Red is the Colour

Our Deputy Director of Logo Development, Roger Placement, reacted angrily to last week's news that De Montfort University has updated its logo by replacing the design's existing red colour with a new "deeper red". Speaking to our reporter Keith Ponting (30), Placement said that this move, which De Montfort's director of marketing, Kerry Law, described as giving the university's image "a more confident and ambitious look", was a clear case of colour plagiarism.

Only two months ago, Placement had personally overseen a deepening of the red in Poppleton's logo after the university's logo consultant had suggested that the mid-red in the original design gave the impression of "indeterminacy and lack of direction".

"We will not be taking this lying down," he told Ponting. "We are already looking into the possibility of making the red in our new logo even deeper than the deeper red selected by De Montfort." He confirmed, however, that there were no current plans to replace the bright purple in the Poppleton logo, which would continue to convey the university's "commitment to scholarship".

Smell the Glove

It's good to know that not all academics conform to the staid old stereotype. Consider the case of Doctor Jake Latimer of our Department of European History for Business. In the past few years, Jake has become well known on the Poppleton cabaret scene for a unique act that ingeniously blends the traditionally separate arts of striptease and glove puppetry.

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But Jake is not content to reserve his talents for the cabaret circuit. The Poppletonian has learnt that Jake is now using his act to enliven a second-year course he teaches on the Congress of Vienna. He told our reporter: "At first, the students were a little disconcerted by the sight of their tutor sitting naked astride his desk manipulating a glove puppet called 'Metternich', but several told me afterwards that it had really brought the subject alive for them."

(You can catch Jake and his glove puppet at Strangeways Night Club, Poppleton, next Thursday night or at 11.15am in lecture room PX103 every Tuesday morning.)

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Letter to the Editor

Dear Sir,

I've been reading your newsletter for the past five months, and during that time I've been struck by the number of articles you publish in praise of the vice-chancellor.

This strikes me as rather odd when anyone who works on this campus knows only too well that he is an inept, overpaid, bloated, demagogic tyrant who couldn't run a whelk stall let alone a university.

Please note that I write in a personal capacity.

Yours sincerely

T.W. Outhwaite

Department of Classics for Business

(The editor writes: We have decided to publish this letter in the interests of balance.)

Thought for the Week

(contributed by Jennifer Doubleday, Head of Personal Development)

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This is a new personal favourite. But check it out with Health and Safety before trying it in your office!

There is not enough darkness in the whole world to extinguish the light of one small candle.