Fangs ain’t what they used to be!
Many university lecturers make little effort, simply reading from notes in a monotone voice and occasionally looking up to check that everyone’s still asleep.
Others prefer to make things more dramatic by suddenly raising their voices, or bringing a pet dog along, or gesticulating wildly, or suddenly leaping onto a desk.
During my brief time at university, I used to long for this sort of professorial song-and- dance routine. after all, there is little point in a lecturer simply reading aloud. The majority of students are perfectly capable of reading for themselves, and books have the advantage over lectures in that they can be re-read, and/or skipped.
So I was sorry to hear that a senior lecturer in psychology at Glyndwr University in north Wales has been taken to an employment tribunal for trying to liven things up, albeit in a way that may not have appealed to all his pupils.
Mr Emyr Williams, who has been described as ‘ an expert on vampires’, is facing allegations of encouraging blood-tasting after one of his classes.
The story remains confused, but it seems that a student cut herself, and then her blood was wiped up and tasted.
at the moment, we have no means of knowing whether or not it was passed around as a novel alternative to the usual choice of tea or coffee. But, if so, it would certainly have made for a memorable lecture.
Mr Williams is said to have cultivated a ‘ national reputation’ for his expertise in vampirism, having once ‘co-authored a study on the history and portrayal of vampires’. This was published in The Journal of Dracula Studies.
It is also said that Mr Williams once appeared on ITV’s This Morning, alongside a couple of wannabe vampires from South Wales called Pyretta Blaze and andy Filth. This couple claimed to enjoy drinking each other’s blood.
no doubt it was a slow day for breaking news.
In the old days, academic reputations were cultivated by publishing, over any number of decades, a succession of lengthy books, the drearier and more specialised the better.
nowadays, it seems you need only team up on telly with a vampire called andy Filth and you’re halfway to an Oxbridge fellowship. Count Dracula himself is often remembered as a rather glamorous figure, but it should not be forgotten that in Bram Stoker’s 1897 original, he is described as a foulsmelling elderly man ‘with massive eyebrows meeting in the middle’, which makes him sound rather more like noel Gallagher. If there’s one thing worse than having Count Dracula coming up to you, teeth bared and a greedy look on his face, then it must surely be Count Dracula coming up to you wailing Don’t Look Back In anger over and over again. Coincidentally, for the past few months a Californian company called ambrosia has been offering elderly americans transfusions of teenage blood for £6,000 a pop. Its founder, Jesse Karmazin, claims that more than 100 people have already undergone the procedure, in which two and a half litres of plasma are injected into each patient. ‘It’s like plastic surgery from the inside out,’ says Mr Karmazin. ‘I’m not really in the camp of saying this will provide immortality, but I think it comes pretty close, essentially.’ Is he telling the truth? Does his expensive treatment really work? Supporters of the procedure argue that several elderly laboratory mice have already benefited from having adolescent blood injected into them, but who can tell? I don’t know how you can ever gauge whether an elderly mouse is behaving more like an adolescent.
DOyOU tot up the number of times he sleeps through until lunch, or complains about being misunderstood, or threatens to get a tattoo, or sings ‘Ohhh, Jeremy Corbyn’ in a tuneless voice?
The names of the patients at the ambrosia clinic have yet to be released, so we have no means of knowing whether injecting them with teenage blood has transformed hundreds of tottering Grampa Simpsons into bouncy young Justin Biebers.
Or has the proof been staring us in the face since 9am on January 20?
as each day has passed since his inauguration, President Trump seems to have grown more like an adolescent, increasingly prone to random outbursts, shafts of paranoia, sudden losses of temper, erratic behaviour and indiscriminate lashings-out at all and sundry.
Has he been busy with the blood transfusions? Has he taken a tip from Count Dracula? Is this 71year- old man turning, before our very eyes, into a 17-year-old boy?