Who Goes Where?

A Non-Existent student paid his fees, was elected to a union sub-committee and took his final degree examination at Brighton Training College, England. At the beginning of the term, a tutor called the roll of freshers in the Engineering Department.

"You've left out Mr. Taylor's name," he was told. The name was duly entered on the list and called at each lecture. Each time someone answered for "Mr. Taylor."

When written work was called for, manscripts were handed in. in Mr. Taylor's name. The time came for the class to sit for the London External examination, and a graduate took Taylor's place and qualified him for a degree.

The fiction was discovered just before the degree ceremony, when the University of London checked the names of graduates.

Another fictitious character was invented at Leeds National Union of Students festival during the Christmas vacation. Among the celebrities was one called Harold Carter. Nobody had ever seen him.

He organised a visit for a coal mine, for which the bus failed to arrive, and a huge bonfire, for which fifty people waited in pouring rain in vain. The N.U.S. organiser asked the editor of the festival newspaper to publish an announcement that Harold Carter was a fictitious person and that all notices bearing his signature should be torn down.

The paper did this most efficiently, except that it substituted the name of Fred Singleon (the organiser) for Harold Carter in the announcement.

The result of this double hoax was that the notices posted by the organiser were pulled down, and Carter's were left.

—Nonesuch News, Bristol University.