vote him for DCO), a carrot (willing voters enjoy a tasty bite), and a stick (less willing voters enjoy a bosh on the head). “But I also brought a machete in case things got serious...”
Please identify potential risks of reputational damage to the University or UCLU.
The words of my Union risk assessment, still fresh in mind nine months after completion. I was in over my head. Who should I call – the police? Malcolm Grant? Sam’s mum? Democracy and Communications Officer James Skuse. Luckily he was having a few pints around the corner and made it up to my Archway flat within a couple of minutes. “Blimey James, that was quick – hope you didn’t have to make too rude an exit?” I asked, taking his vomit-stained coat, as Sam crumbled and wept.
“No it’s alright, I was just on my own!” beamed Skuse. As I explained the situation, Skuse’s smile turned to a determined glare.
“Cometh the moment, cometh James Skuse,” he muttered, lifting the now balled-up Sam in both arms and delicately placing him in the bathtub. I watched the hot water vapour lick the lip of the doorframe. When Investigations Editor Hannah Sketchley arrived, Sam and I were sitting around the table, trying to think of a new word for “cock”. She never knew what went on that day, although she did ask several times why our hair was wet, why there was blood everywhere, and why James Skuse was sleeping naked in the bathroom.
For the sake of Sam’s political career I hushed up this grotty tale, but I can stand the secret no longer.
2012 - 2013: Will Rowland
Will ‘Growler’ Rowland took on the editorship in September 2012. Growler was a notorious ‘triple threat’: a bloody legend, a bona fide big shot, and a bad journalist. He didn’t know the news and had to lean on his capable sub-editors: unclubbable slappers Otto Webb and JoJo Dibbledson-Brown.
The Autumn and Spring Issues focused on UCL’s ‘Masterplan’ to build a campus in Stratford and reallocate space in Bloomsbury. UCL’s plans to build on the site of the Carpenters Estate were going to cause seven hundred people to lose their homes. CG spoke to the residents and they didn’t fancy a move: “You have to fuck off, or you are going to have a war on your hands”, said one chap in response to UCL. The plans collapsed in May due to UCL’s and Newham Council’s inability to reach a commercial agreement. Meanwhile CG’s procurement of the unreleased ‘Bloomsbury Masterplan’ revealed an alarming trend within the planned future of UCL towards corporatization, with “ten new cafés opening” and Malet Place being “transformed into a ‘teaching and learning high street’, with retailers invited in to set up shop in ‘under-used areas’... making the re-developed campus look like a shopping centre.” These plans are yet to come into effect.
CG took delight in Pi Magazine absorbing the failing newspaper, reporting that “Pi Newspaper has been in a sorry state this year... The headlines read like snatches of overheard conversations: ‘Arts societies take performances on tour’” concluding that “this was only a merger inasmuch as a fox eating a dying pigeon can be said to be a merger”. After publication, the intersociety tension spilled over at a ‘Riveria’ themed party in a dank Fitzrovia basement, where a previous Pi Newspaper Editor and the current CG editor engaged in an educationally privileged Mexican standoff of chest puffing and shoulder grabbing.
The year also saw London Student editor Jen Isaakson emerging like Grendel’s mother from the fetid swamp of student journalism. CG reported across multiple issues her evil enterprises, such as “publishing the same article twice”, publishing a “transphobic article”, and taking a free trip from the Australian tourist board “on the condition that [she] advertised Australia in the newspaper.” In a fitting end, CG’s investigative editor wrested control of the London Student from her during the elections at the end of the year. The beast was slain, the peasants rejoices and King Hroðgar gave Webb many gifts, including the sword Nægling, his family’s heirloom.
2013 -2014: Hannah Sketchley
According to experts on child development, at age ten The Cheese Grater should be looking to those older than it, and considering whether adulthood is something to be desired. It should be encouraged into physical exercise in order to maintain a good relationship with its body, and it ought to be making a first crack at independence from its parents in preparation for Big School. Seeya, Rene, we’ve got double science next!
This precipitous year has so far not been uneventful. Despite pleas to make The Never Ending Tory finally end, and of course the traditional ‘new editor, new threat of legal action’ from an old friend of The Cheese Grater, both the website and our reputation remain intact.
The violent eviction of occupying students from Senate House proved that the Age of Empires generation of students have learnt nothing about defending a castle, gave us one of the first French headlines and a lot of Twitter followers. UCL Union jumped aboard the banned wagon and kicked both Robin Thicke and the Metropolitan Police off campus, quite possibly the only thing the two have in common – aside from regularly being twerked upon. We also made the bold leap of jettisoning the beginnings of stories from the front cover and picked some new fonts along the way, decisions which took longer than it did to put the bloody issues together.
What will the tenth year of The Cheese Grater have in store? More late nights locked in the Media Suite, more pissy UCL alumni and our last chance to mock the eternal sabbatical officer and perpetual provider of Cheese Grater fodder before he is finally evicted from Bloomsbury politics.
As the magazine stumbles out of this party, wakes up somewhere unexpected and shakes off a hangover, editing it continues to be both an enormous pleasure and a threat to my health, academic achievement and happiness. Maybe we’ll even get an arts award back, thanks to tactical positioning of CG members on the Arts Committee.
Thanks to Charlie ‘The Dog’ Hayton, Bo Franklin, Beatrice Kelly, Harriet Harper, Harry Pasek and Alexes Dutton and Daish, without whom the magazine’s contents, fonts and printing costs would be immeasurably worse.