I was reading a piece in the Guardian last week about Mark Byford leaving the BBC after 32 years' service.
I knew Mark from my time at Leeds University. My first year was spent in Devonshire Hall in Headingley, and Mark was President at the time. It was an interesting introduction to college life for one who had known only a small Cambridgeshire village and its comprehensive school. 'Students' floated about in gowns on Sundays (I imagined they must have collected so many tokens from the Sunday papers in order to obtain these) and spouted Latin phrases.
Mark seemed to revel in all of this, even the food which was truly disgusting. (A Muslim friend of mine told the cook that he didn't eat meat and so was presented with a slab of Cheddar cheese, swimming in a pool of fatty, beef gravy). The pseudo grandeur of Devonshire Hall masked a number of other insecurities in that it wasn't Oxbridge or Durham; it was somehow second-best and wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
I got to know Mark quite well as he moved into our part of the Hall - a converted house at the bottom of Cumberland Road - where we shared a devotion to football and Leeds United. Mark was studying football fans' behaviour at the time and their proclivity for violence, though he himself nver appeared to get angry about anything.
And so, 32 years on he left the BBC having almost made it but, like Devonshire Hall, only coming second-best. Perhaps for the people who remain there, they may dress up in their finest and say all of the right things at all of the right times but are they really cheese or are they just the gravy?
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